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George Floyd’s death and the US Black Lives Matter movement sparked extensive media attention. Why aren't Australian Indigenous deaths in custody getting the same amount of media coverage?
Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in solidarity with us against the issue of state sanctioned brutality. Systemic change is long overdue. At least 441 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody since the Royal Commission handed down its finding in 1991. These aren’t just numbers to us: these are our Elders, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children. No police officer or authority has ever been held criminally responsible. The legal system is so entrenched with systemic racism that Aboriginal people are the most incarcerated people in the world. Yet w...
Justice reinvestment programs could receive a major boost after the next federal election with the Labor Party pledging more than $90m in reforms. The announcement comes 30 years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody handed down it's final report in April 1991. The federal Opposition says the multi-million dollar investment over four years would tackle the social and economic drivers of disadvantage contributing to the high rates of Indigenous peoples behind bars. Labor pledges millions to reduce incarceration rates Wiradjuri woman and Indigenous affairs La...
Over the past thirty years, more than half of all Aboriginal people that have died in police custody were apprehended for low-level offences, statistics contained in the Australian Institute of Criminology’s (AIC) most recent annual report reveal. In the thirty years from 1989-90 to 2018-19, the AIC recorded 858 deaths in police custody, including 168 Aboriginal deaths in police custody. Among the 168 Aboriginal deaths in police custody, 53 or around one third were suspected of having committed a theft-related offence. Nearly a quarter (39) of all Aboriginal people that died in police cust...
Roseanne Pat never knew her cousin, but his death in a stone cell in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region continues to have a huge impact on her life. “It’s always inside of you, it's something that scars you for life, it's always inside of you like a scar,” she told The Point. “It’s something we’re not going to forget about.” John Pat’s death in 1983, in Ieramadagu or Roebourne, thousands of kilometres from the corridors of power in Canberra, caused a national outcry. The outpouring of anger and grief after his death triggered the push for a Royal Commission into Abori...