More than 30 years after the royal commission, why are Indigenous Australians still dying in custody? | Thalia Anthony and Eddie Cubillo for the Conversation https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/16/more-than-30-years-after-the-royal-commission-why-are-indigenous-australians-still-dying-in-custody #Australianpoliceandpolicing #Indigenousincarceration #IndigenousAustralians #Australianpolitics #NorthernTerritory #Deathsincustody #Australianews #Prisons
#DeathsInCustody
The President and all seven Commissioners of the Australian Human Rights Commission are united in our demand for immediate reform over the ongoing crisis of Aboriginal deaths in custody.
There have been 12 Aboriginal deaths in custody across the country since the start of 2025. Recent deaths in the Northern Territory push the national total to almost 600 deaths since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC). In recent years, this includes increased numbers of men, women, and children dying in custody.
Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss: “My heart goes out to affected families and communities. I stand in complete solidarity with those in mourning.
“Our governments need to respond genuinely to the commitments they have undertaken to meet Closing the Gap targets. There is an urgent need to invest in prevention to stop people from entering the justice system in the first place.
“Our people are dying in a system that has failed them from the beginning. The need for transformational reform is undeniable. During our recent visit to the Territory, Commission President Hugh de Kretser and I heard repeatedly that a law and order disaster was unfolding for Aboriginal people, and this concern has been raised consistently across the country.
“Without an evidence and human rights-based approach to justice and corrections, the massive over-representation of our peoples in custody - and dying in custody - will remain a national shame. Enough is enough.”
#auspol
#DeathsInCustody
#humanRights
https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/we-must-end-national-shame-aboriginal-deaths-custody
The NT police failed this man in life just as they now intend to fail him in death.
The perpetrators have been put in charge of investigating their own crimes.
(There have been almost 600 First Nations people killed in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, including at least 10 this year. Only one of the 339 recommendations handed down by that commission has been implemented:)
Statistics ?
https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/deaths-custody-australia
In an emotional vigil in Alice Springs, Warlpiri elders say now is the time for truth, encouraging witnesses of a young man's death in custody at a local supermarket to come forward.
An eyewitness told the ABC the restraint "looked pretty violent".
Another, who didn't want to be identified, said they saw a plain-clothed officer tackle the man and pin him to the ground with his knee on his neck.
"He was pinned down and he was told to stop resisting," the witness said.
https://amymcquire.substack.com/p/an-aboriginal-man-has-been-killed
A disabled aboriginal man was murdered by police during an arrest outside a Coles in Mparntwe.
#aboriginalDeathsInCustody #abolishThePolice #deathsInCustody #blackLivesMatter
just when you think another article about Indigenous people in australian prisons can’t be more disgusting than the last…
https://citynews.com.au/2025/urgent-need-to-throw-light-on-prisons-dark-secrets/
Impossible to imagine the depths of despair and emptiness that could make a teenager suffer like this.
But never mind, two old white men, who helped to set this youth up to fail are meeting to see how far under the carpet they can sweep this.
Until next time.
It is horrible what happened to #LukeandJesse in #Sydney. It really is. But am so conflicted on this. Where is the community outrage about ongoing #DeathsInCustody, reason enough I would have thought to question police participation, where is the community outrage about what is happening to #Queer people in #Gaza and our government's pathetic responses. I am left to conclude that white, middle-class, victims hold more value and creates more shock waves. And that is an awful conclusion to come to.
Nothing has changed. Not a bloody thing has changed.
So it has finally come to this, yet again. Despite the release of one Deaths in Custody inquest, report or royal commission after another, the effective slow genocide still continues. Instead of possessing even a shred of decency in fully following these recommendations, we have instead have a State Government conforming to simplistic and populist instincts with a repetition of the intellectually bankrupt policy, with regards to the issue of juvenile crime, of "getting tough". Thus, we now have the incident of a Aboriginal juvenile male person, where instead of heeding the warning signs over his rapidly deteriorating mental health, he was left to confinement within the juvenile detention centre of a maximum security adult prison. And the Governmemnt response? We have a Premier shrugging off the whole matter, that the presence of Unit 18 was a "neccesssary evil". The signs were already there in plain sight, where concerns were already expressed upon him committing acts of self harm, yet nothing was done; no offers of counselling or mental health support were ever given. And now he is dead, after being found unresponsive by guards a week ago.
And the whole cycle of ongoing deaths in custody continues one more revolution. Aboriginal Australians, we have failed you yet again.
And this coming almost a week after the failed Voice to Parliament referendum. So kindly spare me any bullshit, about how Australia isn't a racist country. #DeathsInCustody #SongToTheCynic https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/20/indigenous-boy-16-dies-perth-casuarina-prison-after-being-found-unresponsive
Prosecutors have charged a Metropolitan Police officer with murder after he shot rapper Chris Kaba in London last year.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5v9g/chris-kaba-metropolitan-police-murder
#Crime #police #murder #London #deathsincustody
#Police watchdog apologises to sister of black man who died in custody in 2008
#IOPC apologises ‘unreservedly’ to #MarciaRigg, whose brother #Sean died after being restrained in #Brixton
Deborah Coles, the director of the #DeathsInCustody charity #Inquest, “Fifteen years on and with no one properly held to account, this case provides a stark reminder of how the mechanisms for holding police to account are not fit for purpose.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/08/iopc-apologises-marcia-rigg-black-man-sean-rigg-died-police-custody
#SeanRigg
#AbolishThePolice: Cannon Lambert, the attorney who represented #SandraBland’s family and helped them negotiate the 2017 reforms, says the proposal, Senate Bill 1896, would undermine a key plank of the #reforms that bear her name. “It’s antithetical to the purpose of the act,” Lambert told me, saying Bland’s family had wanted #systemicchanges that would lead to greater #oversight of jail conditions and #accountability for #DeathsInCustody.
https://boltsmag.org/texas-bill-jail-death-secrecy-sandra-bland/
https://reporterswithoutorders.substack.com/p/coroner-simon-mcgregors-findings
On our inhumane 'corrections' system, the needless incarceration and deaths of indigenous men and women, addicts, and other disadvantaged groups, and the need for reform.
#news #journalism #justice #prisonreform #deathsincustody #indigenousrights
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