Landmark Report Makes 39 Recommendations To Prevent More Indigenous Deaths In Custody

A landmark report has been handed down by the New South Wales Legislative Council about how to prevent further Indigenous deaths in custody.

In the more than 250-page document, the Council has made 39 recommendations about ways the state government and other authorities can fix the system.

It comes on the 30th anniversary of the findings of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

There were 339 recommendations contained in inquiry and yet there have been five Indigenous people die in custody in just over a month this year.

That statistic alone shows that the system is still broken.

The Royal Commission identified three decades ago that Aboriginal people were more likely to die in custody partly because they were incarcerated at disproportionate rates.

To help rectify this, the NSW Legislative Council has found dozens of ways, both small and large, that the state government, police and other official bodies can do to turn this shocking trend around.

The first recommendation, and arguably the most important, is for the NSW Government to commit to the 'immediate' and 'comprehensive' implementation of any recommendation made in the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report not already implemented as well as the 2017 Australian Law Reform Commission's Pathways to Justice report into the incarceration rate of Indigenous people.

There are a bunch of suggestions about setting up task forces, investigations, committees and inquiries into myriad of topics like the NSW coronial system and mental health screening procedures at correctional facilities.

The Legislative Council has also recommended several laws be amended to improve the situation for Indigenous people.

One includes raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility and the minimum age of children in detention to at least 14, while another seeks to mandate that the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a person should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time'.

There are calls within the report for more funding dedicated to key areas like community-led justice reinvestment initiatives and drug and alcohol rehabilitation services.

The report also wants some courts and other services to be expanded or updated, while also demanding a review into the internal processes following a death in custody.

The final recommendations also highlight the importance of employing 'a greater number of First Nations staff across all areas of the criminal justice system' and 'appointing significantly more suitably experienced and qualified First Nations people to the judiciary'.

Chief Justice of New South Wales, the Honourable Tom Bathurst, said in the report that the system needs to change.

"The Black Lives Matter movement has brought the racism, inequality and abuses of power that have haunted our nation for so long to the forefront of public consciousness," he said.

"This year marks 250 years since Captain Cook first landed in Australia. Despite this significant passage of time, the Black Lives Matter movement has exposed that our criminal justice system remains a tool of injustice for Indigenous Australians, who are one of the most incarcerated people in the world."

Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said the country can't wait for more people to die.

"Three decades since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, First Nations people in Australia are still unacceptably being incarcerated and dying in prison," she wrote ahead of the report being handed down.

"Given the recent spate of Indigenous deaths in custody, it's clear that this is a national crisis."

If you're keen to know more about the report and what community organisations think of it, the National Justice Project is hosting a roundtable on April 20 to dive into all the recommendations as well as other information contained in the 250-page document.

You can find out more about the roundtable here.

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Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

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