Reducing #Indigenous Incarceration

17.10.13

Unfinished business: reducing Indigenous incarceration: [theconversation.com]

From 2000 to 2010, the Indigenous imprisonment rate increased by 52%, while non-Indigenous rates have hardly changed. This will come as no surprise to anyone involved with Australian justice systems. Indigenous over-representation at all stages of the justice process first made headlines during the Deaths in Custody Royal Commission in the early 1990s and has been flagged as a serious problem in report after report in the decades since then. The most recent contribution to this depressing debate is Unfinished Business: Koori Women and the Justice System, released by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission on Monday. The report shows Koori women are the fastest-growing group in the Victorian prison population and are imprisoned at a higher rate than non-Koori women and Koori men.