Aboriginal Suicides in Custody: A View from the Kimberley

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest M. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Royal Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
International Literature ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
International Attention ◽  
Deaths In Custody ◽  
Commit Suicide

Aboriginal deaths in custody have become an issue of national concern and international attention. Amongst those dying are an increasing number who commit suicide. In the heated and tense arena of this politicized debate there are many views but little to back them up. The author examines the international literature on deaths in custody, draws from work on Aboriginal suicide in the Kimberley, including two suicides in police custody, and reports the finding of a survey of 100 prisoners conducted in the police cells in Broome. With the final report of the Muirhead Royal Commission several years away, it is imperative that all sources of information be examined to guide policy changes in the present.

Deaths in custody in Australia 2017-18

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty ◽  
Samantha Bricknell
Keyword(s):  
Royal Commission ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Australian Institute ◽  
Prison Police ◽  
Deaths In Custody

The National Deaths in Custody Program (NDICP) is responsible for monitoring the extent and nature of deaths occurring in prison, police custody and youth detention in Australia since 1980. The Australian Institute of Criminology has coordinated the NDICP since its establishment in 1992, the result of a recommendation made by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody the previous year. This report contains detailed information on deaths in both prison and police custody and custody-related operations in 2017–18, and compares these findings to longer term trends. No deaths occurred in youth detention in 2017–18.

Deaths in custody in Australia 2019-20

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty ◽  
Tom Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Royal Commission ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Australian Institute ◽  
Prison Police ◽  
Deaths In Custody

The National Deaths in Custody Program has monitored the extent and nature of deaths occurring in prison, police custody and youth detention in Australia since 1980. The Australian Institute of Criminology has coordinated the program since its establishment in 1992, the result of a recommendation made the previous year by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. In 2019-20 there were 113 deaths in custody: 89 in prison custody and 24 in police custody or custody-related operations. This report contains detailed information on these deaths and compares the findings to longer term trends.

scholarly journals Decolonise This Space

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzi Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Deaths In Custody

The 15 th April 2016 marked the 25-year anniversary since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) in Australia handed down its Final Report. The report signified a landmark in the relationships between Indigenous Australians and the post-colonial State and Federal governments. Established by the Hawke Labor Government in 1987, the Commission examined 99 Indigenous deaths. Most significant was the finding that the deaths were due to the combination of police and prisons failing their duty of care, and the high numbers of Indigenous people being arrested and incarcerated. In the wake of the RCIADIC, cross-cultural sessions and cultural competency workshops have become ubiquitous for public servants, therapists, and legal and welfare employees, in attempts to bridge gaps in cultural knowledge between agents of the welfare state and Indigenous clients. Using Indigenous Knowledges theory, this chapter assesses how cultural misalignments between Indigenous clients and those who work with them in the name of therapies designed to improve Indigenous lives, dominate cross-cultural interactions. In so doing the questions are posed: how do good intentions become part of the discourses and practices of on-going colonialism for Indigenous Australians, and what can be done to change the balance of power in favour of therapies of relevance to Indigenous people?

scholarly journals Reporting Black Lives Matters: Deaths in custody journalism in Australia

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220
Author(s):  
Bonita Mason
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
30Th Anniversary ◽  
Journalism Students ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Deaths In Custody

George Floyd’s death at the knee of USA police sparked protests and renewed reporting of Indigenous deaths in custody in Australia. As the 30th anniversary of the release of the final report of the Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody approaches, it is timely to update Wendy Bacon’s 2005 research on deaths in custody journalism. While most deaths in custody continue to pass in judicial and media silence, this article, written from a white journalism academic’s perspective, includes instances of in-depth reporting since 2005, journalism that meets the Royal Commission’s observation that journalism can contribute to justice for Aboriginal people when it places deaths in custody in their social and moral contexts. It also includes mini-case study of the news coverage of Mr Ward’s 2008 death, which demonstrates the relationship between governmental or judicial processes and announcements and patterns of coverage. It also notes the effect that First Nations journalists are having on the prevalence, perspectives and depth of deaths in custody journalism. Information and resources are provided for journalists and journalism students to more effectively report Indigenous deaths in custody, include Indigenous voices in their stories, and to better understand trauma and take care of themselves, their sources and their communities

Deaths in custody in Australia 2020-21

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Royal Commission ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Australian Institute ◽  
Prison Police ◽  
Deaths In Custody

The National Deaths in Custody Program has monitored the extent and nature of deaths occurring in prison, police custody and youth detention in Australia since 1980. The Australian Institute of Criminology has coordinated the program since its establishment in 1992, the result of a recommendation made the previous year by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. In 2020–21 there were 82 deaths in custody: 66 in prison custody and 16 in police custody or custody-related operations. This report contains detailed information on these deaths and compares the findings with longer term trends.

Deaths in custody in Australia 2018-19

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty ◽  
Samantha Bricknell
Keyword(s):  
Royal Commission ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Australian Institute ◽  
Prison Police ◽  
Deaths In Custody

The National Deaths in Custody Program (NDICP) has monitored the extent and nature of deaths occurring in prison, police custody and youth detention in Australia since 1980. The Australian Institute of Criminology has coordinated the NDICP since its establishment in 1992, the result of a recommendation made by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody the previous year. This report contains detailed information on the 113 deaths in custody in 2018–19—89 in prison custody and 24 in police custody or custody-related operations—and compares these findings to longer term trends.

The Space of Difference in Law: Inquests into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherene H. Razack
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The Body ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
Police Custody ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Clear Sign ◽  
A Site ◽  
Deaths In Custody

Paul Alphonse, a 67 year-old Aboriginal died in hospital while in police custody. A significant contributing factor to his death was that he was stomped on so hard that there was a boot print on his chest and several ribs were broken. His family alleged police brutality. The inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse offers an opportunity to explore the contemporary relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian society and, significantly, how law operates as a site for managing that relationship. I suggest that we consider the boot print on Alphonse's chest and its significance at the inquest in these two different ways. First, although it cannot be traced to the boot of the arresting officer, we can examine the boot print as an event around which swirls Aboriginal/police relations in Williams Lake, both the specific relation between the arresting officer and Alphonse, and the wider relations between the Aboriginal community and the police. Second, the response to the boot print at the inquest sheds light on how law is a site for obscuring the violence in Aboriginal people's lives. A boot print on the chest of an Aboriginal man, a clear sign of violence, comes to mean little because Aboriginal bodies are considered violable – both prone to violence, and bodies that can be violated with impunity. Law, in this instance in the form of an inquest, stages Aboriginal abjection, installing Aboriginal bodies as too damaged to be helped and, simultaneously to harm. In this sense, the Aboriginal body is homo sacer, the body that maybe killed but not murdered. I propose that the construction of the Aboriginal body as inherently violable is required in order for settlers to become owners of the land.

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