Deaths in custody in Australia 2019-20

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty ◽  
Tom Sullivan

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.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty ◽  
Samantha Bricknell

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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty

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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Doherty ◽  
Samantha Bricknell

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.


1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest M. Hunter

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.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki Dalton

This paper discusses the role of the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) in monitoring inmate deaths in custody on a national basis. It also provides a descriptive overview of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmate deaths in custody during the eighteen-year period between 1980 and 1998.In October 1987, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) commenced investigating the deaths of Australia's Indigenous people in custody throughout Australia between January 1, 1980 and May 31, 1989. RCIADIC's task was to examine the circumstances of the deaths; the actions taken by authorities; and the underlying causes of Indigenous deaths in custody, including social, cultural, and legal factors. The investigation found that the major factor contributing to the high number of Indigenous deaths in custody was the disproportionately higher rates at which Indigenous people come into contact with the criminal justice system. RCIADIC concluded that the most significant reason for this contact was the severely disadvantaged social, economic, and cultural position of many Indigenous people.


Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherene H. Razack

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.


2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gunstone

There is often a disparity in Indigenous Affairs between many documents, such as policies, reports and legislation, and outcomes. This article explores this difference through analysing the policy area of Indigenous education during the period of 1991 to 2000. I examine three key documents relating to Indigenous education. These are theNational Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy, theCouncil for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act (Cth)and the report of theRoyal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. I then analyse the abysmal outcomes of Indigenous education over this period, including educational access, educational attainment, school attendance and reading benchmarks. I argue that the substantial educational disadvantage experienced by Indigenous people is in stark contrast to the goals, policies and objectives contained in the numerous documents on Indigenous education. I then explore the role of governments in contributing to this disparity between documents and outcomes in Indigenous education, including their failure to acknowledge the history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, their lack of commitment to address Indigenous educational disadvantage, their failure to recognise self-determination and the lack of cooperation between governments to address Indigenous educational disadvantage.


1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
David McDonald ◽  
David Biles

During August 1988 the National Police Custody Survey was conducted: data were collected on each occasion on which a person was held in a police cell anywhere in Australia. The survey was undertaken to provide information on the size and composition of the police cell population to assist in interpreting data on Aboriginal deaths in custody. A total of 28,566 incidents of police custody occurred during. the month, involving approximately 23,877 separate individuals. Aboriginal people made up almost 29% of the total; having a custody rate 27 times that of non–Aboriginal people. Substantial differences existed between the eight States and Territories in custody rates and on other variables. Public drunkenness was the most frequent reason for custody, accounting for 35% of cases, and the median length of time in the cells was 5.9 hours. It is concluded that the survey data are reasonably representative of the decade and that the survey should be repeated at regular intervals.


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