No lessons learned on Aboriginal deaths

THE North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency says authorities have failed to learn lessons about indigenous deaths in custody.

AN Aboriginal justice agency says authorities have failed to learn past lessons, after new figures showed rising numbers of indigenous deaths in custody.

A report from the Australian Institute of Criminology on Aboriginal deaths in custody shows that in 2010/11, the most recent period looked at, there were 21 indigenous people who died in custody, about one quarter of all such deaths.

The number was one higher than the previous 12 months and six higher than in 2008/09, when 15 indigenous people died in custody.

North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) principal legal officer Jonathon Hunyor said authorities had not learned lessons from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which handed down its findings in 1991.

"If we want to reduce the number of Aboriginal people who die in custody, we have got to deal with the causes of the gross over-representation in custody," Mr Hunyor said.

"Unfortunately that is a message that just hasn't sunk through, particularly in the Northern Territory where we are locking up people at a greater rate than ever before."

He said he expected the number of indigenous people dying in custody to continue to get worse in the NT, as new mandatory sentencing laws took effect.

The new report found the proportion of indigenous people in prison had almost doubled between 1991 and 2011, when indigenous people represented just over one in four people in prison and one in five deaths.

Indigenous people comprise 2.5 per cent of the total Australian population.

But the report said the recent rise in the number of indigenous people dying in custody was driven by deaths from natural causes, primarily heart attacks, cancer and other serious medical conditions.

Those findings are likely to result from poorer health and lower life expectancy among indigenous Australians, the report says.

Indigenous prisoners were less likely to die in custody than their non-indigenous counterparts, the report found.

The report also said that if increases to the indigenous prison population were taken into account, the death rate of those prisoners remained at an all-time low.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard told reporters federal and state governments were working together to tackle the high rate of indigenous incarceration.

However, justice systems were the responsibility of state governments, she said.

Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the underlying disadvantage at the heart of the over-representation of indigenous Australians in the justice system must be addressed.

"It is deeply concerning that the actual number of indigenous deaths in prison is rising again," Mr Dreyfus said.

NT Attorney-General John Elferink said the numbers of indigenous people dying in custody were not acceptable but people should remember that many in police custody were in a "wretched state".

He said many more Aboriginal people died as a result of Australia's welfare system that poured millions of dollars into the NT every fortnight.

"We as another tier of government have to spend millions of dollars cleaning up the mess," Mr Elferink said.