One of the most shocking documents released this year by Australia’s Bureau of Statistics shows imprisonment rates of indigenous versus non-indigenous Australians.
You would think after decades of focus on the destructive impact of incarceration generally and specific investigations into black deaths in custody that the rate of jailing Indigenous Australians would be declining. You would be wrong.
The latest data, for 2021, shows that for every 100,000 First Australians, 2,412 are in prison, the highest rate since records have been kept. See grey and red chart, above.
That compares with just 152.6 for the non-Indigenous population. That’s right, Indigenous Australians are currently jailed at 16 times the rate of others.
Human rights abuses
The executive officer of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS) Jamie McConnachie told ABC News last Thursday that Indigenous Australians are the most over-imprisoned group in the world.
“Australia is in the midst of a mass imprisonment crisis ... causing immense harm to our communities and represents an urgent human rights crisis.”
Ms McConnachie was responding to a report by the United Nations Committee against Torture which criticised Australian over both Indigenous incarceration and arbitrary detention of asylum seekers:
‘The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had repeatedly expressed alarm at the rising number of cases brought to its attention. It has issued opinions on several cases involving asylum seekers and refugees, finding circumstances amounting to arbitrary detention.’
This report could have been much worse. To their shame, the state governments of New South Wales and Queensland refused to allow the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) access to their prisons which prompted it to suspend last month’s visit to Australia.
This provoked a slap-down of the recalcitrant states from federal Attorney General Mark Dreyfus and an assurance to observers worldwide regarding the stance of the recently-elected Labor Government:
‘It is disappointing that the New South Wales Government refused to allow the SPT to visit any state-run places of detention across that state ... Access to Commonwealth-run places of detention were facilitated in all cases ...
‘I assure the Australian people and the international community that the Australian Government’s commitment to human rights endures.’
Hate groups in Australia
This adverse UN report follows a scathing assessment just last month by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism which expanded its list of Australian hate groups to twenty.
These now include Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, the Australia First Party, the Australian Protectionist Party, Proud Boys Australia and The Australian Christian Lobby.
With changes of government in South Australia and federally earlier this year and state elections upcoming in Victoria and New South Wales, it will be intriguing to see how this index shifts next year and beyond. There is scope for vast improvement. There is also hope.
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This is an abbreviated version of an article published today in Independent Australia. The original article is available here in full for free:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/hatred-greed-and-injustice-surged-in-australia--but-a-turnaround-is-coming,16990