A position paper on Aboriginal deaths in custody was prepared by the National Committee to Defend Black Rights and presented in Geneva in July to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations by Helen Corbett, NCDBR chairperson. Reprinted here, slightly abridged, is the opening section of the paper. Other 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ will be printed in coming weeks.
My people are in a worse situation now than we were five years ago. I was at the 1987 session of this working group that I first had the opportunity to alert the United Nations to the campaign being conducted by the National Committee to Defend Black Rights. Our campaign was aimed at stopping the deaths of our people in police and prison custody.
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody commenced on June 30, 1987, and closed on June 30, 1991. It investigated 99 Aboriginal deaths in police and prison custody during 1980-1989, of which 11 were women. The five-volume National Report in May 1991 contained 399 recommendations to reduce Aboriginal deaths in police and prison custody.
During the royal commission, Aboriginal people were dying in custody at a rate of just under one per month. The death rate has not altered. Over 60 of our people have needlessly died or been killed in jails and police custody since then.
The families of the victims fought hard to achieve the royal commission. Many were harassed, bashed, shot at; our offices were fire-bombed, our phones tapped by the security services.
We persisted in the belief that the royal commission may achieve two goals. Firstly, to give loud, clear recommendations that those responsible for the killings and deaths should be brought to justice. Secondly, that a message go out to all Australians that our people need our rights to sovereignty, land, social justice and dignity now!
The royal commission has failed in the first instance. Not one officer has been charged in over 130 deaths.
We still firmly believe John Pat, kicked to death in the street, was murdered. We still believe Eddie Murray, Kingsley Dixon, Robert Walker, Barbara Yarrie, Bruce Leslie, and dozens of others were murdered.
Further, the Commonwealth and state/territory governments have still not fully implemented the urgent recommendations from the royal commission's Interim Report that were released four years ago. This illustrates the tokenistic attitude of the Australian government.
In effect, the green light has been given to racist police to continue attacking our people. Recent national reports confirm the widespread aults on our people in and out of custody.
In the second instance, the Australian government has committed some $500 million to ensure good publicity, to give the headlines some bite when they claim they are responding to the royal commission. In fact, nothing fundamental has changed. The facts show we are even more likely to be locked up in the colonisers' cells for crimes of poverty, or for just being Black.
The CDBR is on record as strongly supporting almost every one of the 339 recommendations from the royal commission. We demand the implementation of the recommendations calling for recognition of our sovereignty. We demand the granting of our national land rights. We demand that the incarceration of our people be used as a last resort. We demand the humane treatment of all prisoners in custody.
If the recommendations from the Interim Report had been implemented, dozens of our people would not be dead now.
It is a lie that the Australian government has now fulfilled its responsibilities. Until our demands are met and our people cease to die in custody, the government is failing to honour its human rights obligations.
The ratio of police to civilians has increased substantially in Australia, particularly over the last decade. In New South Wales, the estimated ratio of police to civilians was 1:766 in 1945 and 1:432 in 1990.
A report compiled by the International Commission of Jurists stresses that this ratio is more concentrated in areas with Aboriginal communities: for example, Bourke with 1:120; Wilcannia 1:77 and Brewarrina 1:100.
The royal commission states that minor offences of drunkenness and against "good order" make up 63% of the total offences Aboriginal people have been charged with. We are under-represented in the more serious offences such as homicide, sexual offences, robbery, fraud and drug offences.
Our sentences are harsher than for non-Aboriginal people. When our people are in court facing charges, there are never Aboriginal people on the jury.
A recent report by the South Australian Office of Crime Statistics states that more than half the young Aboriginal people in South Australia have appeared before the justice system; 7 out of 10 Aboriginal boys and 4 out of 10 Aboriginal girls have been in trouble with the law.
Police target Aboriginal families and communities concentrated in low income, high unemployment and welfare dependent situations. The continued over-policing of our people illustrates that the royal commission appears to have had little impact on the direction of law and order regime and social policy.
The number of Aboriginal people imprisoned during the period of the royal commission has increased overall by 25%. This is in direct contradiction to recommendations of the Interim Report (1988) and the Final Report (1991) which suggest ways to reduce the number of Aboriginal people in custody.
The 1987 national prison census shows that Aboriginal people are 10 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal people. In August 1988, 29% of people held in police custody throughout Australia were Aboriginal, although our people comprise only 1.5% of the national population.
The increase in imprisonment of Aboriginal people since 1987 has far outstripped the general increases in imprisonment. In New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia there have been dramatic increases in the number of Aboriginal prisoners: 80%, 75% and 24% respectively.
The number of Aboriginal women in prison in all Australian jurisdictions rose from 78 in the 1987 prison census to 127 in the 1991 census — a 63% increase during the period of the royal commission. The rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal women in New South Wales rose by 168%, and in Western Australia by 54%. The recidivism rate for Aboriginal women is 75% compared to 29% for non-Aboriginal women.
These increases occurred during a period when the royal commissioners argued that the over representation of Aboriginal people in custody was a contributing factor to our deaths in custody and recommended non-custodial sanctions for low-risk offenders.