Indigenous jail rates a concern
THE number of Indigenous people incarcerated in Tasmania has more than doubled over the past decade, according to new figures labelled “disappointing” and “disturbing”.
The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services showed there were 154 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Tasmania’s prison system on an average day in 2021-22, up from 73 in 2012-13 – an 111 per cent increase.
Meanwhile, there were 479 non-Indigenous prisoners, up from 399 10 years ago.
Twenty-four per cent of Tasmania’s prison population is Indigenous, despite the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent just 5.4 per cent of the state’s total population.
Rodney Dillon, an Amnesty International Australia Indigenous rights advisor, said the statistics weren’t surprising but they “disappointed” him nonetheless.
He said increasing rates of poverty and homelessness were among the key factors to blame for the spike in the number of Aboriginal Tasmanians in custody.
“We haven’t learnt … how to deal with prisoners,” Mr Dillon said.
“We’ve learnt nothing about mental health, we’ve learnt nothing about sending them back out into society better than when they went in; building stronger families so they have a better connection with that rather than their prison family.”
Greens leader Cassy O’Connor said the “stark decline” in justice outcomes for Aboriginal Tasmanians had been evident since the Liberals came to government in 2014.
“Given their apparent refusal to take this issue seriously, it’s not really surprising to see the Liberals have now recorded a disturbing new milestone,” she said.
The Clark MP implored the Rockliff government to “start genuinely listening to Aboriginal voices, and to commit to evidence-backed solutions for what can only be described as a crisis in the corrections system”.
Corrections Minister Elise Archer said the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody was “an extremely complex problem that requires a comprehensive collaborative response from across governments and the community”.
“The ratio of Indigenous to non-Indigenous imprisonment … rate in Tasmania, despite continuing to be of concern, was the lowest of the eight jurisdictions …, well below the national average.”