The Deaths in Custody Monitoring Program at the Australian Institute of Criminology is unique. To our knowledge, no other country has a similar monitoring process and database. This paper draws on that data and summarises Aboriginal custodial mortality since 1980. Over the past two decades, an average of 6.3 Aboriginal people have died in prison each year, with 17 deaths in 1995—the peak year. Among non-Aboriginal prisoners, 47 per cent of deaths have been suicides and 30 per cent were due to natural causes (the remainder were accidental deaths or homicides). Among Aboriginal prisoners, there have been more deaths from natural causes than from suicides over the years, but for the last four years suicide deaths have exceeded those from natural causes.
Among the key issues identified in this paper:
- A doubling of both the number of Aboriginal deaths and the number of prisoners in Australian prisons.
- In the decade before the Royal Commission, 12.1 per cent of deaths in prison were of Aboriginal people. In the decade since, that has risen to 17.2 per cent. At June 1998, Aboriginal people comprised 18.8 per cent of the prison population; in 1988 this figure was 14.7 per cent.
- While the average age of Aboriginals at death has not changed, the proportion of Aboriginal men aged 20–24 who died has increased from 7.7 to 27.5 per cent of all Aboriginal deaths.