The Wire

It is disturbing to see that when the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody handed down its recommendations in April 1991, Indigenous people accounted for 14 percent of the prison population – clearly over-represented – yet today the figure is double at 28 percent.  The fashion for mandatory sentencing in most states is linked but so too is an increase in the juvenile rate – a shocking half of the juvenile detention population.  So what has been going so wrong?  Well most of the recommendations of the Royal Commission have not been implemented so this can’t help can it?