The Wire

One in two Australians in juvenile detention are Indigenous, which means Indigenous youths are 31 times more likely to be locked up than their non-Indigenous counterparts. It’s a gap that’s widening, according to a report released today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. While overall rates of youth incarceration have gone down, indigenous children are still being detained at the same rate they were four years ago. According to an Aboriginal legal service expert, more children’s court magistrates and diversionary programs are badly needed in remote and regional communities in order to close the gap.