1. The Highest Incarceration Rates in the World

The Extreme Incarceration of Aboriginal people in Australia

Aboriginal people are being imprisoned at the highest recorded rate of any population in the world-by a long way. These rates are higher than African Americans and other Indigenous populations including those of Canada and Aotearoa-New Zealand.

The numbers have kept on rising since the 1990s, since we started keeping more accurate records, so that now in early 2025 Aboriginal people are 17 times more likely to be locked up than other Australians.

It’s happening on a totally different scale from non-Aboriginal people whose incarceration rates are steady and are similar, although at the higher end of the spectrum, to other western countries.

Check out the Peak Prison blog for more details.

But it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about people. We talk about the ‘over-representation’ of Aboriginal people in prison in a way that sanitises what’s happening. It’s not just a few extra people in prison, it’s extreme incarceration.

Almost every Aboriginal family in Australia is affected by having close relatives in prison. And it has many consequences. It breaks spirits. It demoralises an entire population. It fuels more crime.

No matter how hard we look, it’s impossible to find a good enough reason to justify the extreme incarceration of Aboriginal people.

So why is this happening? Do more Aboriginal people deserve to be in prison? Are Aboriginal people more criminal than others?

We say that the answers are complex, that we have to address the root causes, that we have to understand the social determinants of incarceration and the effects of racism and colonisation. This is of course entirely true.

We know that there is not a simple change we can make to fix this. But by saying it is complex, we can miss the many significant things that we can do and need to do right now. By saying it is complex we risk setting our expectations too low and not look to the current systems and narratives that sustain the justice machine, a machine that relentlessly and carelessly over-processes Aboriginal people through it.

While the problem of Aboriginal over-incarceration by definition sits within the justice system, the solutions are fundamentally to be found within community, within our health and social services.

As Australians, we like to see ourselves as fair people.

Ultimately, we are aiming for a justice system that Aboriginal people in Australia can believe is fair, that we can all respect and trust, and that works to keep everybody safer. We do not have that now.

The Australian federal government has established a set of national targets to improve the health and wellbeing for First Nation’s people. The current Closing The Gap Target 10 seeks to reduce Aboriginal adults held in incarceration by 15% by 2031 from a 2019 baseline. That’s over a 10 year timeline.

In the past year alone in 2023-24, rates have increased by 15%!

For true equity, with no ‘over-representation’ the reduction that needs to be achieved is over 90%.

Then,  if we are really serious about matching European best practice and meeting our Human Rights obligations, we would have to halve again the national rates for everyone.

We have work to do.

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/08/new-closing-gap-data-shows-more-first-nations-australians-prison-why

https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-04/poster-targets.pdf