Comment on BOCSAR NSW custody statistics: quarterly update March 2024
Tuesday 14 May 2024
Comments attributable to Nadine Miles, Principal Legal Officer:
These figures show that we are failing to close the gap in imprisonment, and this is a crisis we should all be furious about.
The mass incarceration of Aboriginal people in NSW is the direct result of government policies which have been developed without community input, and which give the green light to continued discrimination against Aboriginal people in the legal system.
The NSW Government knows all too well that police pursue Aboriginal people through the courts for minor offences where they are more likely to give cautions or fines to non-Indigenous people. They know police disproportionately subject Aboriginal people to invasive searches and use of force, forcing their contact with carceral systems which put them in danger. And they know that the record number of Aboriginal people in NSW prisons is directly linked to the explosion in police charges against Aboriginal people over the past 10 years.
Yet instead of policy based on evidence, the NSW Government continues to reach blindly for reactive, so-called ‘tough on crime’ measures which won’t work, like expanded police powers.
This includes the extraordinary new ‘wanding’ laws which have done nothing to reduce violent crime in other places they’ve been tried. Just weeks ago, despite the record-high number of Aboriginal children in custody, the Government chose to pass dangerous bail laws that are the harshest in the country. The Premier himself admitted that the laws will imprison more Aboriginal children, so we can expect to see this shameful record climb even higher.
Closing the Gap is everyone’s responsibility. We are working hard at it but the NSW Government is letting communities down."
ENDS
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