The "national tragedy" of persistently high incarceration rates for indigenous people will be examined by the Australian Law Reform Commission.
It's been 25 years since the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and federal Attorney-General George Brandis says Australia has gone backwards in that time.
Indigenous Australians made up 14 per cent of the national prison population in 1991 - by 2015 it was up to 27 per cent.
Indigenous children and teenagers are 24 times more likely to be incarcerated than their non-indigenous peers and Aboriginal women are 30 times more likely to be jailed, Senator Brandis told a law conference in Melbourne on Thursday.
The inquiry was announced by the Queensland senator in his opening address at the Australian Bar Association national legal conference.
"It is a sad reflection on Australia that our first peoples are so grossly over-represented in our nation's prisons," Senator Brandis said.
"Those statistics paint a stark picture, a picture of failed initiatives, flawed or incomplete reform efforts which, despite the best intentions, often deliver little in the way of tangible progress."
The commission will examine incarceration of Aboriginal people and consider what measures can be put in place to address what Senator Brandis called a "national tragedy".
Labor will support the inquiry even though it's not needed because the problems are already "well identified", federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says.
The government should instead "create a justice target which says we will focus on non-custodial, non-prison options for young black men in this country," the Labor leader told reporters.
"It is a fact in this country that your skin colour is one of the more reliable predictors of whether you're going to get a jail sentence but that shouldn't be the case."
Australian Bar Association president Patrick O'Sullivan QC called the imprisonment rates a "national disgrace" and said the inquiry could lead to informed change.
The terms of reference will be decided after consultation with indigenous groups and the wider community.
