WARNING: This article contains distressing content.
New South Wales has reached a distressing milestone with over a third of the state's prison population being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The latest report by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) has found that the 4,452 Aboriginal adults detained in prisons across the state make up 34 per cent of the total prison population - the highest-recorded rate of Indigenous incarceration in NSW history.
BOCSAR reported that Indigenous people living in NSW are incarcerated 15 times more than their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Executive director Jackie Fitzgerald told NITV the figures were "alarming".
"The overall prison population is actually 500 people fewer than it was six years ago, but the Aboriginal population is moving in contradiction to that general pattern," she explained.
Currently, 46 per cent of the adult prison population is on remand, an increase of 20 per cent since December 2023 and an all time high; many of that cohort are Aboriginal people.
Ms Fitzgerald also noted the impact of increased domestic violence offences and bail refusals: domestic violence charges have grown 50 per cent since 2019 and bail refusal rates have increased from 17.5 per cent to 19.4 per cent over two years.
"The impact is exaggerated for Aboriginal people, which is really having the consequence of that exceptionally high number of Aboriginal people in custody," said Ms Fitzgerald.
"It's really becoming very common for Aboriginal people living in NSW to have contact with the criminal justice system and the custodial system.
"Behind every individual in custody, there's a family, there's children, there's partners, there's extended family.
"The impact is much beyond the individual that's actually in custody, it's rebounding and reverberating into families and communities."
Currently, New South Wales is failing to meet the Commonwealth's Closing the Gap target to reduce Aboriginal over representation in custody.
"We've really increased at every stage since that commitment was made, apart from a small period during the pandemic when prison populations were low," Ms Fitzgerald said.
"Any improvement we saw during the pandemic has long been erased by the increases we've seen in recent years."
She said there's friction between Closing the Gap's incarceration commitment and domestic violence reduction targets.
"Unfortunately, Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal women and children experience very high levels of domestic violence ... the passage of young Aboriginal people into prison is really for domestic violence," she said.
The answer, according to Ms Fitzgerald, lies in a holistic approach.
"Initiatives that might divert Aboriginal people from custody or programs to try to reduce Aboriginal participants in crime, we need more of those programs," she said.
"We also need to consider those broader justice changes, like changes to bail, changes to police pro-activity and enforcement - that can have a much greater impact on Aboriginal people coming into custody.
"We have to look at this problem holistically and consider all of those factors."
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