We published a new total of 434 on the day of the protests. But even that is already out of date
Over the weekend, Black Lives Matter protests brought thousands onto
the streets campaigning for an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Many signs at rallies referred to the 432 deaths that are known to have happened since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody delivered its final report in 1991.
That figure is based on Guardian Australia’s findings from a two-year long project to monitor Aboriginal deaths in custody, Deaths Inside.
We updated the database and published new results on Saturday. We found the number had risen to 434.
But by Saturday morning even that number was already out of date. Just before marches began in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and towns around the country,
the department of corrective services in Western Australia confirmed
that a 40-year-old Aboriginal man had died in custody at Acacia prison,
near Perth.Many signs at rallies referred to the 432 deaths that are known to have happened since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody delivered its final report in 1991.
That figure is based on Guardian Australia’s findings from a two-year long project to monitor Aboriginal deaths in custody, Deaths Inside.
We updated the database and published new results on Saturday. We found the number had risen to 434.
As of today, based on reports that have reached us from families and other sources, including coronial reports, we can say that number is now at least 437.
Our methodology is explained in full in the “about this project” section of Deaths Inside, but we wanted to address the most common questions here.
Why did the Guardian do this project?
We set out to examine what had changed since the royal commission produced its landmark report. We found that little had. People were still dying in the same way, from the same unequal policing, and investigated by coroners who made the same recommendations.
Every square in the database is a person and their family, left to navigate a long, complicated and traumatising coronial process. We wanted to tell you the individual stories of each case because the picture they paint, square by square, is so horrifying that many Australians refuse to look at it.
When we began this project in late 2017, it was impossible to find up-to-date figures. There was no publicly available, searchable database that acknowledged deaths in custody, even though monitoring was one of the 339 recommendations of the 1991 royal commission. That work is carried out by the Australian Institute of Criminology but its reports are subject to long delays and can be at least four years out of date.
Information about deaths that had not yet been subject to an inquest was also hard to find. Prisons often only provided confirmation of a death in custody if requested, meaning that many deaths went unreported.
And despite evidence in some cases of excessive force or neglect by police or prison officers, there has never been a criminal conviction for a death in custody in Australia. Chris Hurley, the police officer accused of killing Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004, was acquitted of manslaughter.
Two police officers are currently facing murder charges for the deaths of Kumanjayi Walker in the Northern Territory and Joyce Clarke in Western Australia, and both have indicated they will plead not guilty.
How did the Guardian arrive at the data?
Deaths Inside lists every Indigenous death in custody we are aware of from 2008 onwards. Where possible the source is a coronial report, but some 20 cases in the database are still awaiting coronal findings. For those cases we have a mix of primary sources, such as statements from police or corrections departments, interviews with family members, lawyers and media reports.
To date we have read more than 460 coronial reports, including more than 300 reports on the deaths of non-Indigenous people who died from 2010 to 2015. That five years of non-Indigenous data was used as the basis of a comparative analysis. All reports were tracked across 20 data points.
A comparison of case characteristics for Indigenous and non-Indigenous deaths in custody using this data is shown here:
The key finding of the royal commission was that Aboriginal people are more likely to die in custody because they are arrested and jailed at disproportionate rates. That remains as true in 2020 as it was in 1991.
One key figure has changed. In 1991, 14.3% of the male prison population in Australia was Indigenous. In March 2020 it was 28.6%.
According to data released by Australian Bureau of Statistics this month, 4.7% of all Indigenous men are in jail compared with just 0.3% of all non-Indigenous men.
Then, as now, non-Indigenous people died in greater numbers, and at a greater rate, in custody than Indigenous people. But then, as now, Indigenous people made up just 3% of the total population. That means more Aboriginal people are imprisoned and dying as a proportion of their total population.
“The conclusions are clear,” royal commissioner Elliott Johnston QC wrote in 1991. “Aboriginal people die in custody at a rate relative to the proportion of the whole population which is totally unacceptable and which would not be tolerated if it occurred in the non-Aboriginal community.
“But this occurs … because the Aboriginal population is grossly over-represented in custody. Too many Aboriginal people are in custody too often.”
Nineteen years after the royal commission, the coroner investigating the death of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day found that, “Ms Day’s death was clearly preventable had she not been arrested and taken into custody.”
Day was not in custody because she was a threat to the community, or because she had been sentenced for committing a crime. Police couldn’t even say by what authority they held Day for four hours after issuing her an infringement notice for being drunk in public – an instrument which replaces the need to arrest and charge.
Coroner Caitlin English said the inquest examined “how it was Ms Day was taken into police custody for her safety and ended up dying from an injury which occurred in custody”.
Day was not the only one. Wiradjuri woman Rebecca Maher, Broome woman Maureen Mandijarra, and a 51-year-old man from Kalgoorlie, whose name is withheld for cultural reasons, all died in police cells after being put there for their own safety.
We read many reports of non-Indigenous people dying in horrific circumstances, from suicide, shootings or car chases. But we did not read of a single non-Indigenous person who died after being imprisoned for their own safety.
And while the most common cause of death for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in custody was medical issues, or what coronial reports refer to as “natural causes”, Indigenous people were less likely to have been given all of the medical care they needed prior to their death.
Our 2018 analysis found that 34% of Indigenous people were denied all appropriate medical care before their death, compared with 25% of non-Indigenous people. Indigenous women were the worst affected, with 50% not receiving all the medical care they needed.
Why didn’t Deaths Inside record the reason a person was in custody?
Australia does not have the death penalty for any offence, therefore the offence a person committed, or is alleged to have committed, is not relevant.
Moreover, we found that 56% of Indigenous people and 51% of non-Indigenous people who died in custody between 2010 and 2015 were not serving a prison sentence but were instead held on remand, were fleeing police, or were killed during arrest.
“The fact is that the royal commission released almost three decades ago said that to stop Aboriginal deaths in custody we must stop putting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison,” the Change the Record co-chair and CEO of the national Aboriginal legal service (Natsils), Cheryl Axleby, said.
“Overwhelmingly state and territory governments have failed to take the necessary steps to do this.”
- For more information on the data and methods used, please read the “about the project” section here
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