The wheels of justice can, at times, turn slowly. Very slowly. But if you are an Aboriginal person in NSW on remand, the wheels appear to have gone into reverse.
NSW Police have aimed to help reduce Indigenous over-representation in the criminal justice system and the state government has signed up to formal targets to reduce incarceration.
But NSW Police charges have led to a record number of Aboriginal people in jail on remand. In the past five years, the raw numbers of Aboriginal people in jail who have been refused bail but not sentenced have jumped 47 per cent from 1200 to 1763. From the vantage point of 10 years ago it looks even bleaker: since 2014, the number of Aboriginal adults on remand is up 143 per cent.
As the Herald’s Patrick Begley reports, two main goals of the police’s Aboriginal Strategic Direction 2018-23 were to help young Aboriginal people by improving their safety and wellbeing and to stop so many Aboriginal people ending up in the justice system. Instead, remand numbers for the 10-17 age cohort rose 26 per cent, while non-Aboriginal numbers on remand declined by 41 per cent.
NSW Police are now warning that as a law enforcement agency, they should not be held responsible for helping to bring Aboriginal prison numbers down. The force’s watchdog, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, disagrees.
In findings released in October, the LECC noted efforts police have made to build better relationships with Aboriginal communities, but found the logic of the police framework was unclear, and their strategy had failed to achieve its goals.
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NSW Police recently rejected the LECC recommendations to review their approach to bail decisions and “proactive” police procedures. Further, in an unexplained decision that could be construed as a display of petulance, police chose not to include the LECC as the monitoring body for the new 2024 Aboriginal Strategic Direction.
As part of the Closing the Gap Agreement, struck with the Coalition of Peak Aboriginal Organisations, the NSW government pledged in 2020 to cut the rate of Indigenous adult incarceration by 15 per cent by 2031 and by 30 per cent for minors aged between 10 and 17.
