Geesche Jacobsen & Joel Gibson; 10/7/09
Aboriginal youth in NSW are nearly 26 times more likely to be jailed than their non-indigenous peers, a report has found. The Australian Institute of Criminology report says that while 4.4 per cent of the state’s youth are indigenous, Aboriginal inmates make up 54 per cent of the people in juvenile detention. Indigenous incarceration rates for juveniles and rates overall continued to rise in 2006-2007, the most recent year for which figures are available. Nationwide, the figure is worse, with indigenous juvenile incarceration now 28 times the non-indigenous rate. About a quarter of adult prisoners around Australia are indigenous, meaning indigenous children are twice as likely as indigenous adults to be jailed.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/national/young-aborigines-26-times-more-likely-to-be-jailed-20090709-der5.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Legal, Young People