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ARTICLE · 02 JUNE 2021

Questionable jurisdiction: Academic Amanda Porter on policing First Nations

Dr Amanda Porter, of Brinja Yuin and European heritage, is Indigenous Programs senior fellow at the Melbourne Law School.

AustraliaGovernment, Public Sector

Under the settler colonial state of Australia, the rate of incarceration of First Nations peoples has seen them become the most incarcerated people on the planet.

The figures are stark. The 12,344 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people locked up in the Australian prison system last December, equated to 29 percent of the entire adult prisoner population. However, First Nations people only account for 2.8 percent of the overall populace.

Despite decades-old calls for an end to Aboriginal deaths in the custody of police and corrections, there have been over 470 such deaths since a Royal Commission into the matter handed down 339 recommendations in 1991 – the majority of which remain unimplemented.

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