One of the first reporting jobs I was sent on as a young ABC Radio cadet was to a Walgett hearing of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
The commissioner, Hal Wootten QC, allowed me to fly with the commission staff in the small Cessna, and I have a vivid memory of him merrily handing around a basket of biscuits, our DIY in-flight service.
There was no laughing in Walgett where we heard the heartbreaking story of Clarence Nean, one of the 99 deaths investigated by that groundbreaking royal commission, which handed down its final report in 1991 and remains the yardstick by which we continue to measure the abject failure of state and federal governments to stem the obscene tide of Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Clarrie Nean was 33 when he died in Dubbo Base hospital at 9.30pm on 15 August 1982. He had collapsed earlier that day in Walgett police station, where he was spending four days on a warrant for non-payment of an $80 fine he copped for nicking a tin of sardines and sauce valued at $1.07 from the local supermarket.
Clarrie – like so many others – had been part of the Stolen Generations. He’d spent time at the notoriously brutal Kinchela boys’ home. Most of his adult life, Clarrie had been in and out of the criminal justice system and he was a big drinker. The coroner said Clarrie died of a brain haemorrhage, the result of years of poor health.
Commissioner Wootten found that Clarrie’s death was, in part, due to living “in a society in which Aboriginals were marginalised, denigrated and denied dignity and control of their lives by a racist bureaucracy and community”.
Wootten found that “a reduction in the great disproportion of Aboriginals in custody will be difficult to achieve without fundamental changes to the racist attitudes that have pervaded the treatment of Aboriginals”.
“Aboriginals must have real opportunities to escape from the situation to which they were forced by dispossession and institutionalisation. Fundamental is the need to restore self-esteem and, as part of this, independence, and an opportunity to take real responsibility for their own affairs. The deep desire for this is expressed in claims for ‘self-determination’, ‘self-government’ or ‘sovereignty’.
“Australia has to learn to listen to its Indigenous people and to face the hard task of finding what meaning can be given to their claims within a nation state.”
These words written almost 40 years ago are still unforgivably true today.
Here are the latest numbers from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC): 33 of the 113 people who died in police or prison custody in the last financial year were First Nations – the highest number since records began in 1979-1980.
Indigenous people make up about 3.8% of Australia’s population but are more than one-third of the country’s prisoners.
The AIC found that 29% of all deaths in custody in the last financial year were First Nations people – the highest proportion in more than two decades.
Each number is a person who is loved and missed and mourned. The numbers don’t even begin to describe how it feels to have a loved one behind bars and worry every day whether you are going to get the call to say they’ve gone. It’s a harrowing life, feeling like part of you is in there with them, trapped on both sides of the bars. What’s worse, so many of our people in jail are on remand, meaning they have not been convicted of a crime.
“Tough on crime” campaigns to tighten bail laws have the effect of trapping more of our mob in jails, often for minor offences. A stint in remand can make your post-custodial prospects way worse. The longer you’re in there, the harder it is for you to turn your life around, even if you have access to the supports to do so. Remand is classified as maximum security, where mob who might be locked up for minor offences or charges relating to poverty (like Clarrie’s unpaid fines), homelessness or mental health problems, are exposed to the harshest form of custody and the toughest of sentenced prisoners.
A third of the Australian prison population is First Nations – which roughly means that a vast majority of Indigenous families in Australia know somebody behind bars, or had somebody die there. This affects us all. It is a deep and entrenched structural problem that requires nationally driven leadership and solutions. Police and prisons are state and territory responsibilities, but the federal government could and should do more to drive change.
The solutions already exist, contained in the dozens of reports gathering dust produced by inquiries, royal commissions and parliamentary investigations over the last 35 years or more. And yet we hear the same words spoken in response to the latest numbers by lawyers, politicians, coroners, magistrates, health professionals. They follow a tired old template. They say they are committed to a thorough investigation of the incident. They refer to established protocols and procedures. They express condolences to families and communities. They promise transparency and cooperation. They claim the systemic issues are being addressed.
These responses are so formulaic, clearly designed to deflect criticism and maintain the status quo. I have lost count of how many coronial inquests I’ve sat in where these things are said so often they have lost all meaning.
But I remember the families who have endured them to fight for change because they never want anyone else to go through what they have endured.
It is bereaved families who fight for progress, who offer clear and achievable solutions. They advocate for reforming bail laws, decriminalising public drunkenness, banning prone restraint, exploring alternatives to police as first responders to mental health callouts, banning the use of spithoods, especially on children, and raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 12. They continue to speak up, in defiance of deplorable state and territory governments who get elected by getting “tough on crime”, which in reality means locking up more of our people, and then trot out the same empty words whenever somebody dies.
At that hearing in Walgett, I recall thinking the royal commission would be so powerful, so important, that Australia could not look away. I was wrong. All these years later, I can only conclude there really are no words that will make governments face their responsibilities. They simply do not care. This is their system operating as intended: eradicating our people, death by incarceration.
• Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support; or call Lifeline on 13 11 14, Mensline on 1300 789 978 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636
• Lorena Allam is descended from the Gamilaraay and Yawalaraay nations of north-west NSW and was the Guardian’s Indigenous affairs editor. She is now the industry professor of Indigenous media at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney
