Aboriginal leader slams Qld jails

Aboriginal leader slams Qld jails

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE — Aboriginal campaigner Mary Graham has launched a strong attack on the Queensland Corrective Services Commission for its treatment of blacks in custody.

Graham said on April 19 that she had resigned her position as a commissioner last month after a year of frustration, accusing the commission and the state and federal governments of lacking a genuine commitment to the welfare of jailed blacks.

Almost two years after the $30 million Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made more than 300 recommendations, the vast majority were still not implemented in Queensland, she said.

Graham said she believed that several black deaths in Queensland custody, including the suicide this month of Barry Turbane, would not have happened if the QCSC had adopted the recommendations to the letter.

She accused the QCSC of "making only cosmetic changes and window-dressing" instead of undertaking positive, structural reforms which would help prevent deaths in custody.

Graham, who last year protested to Amnesty International over the treatment of Aborigines in Queensland custody, said she was compiling a paper detailing concerns over the issue.

From GLW issue 97