Black deaths continue

Wednesday, July 20, 1994 - 10:00

Black deaths continue

Black deaths in custody are increasing, according to a report into 1993 deaths by the Institute of Criminology. Eight Aboriginal people died in custody in 1993, a rate almost eight times the national average.

Indigenous people make up 1.4% of the population, but 11% of deaths in custody. In Queensland on July 4, an Aboriginal man became the tenth Aboriginal to die in custody in the past twelve months and the 31st death in the 1990s.

The federal social justice Commissioner, Mick Dodson, told parliament in the last week of June that bureaucratic inaction was to blame for continuing Aboriginal deaths.

From GLW issue 151