The relationship between prisoner health and deaths in custody in Australia

Public awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody has been high in the 31 years since the findings of Australia’s Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody were handed down. Non-indigenous deaths in custody are also of concern because the death rate is twice that of Indigenous people (in 2020-2021, 0.18 per 100 prisoners for non-Aboriginal people and 0.09 per 100 prisoners for Aboriginal people). However, 31.2% of Australia’s 40,330 inmates are currently Indigenous despite Indigenous people comprising only 3.2% of the national population. Deaths in custody disproportionately impact the Indigenous population because they are heavily over-represented in the prison population. The death rate of Aboriginal people in police custody is also 7.5 times that of non-Aboriginal people (0.45 Aboriginal deaths in police custody per 100,000 population compared with 0.06 non-Aboriginal deaths per 100,000 population). Police and correctional authorities have made significant reforms to reduce custodial death rates, but this reduction has now reached a plateau. New solutions addressing the causes of deaths (rather than merely reacting to each new spate of deaths) are urgently required. A number of studies have described the health of prisoners as extremely poor compared with that of non-prisoners. This study investigates whether improving the health of all prisoners may be an effective way to reduce both Indigenous and non-Indigenous deaths in custody. The presentation shall be based on my submitted Major Thesis.