The AIC reports annually on all juveniles in detention in Australia, including information on juveniles' age, sex, Indigenous status, legal status (remanded or sentenced) and jurisdiction. On an average day in the 2019 financial year, 478 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth aged 10 to 17 years were held in youth detention in Australia. On an average night in Australia, 34 in every 10,000 Indigenous young people are in prison, compared to just 1.3 per 10,000 non-Indigenous young people. The NT has the highest rate of youth detention in Australia and 95 per cent of all kids locked away there are indigenous. Aim: To determine whether there are different health needs associated with differences between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous youth in detention in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. While in Victoria the rate is almost half the national average, Western Australia's rate is twice as high. “These are young people in greatest need and the ones who are likely to require a higher level of intervention and case management.”. According to data collated by the Law Council of Australia from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of Indigenous Australians in the prison system has risen by a staggering 88 per cent between 2004 and 2015. Tasmania had the smallest difference in detention rates: the rate of detention for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people was approximately four times the rate for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. J., Grady, M., & Dillard, R. (2018). Across Australia, Indigenous children constitute at least 54% of children in juvenile detention centres. Data from the Youth Detention Population in Australia 2017 report. Reducing Indigenous youth incarceration in Australia The need for new solutions Despite awareness of the disproportionate level of Indigenous juveniles inside justice and detention systems, programs implemented to address this issue have failed to reduce the high incarceration rates of Indigenous youth. 31 For every 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in WA, 3,745 are imprisoned, while in the Northern Territory the statistic is only slightly less with 3,025 prisoners per 100,000 people. This paper provides a statistical overview of juvenile detention from 1981 to 2002, with a detailed review of the financial year 2001-02. Indigenous children are wildly over represented in detention, incarcerated at 24 times the rate of non-indigenous youth. Figure 2. Rates per 10,000 young people (aged 10 to 17 years) in youth detention in 2018–19, by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status. Vaccines, Panic buying, and Black Lives Matters: The best of The Case in 2020, ‘Fear of regional outsiders’: Expert says the pandemic has led to a growth of regionalism within Australia, ‘Double standard’: Experts weigh in on publicly shaming only certain COVID rule-breakers, 2020’s wildest moments: from toilet paper trauma to epic cancellings, QAnon and coronavirus: How our comedians saw 2020, 'Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse': NSW residents urged to complete QR codes correctly as cases rise. Every single child in prison in the Northern Territory is Indigenous. 30 Aboriginal youth comprise 4% of the Western Australian youth population. I lived in Sydney’s most infamous murder house. Indigenous children are 26 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in detention. Indigenous Australians are also grossly over-represented in the adult prison system with the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ March 2016 report on Corrective Services finding that 28 per cent of the nation’s prison population is Indigenous. Aboriginal children in the state are almost 50 times more likely to be in youth detention than non-Indigenous children. SBS acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia. Note: Data is based on the count of unique persons (aged 10 to 17) in youth detention at any time during the year. By locking away children and separating them from their families and communities, our governments are placing limits on children’s potential and traumatising them and causing life-long harm. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s December 2015 report on Youth Detention states that across the country, 54 per cent of juvenile detainees between the ages of 10 and 17 are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander young people aged 10 to 17 are 23 times more likely to be in detention than non-Indigenous young people, jumping to 38 times in some states. The latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare youth justice report also found 39% of young Indigenous people were aged 10-13 when they first came into the justice system, compared to only 15% of non-Indigenous young people. He argues that the underlying causes for these young people’s offences need to be recognised and addressed. The Australian Capital Territory had the largest decrease in detention rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people: from 205.54 in 2017–18 to 150.51 in 2018–19, a decrease of 26.7%. Among the 980 young people in detention on an average night in the June quarter 2018, most were male (90%), aged 10–17 (84%), unsentenced (60%), and Aboriginal or … Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Youth Justice in Australia 2018–19, cat. JUV 132, Supplementary Table S85b (2020). Aborigines comprise just three per cent of Australia's population but make up 27 per cent of those in prison and represent 94 per cent of the Northern Territory's juvenile inmates. Indigenous youth over-represented in detention: Amnesty International By Amy Mitchell-Whittington Updated August 31, 2016 — 3.00pm first published at 1.43pm Indigenous children make up one in 15 kids in Australia, and half of all children in Australia’s youth detention centres. Factors that increase the risk of Indigenous incarceration include the “misuse of alcohol, socio-economic disadvantage, childhood exposure to violence and abuse, the younger age profile of the Indigenous population, previous involvement with the criminal justice system and psychological distress,” according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. This trend is not new: Nationwide, Indigenous young people have consistently outnumbered non-Indigenous youth in every quarterly survey since March 2013. Aboriginal youth programs that work. 18 270 out of 455 - Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing, Youth Detention Population in Australia 2017, Tables s 2 and s 12. Eight of these ten boys were Indigenous. Western Australia also had the greatest difference in detention rates between the two groups: the rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people was approximately 21 times the rate for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. Source: AIHW, Youth Justice 2016-17, ABS 3238.0 Aboriginal Population Estimates and Projections, ABS 3101.1 Australian Demographic Statistics Aboriginal youth detention rates. Across Australia, Indigenous children make up 53% of all youth detainees. Data for the monitoring program are provided by the relevant juvenile justic… Youth (10-17 years) under justice supervision (community-based and detention) in Victoria, rates per 10,000 population. This is an increase of 11 per cent since March 2015. * For the purposes of youth detention in Australia, juveniles are defined as children aged between 10 and 16 years in Queensland and 10 and 17 years in every other state and territory. In Victoria, the rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people was approximately 10 times the rate for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. These are the words of a 17-year-old Indigenous boy locked in a juvenile detention centre in Perth. Western Australia had the highest rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth detention at 284.1 per 10,000 young people. Mr Vita also expresses, “many young people in the youth justice system come from homes where poverty, alcohol abuse, violence and dysfunctional relationships are the norm. According to the most recent statistics, Indigenous children are 26 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous children. It focuses on trends over the 4-year period from the June quarter 2014 to the June quarter 2018. In Victoria, that rate is 16%, with 60% of children going on to reoffend. In The Westerman Aboriginal symptoms checklist for youth manual. That’s compared to a 28 per cent increase in non-Indigenous Australians within the same period. Despite the indicators, the State Government claims that this recommendation has been implemented. On average,10,558 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults are in prison each day, which is an increase of 7 per cent since the number was calculated at the same time in 2015. This is systemic racism in action. 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