A visit to Sydney's Reiby Juvenile Detention Centre left Indigenous rapper Adam Briggs with a rueful observation: "There's a lot of potential behind all this razor wire."

The award-winning artist spent a day with boys at the centre which houses New South Wales's "A Class" offenders aged 16 and under, whose crimes can vary from assault to murder.

Briggs toured the centre as part of the documentary series Over Represented that explores the Indigenous experience of imprisonment in Australia as part of the Incarceration Issue published by magazine Vice.

"There is a lot of potential behind this razor wire" — Adam Briggs ( Ben Sullivan, courtesy of VICE )

Anywhere from 60 to 70 per cent of boys at the Reiby centre are Indigenous.

"I remember when I was your age, a few of my cousins got locked up and that was really my first taste of someone my own age going into the system," he told them.

"That's why now it was important for me to come back and be able to talk to fellahs like yourselves and let you know that there are fellahs outside thinking about you and want to help."

On average, Indigenous youth in Australia are 24 times more likely to be jailed than their non-Indigenous peers, according to a report published earlier this year by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

In New South Wales that number is 17.5 times. In Western Australia it is 52.4 times.

Adam Briggs (centre back) with staff and boys during a visit to Sydney's Reiby Juvenile Detention Centre. ( Ben Sullivan, courtesy of VICE )

Sam Lene, programs coordinator at Reiby, said there was a turnstile for some of the boys who are "in and out a lot of times".

"I've seen a boy go in 10 years old and leave here at 16," he said.

"A lot of times in their lives these boys don't have a positive role model."

The AIHW said that nationally, about 6,100 people aged 10 to 17 are under justice supervision on an average day. Nearly half are Indigenous, it said.

And for incarceration, young Indigenous people make up 6 per cent of the population aged 10 to 17 but 58 per cent of those incarcerated in the same age group.

"This system, I don't like it, never have, but it's great to see people, genuine people with a genuine heart, working with the kids to try and keep them out of the system," Briggs said.

"The difference is these kids have is the opportunities they've been afforded.

"There is a lot of potential behind this razor wire, it would be a shame to lose all that."

Adam Briggs toured the centre as part of the documentary series Over Represented. ( Ben Sullivan, courtesy of VICE )

Briggs was moved by a meeting with 15-year-old Dizzy, who had been in the centre for six months and is made to wear an anti-suicide smock or "suicide gown".

Dizzy was playing cards with two of the centre's youth officers who were wearing helmets and face shields in case the boy spat at them.

He told Briggs that when he was released he wanted to help young Aboriginal kids and even performed an impressive rap of his own.

Dizzy, from Albury, and his story hit home for Briggs whose hometown is Shepparton, less than two hours from Albury.

"I was sitting with a young fellah with a suicide gown on who had just turned 15 ... he hasn't even lived a life to end it yet."