Exclusive: 17 more people have died since August 2018, when analysis revealed 407 deaths since the end of 1991 royal commission

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Indigenous deaths in custody have worsened in the 12 months since Guardian Australia released its Deaths Inside project, with 17 more deaths recorded since August last year.

Analysis shows that government failures to follow their own procedures and provide appropriate medical care to Indigenous people in custody are major causes of the rising rates of Indigenous people dying in jail.

Deaths inside: every Indigenous death in custody since 2008 tracked – interactive Read more

In August 2018, an exclusive analysis of 10 years of coronial data found 407 Indigenous people had died in police or prison custody since the end of the royal commission in 1991.

As of today, that figure has increased to 424.

The federal government has failed to respond to two major reviews on Indigenous imprisonment delivered in that time.

And, despite the offer of federal funding, only three jurisdictions – Western Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory – have implemented a custody notification service (CNS) to match the life-saving program operating in New South Wales.

The CNS is a 24-hour phone line for Aboriginal people taken into police custody. The NSW service takes about 15,000 calls a year, and only one Indigenous person has died in police custody since it was implemented 18 years ago.

According to the federal government’s own measures, the majority of recommendations dating back to the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1991 have either not been implemented or only partly implemented.

Guardian Australia’s new analysis, which includes deaths reported via coronial findings, official statements and other means in the past 12 months, shows:

The proportion of Indigenous deaths where medical care was required but not given increased, from 35.4% to 38.6%.

The proportion of Indigenous deaths where not all procedures were followed in the events leading up to the death increased from 38.8% to 41.2%.

The proportion of Indigenous deaths involving mental health or cognitive impairment increased from 40.7% to 42.8%.

An increase in the proportion of deaths attributed to a medical episode following restraint from 4.9% of all deaths in the 2018 analysis, to 6.5% with new data in 2019.

Indigenous women were still less likely to have received all appropriate medical care prior to their death, and authorities were less likely to have followed all their own procedures in cases where an Indigenous woman died in custody.

One of the cases that involved an Indigenous woman who was not given the appropriate health care in custody was Wiradjuri woman Rebecca Lyn Maher, who died at Maitland police station on 19 July 2016.

In findings handed down last month, the coroner Teresa O’Sullivan urged the NSW government to expand its service to include people who, like Maher, were held in protective custody.

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, says he is keen to see the service offered in each state and territory and for protective custody.

“A CNS provides an important means by which to reduce the likelihood of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody,” Wyatt said. “The services provide detainees with culturally appropriate health and welfare support and basic legal advice.”

The $2.25m Northern Territory scheme, which has only been operational for a fortnight, does not include people placed into protective custody for public drunkenness, or people picked up under “paperless arrest” laws.

“While protective custody and paperless arrests are not included in the scope of the custody notification service, NT police are absolutely committed to the best possible safety for all detainees,” the NT police minister, Nicole Manison, told Guardian Australia.

The Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (ALSWA) also brokered a $2.25m deal with the former Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion last November, topped up by $202,000 a year from the WA government. It has been trialling the system with selected police stations and the service is expected to be fully operational next month.

“Police don’t want further deaths in custody,” the ALSWA director of legal services, Peter Collins, told Noongar Radio.

“We’re just hoping that if the service operates in the way it is designed to and the police respond in the way we expect them to, that it won’t happen in the future.”

In Victoria, the scheme has been written into law and will begin operation on 1 October but funding is yet to be finalised.

The South Australian, Queensland and Tasmanian governments have maintained their refusal to introduce a legislated custody notification service, saying they have equivalent procedures in place.

The Australian Law Reform Commission also recommended a national CNS, in a report provided to the federal government more than 18 months ago.

The report was commissioned in 2016 by the former attorney general George Brandis, who described Indigenous imprisonment rates as a “national tragedy”. The government has yet to respond to its recommendations, despite a desperate plea for action more than a year ago.

Wyatt said he’s aware the ALRC report had been with the government “for some time” and was “committed to considering” it.

He said state and territory governments had direct responsibility for tackling incarceration rates, but he was “working to improve outcomes for vulnerable youth through early intervention programs that identify at-risk children and assist in addressing the drivers that lead to offending behaviour and recidivism,” Wyatt said.

From the end of 2019, the Deaths Inside database will be maintained and developed by the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous education and research at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

The UTS distinguished professor Larissa Behrendt said the database “ensures people deeply impacted by the legal and justice system are more than a statistic”.

“It will be an important resource for community and for researchers,” Behrendt said.