A Queensland Indigenous leader says being sent to jail has become a badge of honour among many young Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Indigenous people from all over Queensland are meeting in Brisbane to discuss ways to fight the high rate of reoffending within their community.

They have been told by the Queensland Corrective Services Department that the number of Indigenous people in the state's jails has risen to almost a third of the total prison population.

Sam Watson, an activist and community leader, says it is a worrying trend.

"Looking at particular communities across Queensland, it almost seems to be some sort of rite of passage for young people to commit offences, go into custody and then from there go into jail," he said.

"For a number of years now Hollywood has been presenting this sort of image of the glorified gangster who must make his bones by killing someone.

"Well, at a lesser level on the streets around Queensland, unless you've done some hard time, then you're not considered worthy of being part of the group.

"It's that need to belong to the group. It's the need to prove yourself as a worthy contender."

Mr Watson estimates every second Indigenous person who is released from prison reoffends within a year.

Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders make up just over 3 per cent of Queensland's population but they account for 28 per cent of people in jail.

A safe haven

The Budja Djan Men's Council president, Duncan Johnson, says many find life is easier inside prison.

"If you're in a low-economic situation and you go into jail you get three meals a day, a bed," he said.

"They have television, PlayStations, all that sort of stuff - everything is structured for them.

"So when they come out there's no structure in the community for them and they find it hard to actually fit back into the community and society in itself."

Mr Johnson says they sometimes reoffend in order to go back to jail.

"That's what you call institutionalisation. Yes, they reoffend because they feel more safer there," he said.

He says existing rehabilitation programs for Indigenous offenders are inadequate.

"I don't think they answer any of the problems affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and adults in the male and female system," he said.

"I think we've got to look outside the box for some of the answers to them things, especially long-term."

Room for improvement

Stephen Hagan, a lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland and a former Aboriginal Person of the Year, agrees the system must not be working.

"I think it's very clear from the discussions in the meeting today that they don't have the right personnel inside the prison system - I'm talking about Indigenous personnel inside the prison system - to assist those who come in," he said.

"And they don't have half-way houses or people on the outside, as in probation officers, to speak to Indigenous people to stop them reoffending."

The director of Indigenous coordination at Queensland Corrective Services, Michael Stubbins, also says there is room for improvement.

"It's terrible, I mean there is no doubt that the statistics all show that there is continued over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," he said.

"We have the third highest rate in Australia and we need to do further work in relation to how we address that."

Starting young

Mr Watson says young Indigenous people are filling the state's detention centres from as early as 11-years-old.

"At the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre I think there's about 97 young people in custody and at times there's 65 to 67 of those who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people and that is just not good enough, not acceptable," he said.

To break the cycle of violence Mr Watson says effective rehabilitation has to start when offenders are young.

"Once these kids start committing offences and find that the world has noticed them, they find that in this macabre thinking of theirs that the only way they can have the world acknowledge their existence is by committing offences, being arrested and going into the criminal justice system," he said.

"So these kids need to be convinced that that is not the right way, that there are better things to be doing than spending your entire life locked up behind bars."