WHILE indigenous people make up less than two per cent of the ACT’s population, they also form 24.4 per cent of the population in Canberra’s prison, according to the Productivity Commission’s latest Report on Government Services.

Although the report found that on average the daily number of prisoners in the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC) had gone down, it also found that Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people are imprisoned at 19 times the rate of non-indigenous people, well above the national average ratio of 16.

It further highlighted that Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people are subject to community corrections orders at 12 times the rate of non-Indigenous people and have a much lower completion rate of 69 per cent compared with 78 per cent.

“It’s clear that whatever the ACT Government is doing to address Aboriginal incarceration rates in Canberra is not working,” said Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services CEO Julie Tongs.

“We need to examine the myriad and complex factors that have led to these appalling outcomes for Aboriginal peoples in the ACT, including a lack of housing, a lack of access to specialist and mental health services and high rates of children in out-of-home care.

“This is not just a problem in our prison, but across the whole community. We need a whole-of-government response that takes our voices and our pain seriously.”

ACT Council of Social Services CEO Dr Emma Campbell described the scale of the problem as “enormous”.

“The proportion of prisoners who are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the ACT has doubled over the last ten years,” she said.

“We need to urgently address this problem by investing in community-controlled organisations for health, housing, drug and alcohol treatment services and justice.”

Ms Campbell says the ACT has Australia’s highest rate of recidivism for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people, with 91 per cent of detainees having experienced prior imprisonment.

“By not addressing the systemic causes of over-incarceration, we are setting people up to fail over and over again,” she said.