A newly released report by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has laid bare a grim milestone: in the period 2024–25, a total of 113 people died while in police, prison or youth-detention custody — 33 of them from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This is the highest number of Indigenous deaths in custody since the country began tracking such figures in 1979–80.
Since the conclusion of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the total number of Indigenous people who have died in custody has now surpassed 600 — the AIC’s real-time dashboard records the figure at 617.
Of the 113 deaths recorded in the most recent year: 90 occurred in prisons (the highest annual number since 1980), 22 in police custody or custody-related operations, and one in a youth detention facility. Among the Indigenous individuals who died in prison custody, their deaths accounted for 29 per cent of all prison fatalities — the highest proportion in more than two decades.
Alarmingly, more than half of the known deaths among Indigenous prisoners were self-inflicted, with hanging responsible for the majority, particularly among those on remand. For those where cause of death was known, 53 per cent were suicides — the highest such rate for Indigenous prisoners since 1980. Among remand prisoners, a staggering 75 per cent of known deaths were due to hanging.
Advocates and family members of those who died have reacted with anguish and frustration. One grieving relative, whose husband died in a maximum-security prison in 2023, said the string of deaths felt “like a weekly thing now.” She expressed despair that despite decades of activism and protest, “nothing has changed.” Leaders of Indigenous legal services argue that many of these deaths were preventable, pointing to systemic failures—including “racist policing practices and harmful systems built on oppression.” Social justice advocates emphasised that the ongoing surge of deaths reveals a persistent refusal by authorities to offer culturally informed care, proper oversight, or serious reforms.
For many, the numbers are not just statistics but represent a national disgrace — a sign that, more than three decades after the Royal Commission’s recommendations, the reforms remain largely unimplemented and Indigenous people remain unsafe in custody. Experts and community leaders have renewed calls for urgent, systemic overhaul, culturally appropriate detention practices, mental-health support for detainees, removal of hanging points from cells, and a commitment to drastically reducing Indigenous incarceration. The recent data underscores a crisis that demands immediate government action.
