Urgent action needed to lower Aboriginal incarceration rates: expert

Rapidly increasing incarceration rates of Aboriginal men, women and children cannot be ignored by the government any further, a leading aboriginal social justice advocate said on Thursday.

Speaking before a Geraldton Aboriginal Medical Service conference in Western Australia, Mick Gooda highlighted that a 57 percent increase in incarceration rates among Aboriginals over the last 15 years has been ignored for too long, and that it was little wonder that growing levels of poor Aboriginal health was going hand in hand with high lock up rates.

"If you think putting people in jail creates safe communities, we're kidding ourselves," Gooda said on Thursday.

"Let's not put them in jail, let's put them in an appropriate facility."

Gooda implored that action must be taken to lower the incarceration rates, otherwise the standard of living in Aboriginal communities would just plummet further.

"I've run out of adjectives, from emergency to urgent, to a catastrophe in the making, because the figures just keep climbing, " he said.

He said that rural communities as well as government organizations must look at other methods of reducing the number of Aboriginal people sent to jail.

"It's really important that communities sit down and start talking together," he said.

"If you don't have a unified voice, the government will do whatever they want because they've got permission to do it because people aren't coming together."

Statistics released in 2014 showed that Aboriginal men, women and children were up to 15 times more likely to be locked up than non-indigenous Australians.

Gooda said that by implementing practical changes that serve to help Aboriginal people instead of locking them up, the government could save money as well as improve the standard of living and safety within indigenous communities.

"Here's a way governments can actually save a bit of money; by not locking people up who shouldn't be locked up."

"Those are the sort of things I think we should be starting to look at, because every one person we save one night in jail, we're heading towards reducing this awful rate." Endi