Australian Human Rights Commission Deplores Aboriginal Conviction Rate

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner slammed Australia for the excessive number of imprisoned Aboriginal people and called it shocking that the country does better at keeping them in jails rather than in schools.

MOSCOW, December 4 (Sputnik) — The excessive number of indigenous people in Australian detention centers is a human rights issue the country needs to tackle immediately, Mick Gooda, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, said Thursday.

"I find it shocking that we do better at keeping Aboriginal people in prison than in school. The Aboriginal re-imprisonment rate is actually higher than the Aboriginal school retention rate," Gooda was quoted as saying in a press release published on the Australian Human Rights Commission's website.

Gooda's statement accompanies the 2014 Social Justice and Native Title report. According to the report, the incarceration rate among Aboriginals reached 58 percent within 10 years. The figure is higher than the Aboriginal school retention rate from Year 7 to Year 12, which is 46.5 percent.

The report also shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults are 15 times more likely to find themselves behind bars than their nonindigenous peers.

Gooda went on to confirm that around half of the young people currently detained in juvenile centers are either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. He also deemed it unacceptable that indigenous women who are victims of domestic violence should be hospitalized "at 31 times the rate of non-Indigenous women."

In a bid to tackle the unfavorable situation with indigenous people, Gooda urged the Australian government to allocate a portion of the funds on prisons for the establishment of programs that would potentially lead to a decrease in crimes committed by indigenous people.

Gooda also called on the country's authorities to abandon their "tough on crime" stances and instead adopt an approach that would contribute to the improvement of the criminal justice system.