Locked up and locked out: Act now to ensure a free and equal future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise only 2.5 per cent of the Australian population, but make up 26 per cent of the total prison population and are imprisoned at a rate 14 times higher than non-Indigenous people.

Help us address this inequality - lobby your politicians now to develop justice targets to reduce the imprisonment rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people!

The government needs to know that thousands of Australians, including you, believe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people deserve better.

In response to our last online campaign action, ANTaR supporters lobbied their Attorneys-General to ensure Aboriginal justice issues were high on the agenda at their July meeting. This made a real difference. At that meeting, the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAGS) agreed to ‘significantly reduce the gap in Indigenous offending and victimisation’. And since then, they have referred the issue of justice specific Closing the Gap targets to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

To ensure these commitments are turned into actions, it is crucial that we keep the pressure on our Federal, State and Territory politicians to ensure that at the next COAG meeting, they agree to develop justice targets to reduce imprisonment together, and in genuine consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Inequality in imprisonment rates is worse now than it was at the time of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, 20 years ago. The government has known about this serious over-representation for many years. It has no excuse to delay action.

Justice targets, developed in consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, are vital to driving action and ensuring government accountability. They are one of the missing pieces in the Closing the Gap Strategy.

Existing targets on health, employment, education and life expectancy all depend on reducing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment and its destructive social and economic effects.

You can help! All you need to do is take two minutes to email your Federal, State and Territory leaders and insist they agree at the next COAG meeting to develop justice targets to reduce imprisonment in partnership with Aboriginal people.

To make it easier, we’ve drafted a letter containing key messages which you can send or use to write your own message.

Responsibility for this situation falls on the shoulders of those who allow it to happen. Stand up now and tell our governments they must take meaningful action! Each individual voice makes the National Call to Action louder.