Comment on Aboriginal community shaken by second death in Australian police custody
Aussieiuszko@aussie.zone 3 weeks agoCross-posting my rebuttal of this misleading stat:
It’s not just that.
Aboriginal people died at a rate of 0.13 per 100 prisoners, compared to a death rate of 0.21 per 100 prisoners for the total prison population.
[…]
The same AIC report calculated that Indigenous people as a whole died in police custody at more than six times the rate of non-Indigenous people as a whole – 0.61 per 100,000 people, compared to 0.09 per 100,000 people.
As a prison population, they don’t die at a higher rate. As a whole peoples they do.
ziltoid101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Those middle paragraphs were kinda important though, tbf. It was explaining that as a whole they are more likely to die in custody because they are more likely to be in custody in the first place. When addressing hypotheses specifically about deaths in custody, the first statistic (where indigenous people are not overrepresented) is a lot more meaningful.
We need to do a lot to improve the treatment of indigenous people, that goes without saying. It’s important that we’re barking up the right tree, but I appreciate that it’s a sensitive topic and it’s also important to not just cite cold stats. It’s a big issue - why are they overrepresented in custody? I don’t think there is some magical instant answer, but I think broader history shows that addressing poverty will simultaneously address a lot of these issues.
OutForARip@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
No it’s not, it’s irrelevant which is why I cut it out.
Already covers it in the first part. When you compare prison populations Aboriginal people die at a lesser rate because so many are locked that they lower the trend.
When you compare per person in society, they are overwhelmingly dying more often in custody compared to any other group.
ziltoid101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It sounds like we agree - they’re dying more in custody far more than non-indigenous because they are in custody far more than non-indigenous. Sorry if I misunderstood at any point.
While acknowledging the gravity of the deaths and always respecting cultural sensitivities, a successful systemic review should be focused on reducing overrepresentation in custody, not specifically just deaths in custody.