Blak History Month🎙Deaths in Custody and the 1991 Royal Commission: A National Shame Exposed.

By the late 1980s, the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people dying in police and prison custody had become too alarming to ignore. Communities were grieving, protesting, demanding answers. In response to growing pressure, the Australian Government established the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1987, delivering its final report in 1991.

The Commission investigated 99 deaths between 1980 and 1989. Its findings were devastating: systemic racism, over-policing, and social disadvantage were central drivers of Indigenous incarceration — not individual failings. Many of those who died in custody should never have been jailed at all, often locked up for minor offences or simply for being poor, homeless, or Indigenous.

The report made 339 recommendations, including reducing Indigenous incarceration, investing in community-led solutions, and ensuring culturally safe treatment within the justice system.

Yet decades later, the tragedy continues. Hundreds more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody since 1991, with many of the Commission’s key recommendations still unfulfilled.

This is not just a crisis — it’s a measure of the nation’s failure to value Black lives equally. The Royal Commission exposed the truth. The question that still hangs over Australia is: When will we act on it?