The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) emphasised the need for all jurisdictions to have available, on an ongoing basis, detailed information on people held in police cells. When the RCIADIC commenced, basic questions about Aboriginal deaths in police custody could not be answered from existing information held by Australia’s police services. The first National Police Custody Survey was conducted in August 1988 to support the RCIADIC as 60 per cent of the deaths in custody being investigated occurred in police custody. The original survey provided information on the timing and reasons for an individual’s placement in custody as well as demographic information. The RCIADIC saw a need for the survey to be repeated periodically to monitor and evaluate the impacts of changes made over time.

Australian Institute of Criminology

The AIC conducted national surveys of police custody in August 1992, August 1995 and October 2002 with the cooperation of police in each jurisdiction in Australia. Each survey was a snapshot in time, providing information for people in custody in that month.

These surveys aimed to identify:

• how many people go into and out of police cells over the course of one month;

• why people are placed in police custody;

• the types of offences associated with police custody;

• the length of time that people are in police custody;

• the proportions of incidents in which Indigenous people are involved;

• rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous custody per population; and

• whether these patterns change over time.

In the report from the 2002 survey, the AIC aimed to continue to monitor patterns in police custody through the conduct of future police custody surveys. However, no surveys have been published since 2002. The AIC conducted a survey in 2007, but the results were not published, as the methodology for collecting and recording data introduced comparability issues between jurisdictions which could not be reasonably resolved using statistical and weighting procedures.

When this recommendation was assessed by the Aboriginal Justice Caucus in 2023, data on the number and details of people in police cells were not routinely published.

Outputs

The RCIADIC recommended that national police custody surveys be conducted ‘with the aim of systematically monitoring and evaluating the degree to which needed improvements in legislation, attitudes, policies and procedures that affect police custody are implemented’.

The surveys published between 1988 and 2002 provided data to support monitoring of trends in the number and rates of people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, in custody, and types of offences for which people were held. The survey could be used to conclude whether recommendations from the RCIADIC were potentially ‘having some impact in terms of reducing numbers of Indigenous people from being detained’. However, the data collected were not sufficient to conclusively monitor or evaluate why such trends occurred.

Outcomes

There is no ongoing implementation of the National Police Custody Survey, resulting in a significant gap in monitoring police custody practices and evaluating the impact of reforms, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.