Deaths in custody, noted

At the risk of starting to sound like Andrew Bolt lite (and I really, really don't want to), there was article earlier this month in the SMH by someone from ACU pointing out things that mainstream journalists seem very reluctant to point out about aboriginal deaths in custody:

Let’s set the record straight. Yes, any death in custody is sad, but the reality is people die. Whether they are in custody or not, Aboriginal or not, people die. The Australian Institute of Criminology, reporting in 2019 on the first 25 years since the royal commission, found the majority of prison deaths for Aboriginal prisoners were due to natural causes.

The next highest group was due to hanging, and investigations must get to the bottom of suggestions that two of the recent deaths in custody occurred when prisoners found hanging points in their cells: the commission recommended the removal of all hanging points.

However, there has been a decrease in the hanging death rate of Indigenous prisoners. Indeed, the 2019 report found that since 2003–04, the hanging death rate of Indigenous prisoners had been lower or the same as that of non-Indigenous prisoners. The report also noted that to that time, no Indigenous hanging deaths had occurred in police custody (as opposed to jail) since 2008–09.

Further, an Aboriginal person in custody is less likely to die than a non-Aboriginal person in custody, and this fact it rarely reported in the media. According to David Biles, a criminologist, who for three years headed the criminology research group of the royal commission: “In the early days of the royal commission, when I and a small team of researchers were able to prove unequivocally that Aboriginal people were slightly less likely to die in prison or police custody than non-Aboriginal people, we were met with derision and disbelief. We were even accused of disloyalty to the royal commission.”

The Australian Institute of Criminology publication states that the same remains true today. “Indigenous people are now less likely than non-Indigenous people to die in custody, largely due to a decrease in the death rate of Indigenous prisoners from 1999–2000 to 2005–06. ”

However, these objective facts have not stopped some Aboriginal leaders from portraying an alternative narrative.

But on the matter of the high profile death in custody in the US (George Floyd), Sinclair Davidson's Home for Australian Rednecks is no doubt hopping.  Let's check:

Uhuh.

The Fox News, Tucker Carlson response to this will be ...interesting.  And, more than likely, appalling.

Update:   more from the Catholic conservatives of Catallaxy -

(And yeah, Pelosi did say something silly and kinda stupid.  But it's small change in offensiveness compared to the Right's attitude that it's the end of American civilisation caused by people being too sympathetic to a dead black guy.)

Update 2:   As expected, Carlson acts like the full blown jerk that he is: