Human rights groups are urging the Australian government to do more to bring down Aboriginal incarceration rates which have almost doubled in 25 years, with indigenous criminals now accounting for a quarter of prisoners.
The calls came on the 25th anniversary today of the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which recommended sweeping reforms to improve the plight of the nation's first peoples, who are the country's most impoverished.
The indigenous population remains "very much over-represented" in prison, the government's Australian Institute of Criminology said.
Aborigines made up 14 per cent of those in jail at the time of the royal commission but now account for 27 per cent, even though they comprise just under three percent of the adult Australian population, Bureau of Statistics data from 2015 shows.
Despite the rise in incarceration rates, Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion said many of the commission's 339 recommendations, particularly those focused on reducing the risk of deaths in custody, had been implemented.