Families, politicians say not enough has changed 30 years on from Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

April Fool’s Day was always a day of celebration in the Chatfield house.

But this year on April 1, Nioka and Colin Chatfield bundled their family into their white mini-van, picked up a cake from the local bakery and drove to their son’s graveside at the Armidale Cemetery to mark what would have been his 26th birthday.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died.

“The fun we used to have — it’s all gone, now a memory,” Mr Chatfield said.

Tane Chatfield died in Tamworth Hospital in September 2017, two days after he was found unconscious in his prison cell.

He is one of more than 450 First Nations people who have died in custody in the 30 years since a landmark inquiry delivered a blueprint to stop such deaths.

An inquest last year found the 22-year-old took his own life — a finding his family does not accept.

“We don’t know what happened in that cell,” Ms Chatfield said.

“All I do know is that it’s a really big lack of duty of care.”

“They were obligated with their policy and procedures to keep my boy safe.”

The coroner examining Tane’s death, Harriet Grahame, called for hanging points in cells at the Tamworth Correctional Centre to be removed.

“Coroners have been recommending the removal of hanging points for many years,” she said.

“The issue must be taken seriously.”

Incarceration rates key to crisis

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody first called for the removal of hanging points in 1991.

It is one of more than a hundred recommendations yet to be implemented since the inquiry tabled its report 30 years ago.

“This is a national disgrace,” Labor senator Pat Dodson said.

Senator Dodson was one of the inquiry’s five commissioners.

“Thirty years on, we’ve got nearly 500 people who have died and we’re starting to get the same feeling that there’s neglect, that people don’t care, [that] there’s irresponsibility,” he said.

“If the political leadership at the top doesn’t get itself into gear very shortly, we’re going to have a real crisis on our hands, similar to what we had back at the time of the royal commission.”

Around 60 per cent of the royal commission’s 339 recommendations have been fully implemented, according to a 2018 report by Deloitte.

Senator Dodson has called on Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, to work with peak Indigenous groups to create a national plan to spearhead change.

Mr Wyatt said that was already in motion through the creation of two justice targets in the Closing the Gap agreement, which aim to reduce the rate of Indigenous adults and young people in prison by 15 and 30 per cent respectively within a decade.

“We’re not in a national crisis in the sense of people dying because of the actions of a prison guard or a police officer,” he said.

“Where we do have the crisis is the underlying issues that impact the rates of incarceration.”

The royal commission found that Indigenous people were not more likely to die in prison than non-Indigenous inmates.

But as a proportion of the entire population, Indigenous people were more likely to die in custody because they were more likely to be in custody.

It said prison should be a last resort for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But since 1991, the Indigenous prison population has more than doubled from 14 per cent to 29 per cent.

That is despite a drop in crime rates, said Chris Cunneen, a professor of criminology at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“It’s not about the rate of crime — it’s about governments relying on punitive approaches to law and order, relying on prison,” he said.

“And the result of that is that the poor and marginalised and racialised groups like First Nations people are the fodder that end up behind prison bars.”

Family vows to continue fight

Protestors rallied across the country this week to call for an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody.

Darren Brady found himself on the front line of the protest movement after his aunt, Birri Gubba woman Sherry Tilberoo, died in a police holding cell in Brisbane last year.

“As a family we would always be part of those spaces, those protests … but always in the back,” he said.

“It was interesting to see how we were literally forced, you could feel it, we were forced to be right there at the front.”

Mr Brady and his family hope a coronial inquest will provide answers about Ms Tilberoo’s death.

In the meantime, he is speaking up to give back to the aunty who gave him so much.

“I believe we can do this … move forward positively and successfully to achieve no deaths in custody,” he said.

“I will continue to be frustrated and tired but now I will continue to fight to make sure that it happens.”

“It just sucks that we have to fight and not be somebody who can enjoy life more.”