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The state’s top coroner has taken the rare step of issuing an open letter after NSW reached the “profoundly distressing milestone” of recording the highest-ever number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in a single year.
Teresa O’Sullivan told The Sydney Morning Herald after her appointment in 2019 that preventing Indigenous deaths in custody was a priority for her court.
But the number of Aboriginal people in custody has increased by almost 20 per cent in the past five years, while the non-Aboriginal prison population declined in the same period.
“Twelve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have died in custody in NSW so far in 2025 – the highest number ever recorded in a single year, with more than two months remaining in the calendar,” O’Sullivan wrote in the letter, released on Wednesday.
O’Sullivan said the number of Aboriginal people in custody had increased by 18.9 per cent over the past five years, while the non-Aboriginal prison population had declined by 12.5 per cent.
“Nearly half of Aboriginal adults in custody (45.6 per cent) were on remand or refused bail awaiting further court outcomes. The number of Aboriginal people on remand has surged by 63 per cent over the same five-year period,” she wrote.
“These figures reflect the entrenched over-representation of First Nations peoples in the criminal justice system – a systemic issue that compounds the risks and vulnerabilities contributing to the rising number of deaths in custody.”
[Ed: Indigenous people make up only 3.3% of Australian population but 29% of male prison population and 34% of indigenous female prison population.]
Source: NSW records highest ever number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in 2025