'When will we have peace?' Grief and outrage at three Indigenous deaths in custody in a week

“When will we have peace?”

That was the Greens senator and Gunnai Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman Lidia Thorpe’s anguished question on Friday after the news that three Aboriginal people had died in custody in the space of a week.

In New South Wales, a man in his 30s and a woman in her 50s died in custody. Their deaths were only revealed under questioning during a state parliamentary hearing five days ago.

News of the third death, of an Aboriginal man in Victoria’s Ravenhall correctional centre last Sunday, broke as the findings of a coronial inquest into the prison death of another Aboriginal man were being handed down in Sydney.

A 36-year-old Anaiwan Dunhutti man, Nathan Reynolds, died in 2018 gasping for air on a prison floor from an asthma attack after guards took an “unreasonably” long time to come to his aid.

The NSW deputy coroner Elizabeth Ryan said the “confused, uncoordinated and unreasonably delayed” response by prison guards and health staff deprived Reynolds of “at least some chance” of survival.

Reynolds’ family, who have waited almost three years for answers as to how and why he died – and, crucially, for somebody to be held responsible – heard the NSW deputy coroner give a brief summary of her findings on Thursday.

“These failures were due both to numerous system deficiencies and to individual errors of judgment,” Ryan said. It had taken more than 11 minutes for the guards to arrive, 13 minutes for a nurse to be summoned, 22 minutes before she arrived at his side and 47 minutes before ambulance paramedics attended him, she said.

But Ryan said her recommendations were “not focused on attributing blame”. They were made “in the hope” that people like Reynolds, who enter custody with severe asthma, will have a better chance of avoiding a life-threatening attack, and of surviving one should it happen.

Standing outside the courtroom minutes later, justice advocates, families and their supporters heard the saddening news of the third death. Still trying to come to terms with the coroner’s findings in the case of their beloved brother’s death, Reynolds’ sisters Makayla and Taleah expressed solidarity with those newly bereaved families.

“People should not die in prisons away from their loved ones,” Makayla Reynolds said. “Last week another two people died in NSW prisons. This morning we were advised of another death in Victoria. Our thoughts and support go to their families.

“No family should ever have to go through this. How many more Aboriginal people must die before their time due to the failings of justice health and corrective services? We say no one. Not one more single person has to die before their time.”

The Northern Territory coroner heard about the death of 47-year-old Kumanjayi Bloomfield, who died in car accident on the Plenty Highway near Harts Range while trying to evade police in July 2019. The police report into his death took 10 months to be delivered – well beyond the force’s internal deadlines. Bloomfield’s family told the ABC they had “significantly lost trust in police” since his death.

Three more death-in-custody inquests are about to begin.

Early next month the Queensland coroner will hear how Townsville police used a controversial neck hold banned in jurisdictions across the world during the arrest of an Aboriginal man who died in 2018.

The 39-year-old was detained after his wife called police because she was concerned about his mental wellbeing. A police technique known as a lateral vascular neck restraint was apparently used while trying to restrain him.

In Western Australia, a coronial inquest will start next month into the deaths of two young Aboriginal men who drowned in the Swan River in Perth in 2018 while fleeing police.

The police were chasing the boys on foot after reports of “teenagers jumping fences”. Four teenagers entered the river to escape but only two made it out.

That will be followed by the inquest into the death of 26-year-old Cherdeena Wynne, who died in hospital five days after she became unresponsive after being handcuffed by police in an Albany street. She died 20 years after her father, Warren Cooper, died in custody after being found unresponsive in the Albany police watchhouse. He was also 26.

‘The system is killing our people’

Late on Thursday, the nation’s combined Aboriginal legal services demanded that the prime minister urgently meet with bereaved families who were pleading for systemic change.

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services representatives from across the country said they were “horrified and deeply upset” at the ongoing death toll.

“Our people have marched, we have raised our voices, we have participated in inquiry after inquiry, we have shared our stories and developed solutions,” they said in a statement. “Yet governments are standing by while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are dying under their watch, in their prisons, police cells and during police pursuits.”

Natsils said it supported the 15 families whose loved ones had died in custody who were behind a petition “urging prime minister Scott Morrison to meet with them face to face for the 30-year anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody”.

Thorpe said Morrison was refusing to meet with grieving families to explain how the deaths were possible. “That’s how little this government cares about anyone except themselves,” she said.

The prime minister’s office has been contacted for comment.

In April, it will be 30 years since the royal commission handed down 339 recommendations. The extent to which they have been implemented is the subject of dispute.

A government-ordered review in 2018 by Deloitte Access Economics found that 64% of recommendations had been fully implemented in all relevant jurisdictions, 14% had been mostly implemented, 16% had been partly implemented and 6% had not been implemented at all.

But that report was roundly dismissed by a group of leading Indigenous and social academics as “misleadingly positive” and “largely worthless”.

Thirty-three academics wrote that the review enabled governments to “hide behind the veneer of simply having introduced policies and programs which it claims have addressed recommendations, rather than come to terms with their real-world impacts”.

Parallel to the news of more deaths in custody, in Victoria the Yoo-rrook justice commission was announced last week. It is the first commission of its kind in Australia to look at historical and ongoing injustices against Aboriginal nations. Named for the Wemba Wemba/Wamba Wamba word for “truth”, it will be given the powers of a royal commission, meaning it will be able to compel evidence under oath.

The First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, which is responsible for the treaty process, welcomed the commitment to telling the truth. But the assembly co-chair, Bangerang and Wiradjuri woman Geraldine Atkinson, also said she was devastated by the news that three Aboriginal people had died in custody in a week:

Solutions for keeping our people safe have been known for 30 years, since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. For 30 years, governments have failed to act on these recommendations – inaction that has cost the lives of over 450 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In Victoria, Aboriginal people are imprisoned at rates 12 times higher than the rest of the population. We are dying ten years younger. This system is killing our people and it has to stop. I stand with our community in grief and solidarity, and will continue to fight for safety and justice for our people.

This tragic story is one of many that will be heard in the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission. The truth will be painful and confronting but it needs to be heard.

In NSW the Aboriginal Legal Service said it was “well past time for real accountability” in the justice system.

The two prison deaths in NSW came to light when the Corrective Services NSW commissioner, Peter Severin, was questioned in a parliamentary hearing by the Greens MP David Shoebridge.

Severin said it was “not appropriate” to advise the public of deaths without any detail but the NSW Aboriginal Legal Service disagreed.

“The NSW government has an obligation to let people know things that are in the public interest, and this includes when there has been a death in their care,” said the NSW ALS chief executive, Karly Warner.

In the middle of last year, as the Black Lives Matter movement was spilling on to the streets of Australian towns and cities, a large coalition of justice groups outlined five reforms they said “could be made tomorrow, if the political will is there”.

The groups, representing more than 100 legal services, including Change the Record, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, the Human Rights Law Centre, Amnesty International, ANTaR, the First People’s Disability Network, Community Legal Centres, Family Violence Prevention Legal Services, the Australian Council of Social Service, Oxfam and the Law Society of Australia, issued a five-point plan.

This sought to repeal punitive bail laws and mandatory sentencing laws, raise the age of legal responsibility from 10 to 14 years, legislate for independent investigations of deaths in custody and independent police oversight bodies, and implement all recommendations from the royal commission and the “countless” investigations, inquests and reports that have been published in the three decades since.

Thorpe said the cumulative impact on Aboriginal families and communities of the ongoing deaths in custody was plain to see.

“This is relentless and traumatising for our people,” she said. “The system is broken. Thirty years on since the royal commission, how is it possible that our people are still dying in custody and not a single person or institution has been held to account? When will we have peace?”

• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org