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In 1987, the Commonwealth Government appointed a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, as the number of deaths of Aboriginal people held in custody had reached such numbers that the issue could no longer be ignored.
The Commissioners held enquiries in all States and Territories and in 1989 presented a report to the Government containing 339 recommendations of changes that needed to be made in policy and practice by the various government departments, including Police, Corrective Services, Juvenile Justice, Health, Housing, Legal Services, Family Services, Courts Adminstration and Coroner.
The work of the Commission had established that Aboriginal people in custody do not die at a greater rate than non-Aboriginal people in custody.
However, what is overwhelmingly different is the rate at which Aboriginal people come into custody, compared with the rate of the general community. The degree of over-representation in police custody, as measured by the Commission's study of police cell custody in August 1988, is twenty-nine times greater. In Chapters 5 to 9 those matters and their implications are discussed in detail. The ninety-nine who died in custody illustrate that over-representation and in a sense are the victims of it.
The full Report can be accessed at www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic/
One of the recommendations in the Report was:
That all political leaders and their parties recognise that reconciliation between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in Australia must be achieved if community division, discord and injustice to Aboriginal people are to be avoided. To this end the Commission recommends that political leaders use their best endeavours to ensure bi-partisan public support for the process of reconciliation and that the urgency and necessity of the process be acknowledged. (Ref: Recommendation 339 in the Report of The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 1989)
This recommendation led to the establishment of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991.