NT News, 8 June 2025

There’s no doubt that ‘tough on crime’ is catchy. It’s helped countless politicians, from all sides of politics, win elections around the world and fuelled the false belief in parts of the community that building more prisons and locking more people up actually reduces crime.

But we also know that this phoney ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric causes devastating harm. We are once again seeing this play out in the heartbreak of the Warlpiri family and community who are mourning a beloved young man who died while being detained by police in an Alice Springs supermarket.

Those circumstances are still being investigated and I do not claim to speak for that man’s family or community, nor to fully know their grief.

Yet this tragedy once more highlights deep systemic failures; failures that have been identified repeatedly by Aboriginal communities and outlined in detail in Government reports over many decades.

In the 34 years since I presented the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody to the national Parliament, there have been precious few improvements in how our legal, police and prison systems operate when it comes to the disproportionate incarceration of First Nations people.   

Since 1991, the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australian prisons has more than doubled - from 14.4 per cent to 36 per cent. 

In the Northern Territory, the prison population is at a record high, having jumped 7 per cent in the last quarter of 2024. A greater embrace of ‘zero tolerance’ policing has been cited as a possible cause, while the impact of tighter bail laws and the reintroduction of mandatory sentencing for some crimes is yet to unfold.   

The NT's incarceration rate is now reported to be the second highest in the world behind El Salvador. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 88 per cent of those in the NT’s prisons, while the number of people on remand has risen to make up 44 per cent of total prisoners.

The new government’s first Budget, handed down last month, was headlined by record funding for Corrections as the government scrambles to staff its overflowing prisons and find more beds.

And while the NT government doubles down on its commitment to law and order politics,  the evidence overwhelmingly shows that sending more people to prison does not work to make the community safer. If it did, the NT would already be the safest place in Australia.

Jailing is failing in the Territory, and around Australia. It doesn’t work to deter crime. It doesn’t work to rehabilitate. And it makes it more likely, not less likely, that someone will go on to reoffend. Instead of throwing our efforts and taxpayers’ dollars into getting tough on crime, we need to get tough on the causes of crime.

The research is very clear; in order to reduce crime, we need to look outside of prison and policing. We need real investments in services and critical support infrastructure including  housing, health and educational and employment opportunities. People need access to meaningful supports in the community that address alcohol and other drug issues, mental health, and disability.  We need to stop imprisoning disadvantage and start addressing it in the community, and we need to listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have been telling Governments for decades what is required. 

None of this is about being soft on crime, it is about being clear-eyed about what actually works to build safer communities.

In the NT, as in other parts of the country, there are excellent grassroots organisations working to strengthen local communities and families and prevent contact with the criminal justice system.

Community-led initiatives, such as those that have seen a remarkable 95% reduction in youth crime on Groote Eylandt through early intervention, diversion, and mentoring, offer a beacon of hope and a blueprint for a smarter path forward. Yet too many of these are hamstrung by limited funding and staff, when we should be doing all we can to expand their reach and amplify their work.

The commitment to justice reinvestment initiatives in the first term of the Albanese government was a positive step, but this crisis demands more than piecemeal funding. We need a comprehensive, long-term strategy, led by the Federal Government, that targets the social determinants of crime with the same urgency and resources currently directed towards law enforcement. We have to recognise, as the Royal Commission Report into Deaths in Custody outlined more than thirty years ago, that in order to address the shame and heartbreak of deaths in custody, we need to address the social drivers of incarceration.

All of us aspire to live in communities that are safe, but the persistent reliance on punitive measures is not only failing Territorians but actively exacerbating the very problems it seeks to solve.

Robert Tickner is a former Federal Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and chair of the Justice Reform Initiative.