Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults held in incarceration by at least 15%.

Proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people charged by police.

There are two measures for this indicator.

Measure 1 is the rate of adults charged by police, defined as:

Numerator – number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 18 years or over proceeded against by police at least once in the previous 12 months where the principal method of proceeding was a court action

Denominator – number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 18 years or over at 31 December

and is presented as a rate per 100, 000 people aged 18 years or over.

Measure 2 is the proportion of police proceedings against people aged 18 years or over that are court actions, defined as:

Numerator – number of police proceedings against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 18 years or over, by method of proceeding (court/non-court action)

Denominator – number of police proceedings against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 18 years or over

and is presented as a percentage.

National Agreement on Closing the Gap July 2020

31 July 2024

Driver

Measure 1: a low or decreasing rate is desirable.

Measure 2: holding the number of proceedings constant, a low or decreasing proportion is desirable.

Measure 2 and numerator for Measure 1

Name: Recorded Crime – Offenders

Frequency: Annual

Documentation (links): https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/recorded-crime-offenders

Denominator for Measure 1

Name: Estimates and projections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population

Frequency: Annual (data revised on a five‑yearly basis)

Documentation: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/estimates-and-projections-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-australians

Measure 2 and numerator for Measure 1

Provider name: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

Provider area: National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics

Denominator for Measure 1

Provider name: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Provider area: Demography

2018-19

2022-23

State and territory and Australia, by Indigenous status.

Measure 1: Numerator divided by Denominator multiplied by 100,000.

Measure 2: Numerator divided by Denominator multiplied by 100.

Counting rules

The reference period is 1 July to 30 June.

The reported jurisdiction is the location where the offender was proceeded against by police.

Measure 1

‘People proceeded against by police’ represents a person aged 18 years or over who is proceeded against and recorded by police for one or more criminal offences. An offender is only counted once during the reference period irrespective of the number of offences committed or the number of separate occasions that police proceeded against that offender.

‘Principle method of proceeding’ is defined as the main legal action (court or non‑court) initiated by police for an offender based on the ABS hierarchy of method of proceeding classification.

A person is counted in the numerator where a least once during the reference period they are recorded:

• as having a principal method of proceeding which is a court action
• being 18 years or over where one or more of the principal methods of proceeding was court action
• as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander at the ‘offender’ level.

Denominators (measure 1):

• The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is calculated for December (of the reference period) based on the average of two ABS June estimates of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population (based on the ABS Series B projections).
• The non-Indigenous population is calculated by subtracting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population from the total population (December of the reference period).

Measure 2

‘Police proceedings’ represent a count for each separate occasion within the 12‑month reference period that police initiate a legal action against an alleged offender.

Court actions by police include the following ABS codes:

• 110 Charge and bail/remand
• 120 Charge and summons
• 190 Other court action, not elsewhere classified.

Non-court actions by police include the following ABS codes:

• 210 Informal caution or informal warning
• 220 Formal caution or formal warning
• 230 Conference
• 240 Counselling (includes drug diversion schemes)
• 250 Penalty notices
• 290 Other non‑court action, not elsewhere classified.

Exclusions (all measures):

People/proceedings with an unknown or not stated Indigenous status. (Data on the number of people/proceedings whose Indigenous status was not stated is provided for context).

To measure adults charged by police, ABS data on adults proceeded against with a court action is used as a proxy.

Data values have been randomly adjusted using perturbation to avoid the release of confidential data. Discrepancies may occur between sums of the component items and totals.

The quality of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identification varies across jurisdictions. The data is only available by Indigenous status for New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia the Australian Capital Territory, and the Northern Territory. Australian Capital Territory. Based on ABS assessment, Indigenous status data for other jurisdictions was not of sufficient quality and/or did not meet ABS standards for self‑identification for national reporting. Due to data quality issues, the data is not available for method of police proceeding (i.e. court/non-court proceedings) for South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Caution should be used when comparing Indigenous status data across states and territories or time periods, due to variations in the proportion of offenders with unknown Indigenous status.

Future reporting will seek to include the following additional disaggregations:

• remoteness areas and other geographic categories available
• socio‑economic status of the locality
• age
• gender
• disability status.