NSW Premier Chris Minns Says Police Shouldn't Be Blamed for Disproportionate Indigenous Incarceration Rates

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has said police shouldn’t be blamed for disproportionate Indigenous incarceration rates.

On a tour of the far west NSW electorate of Barwon earlier this month, the premier said he was concerned about the level of Aboriginal incarceration “across the board”.

“That’s a really complex problem that we have to try and solve," he said in an interview with Guardian Australia.

“We can’t just put it all on the police’s shoulders or blame the police, because often a whole series of things have gone wrong before there’s an interaction between an Indigenous youth and a NSW police officer.”

Aboriginal people made up 58.9 per cent of NSW’s juvenile detention population at the end of June. In Barwon, children and teenagers aged between 10 and 17 are more likely than the state’s average young person to come into contact with police, according to data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

In late October, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) released its report on the Suspect Targeting Management Plan against young people, finding there was a “gross over-representation of young Aboriginal people selected for targeting”.

In a report released December 11, the LCC also found there was a “systemic problem” around interviewing young vulnerable people, including Indigenous youth.

In September, documents obtained by Redfern Legal Center showed over four years to June 2022, of the 28,826 incidents where police force was recorded, 13,161 involved Indigenous people.

The Country Mayors association, police union and various Nationals MPs have called on the Minns government to hold an inquiry into youth crime in Central West and regional NSW.

But on the tour this month, where Minns met with police, mayors and Aboriginal community leaders, the premier said he was “reluctant” meet the demands.

The campaign pushing the inquiry has been led by Jamie Chaffey, chair of the Country Mayors Association, who is tied to the National party and unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2019. Chaffey said the push was about “quality of life”.

“This is about the quality of life in rural NSW. When we know we have people scared to live in some communities… it’s our job to make sure that without fear or favour we call that out,” he said.

The MP for Barwon Roy Butler, an independent, said a parliamentary inquiry would make headlines but miss an opportunity for “solutions”.

He urged the government to address the lack of early intervention services. “I am aware of highly successful locally grown programs that struggle for funding and frankly well known services that are paid to deliver programs and don’t achieve the standards I expect," he told Guardian Australia.

The police commissioner said a parliamentary inquiry into youth crime would only delay action.

Arielle Richards is the multimedia reporter at VICE Australia, follow her on Instagram and Twitter.