Women who die in custody: What Australian coroners’ reports tell us
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Author | Tamara Walsh |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12495 |
Received: 3 February 2022 Accepted: 11 May2022
DOI: 10.1111/ho jo.12495
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Women who die in custody: What Australian
coroners’ reports tell us
Tamara Walsh
Professor of Law, The University of
Queensland, Australia
Correspondence
Tamara Walsh,Professor of Law, The
University of Queensland, Australia.
Email: t.walsh@uq.edu.au
[Correction added on 25 November 2022,
after first online publication: CAUL 2022
funding statement has been added.]
Abstract
Women’s deaths in custody remain under-researched
around the world. This article reports on a large-scale
study on deaths in custody conducted in Australia that
involved an analysis of 736 coroners’ inquest reports
dated between 1991 and 2020. Women were substan-
tially under-represented among this sample, comprising
less than 5% of all deaths, but half of the women were
Indigenous. While most of the women had a range of
individual risk factors in common – such as a history
of victimisation, mental illness and drug and alcohol
use – the Indigenous women also experienced systemic
racism from their custodians and the medical personnel
to whom they were referred for treatment. While most
coroners focused primarily on the cause of death, some
made recommendations directed at addressing uncon-
scious bias. This research supports calls for alternatives
to detention for women and the decriminalisation of
racialised offences such as public intoxication.
KEYWORDS
criminalised women, deaths in custody, Indigenous, police cus-
tody, prison
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits
use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or
adaptations are made.
© 2022 The Authors. The HowardJournal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
540 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hojo HowardJ. Crim. Justice. 2022;61:540–555.
THE HOWARDJOURNAL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE 541
1 INTRODUCTION
There has been increased community interest in deaths in custody around the world in recent
years. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has powerfully articulated ongoing concerns regard-
ing the high rate of deaths in custody among people of colour, bringing hope to Australian
Indigenous people that ‘international pressure’ might result in change (Mundine, 2021). The over-
representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian criminal law
system has been described as a ‘national disgrace’ (Australian Law Reform Commission, 2018,
p.22). Indigenous people are ten times more likely than non-Indigenous people to be impris-
oned (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020), and their rate of incarcerationcontinues to increase,
despite decades of advocacy and scholarship aimed at addressing the disparity (Porter & Cubillo,
2021).
The rate of incarceration of Indigenous women, in particular, has risen sharply over the past
decade. Women now make up 9% of the Australian prison population, up from 7% 15 years ago
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005, 2020), but Indigenous women aremore than 20 times more
likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous women (Australian LawReform Commission, 2018,
p.348). Indigenous women comprise 38% of female prisoners even though they make up only 2%
of the Australian population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021).
Extensive scholarship has focused on the gendered pathwaysto imprisonment, and the distinct
treatment needs of female prisoners, yet policy and practice within the prison system continues to
be male-centric (Baldry, 2010; Carlton & Segrave, 2016; Franich, Samdy & Stone, 2021). Research
on deaths in custody is generally framed in gender-neutral terms. Eventhe Australian Royal Com-
mission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (Royal Commission) neglected to examine the specific
issues that pertain to women in custody (Davis, 2011; Marchetti, 2009).
The aim of this research was to investigatethe nature and circumstances of Australian women’s
deaths in custody. Over a four-year period, our team of researchers analysed every coroners’
inquest report on an Australian death in custody that was available in full-text online. Key
information was extracted from these inquest reports, including demographic information and
personal characteristics, the cause and circumstances of individuals’ deaths, and whether the
coroner made any recommendations (Walsh & Counter, 2018). Of the 736 reports that we anal-
ysed, 34 (less than 5%) concerned deceased women. In this article, I discuss why and how these
women died, and the factors that contributed to their deaths.
2GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DEATHS IN CUSTODY
The Royal Commission defined deaths in custody broadly to include the death of a person who
is in police, prison or youth detention custody whose death is caused or contributed to by trau-
matic injuries sustained while in custody, who dies or is fatally injured while police or prison
officers attempt to detain them, or who dies or is fatally injured in the process of attempting
to escape from prison or police officers (Johnston, 1991). This definition has received interna-
tional approval (Cheema, 2009) and we adopted this definition in our research (Walsh& Counter,
2018).
The rate of death in prison custody in Australia has remained relatively stable over the past
ten years at around two deaths per 1,000 prisoners per year, while the rate of death of women
in custody is around 0.6 per 1,000 prisoners per year (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020).
Around 23% of female deaths in prison custody are Indigenous women (Australian Institute of
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