Indigenous Correctional Gap Widens Across Australia

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander over-representation in Australia’s criminal justice system is usually discussed in terms of prisons. But the latest ABS data show the disparity extends much further.

At 30 June 2026, the age-standardised rate of Indigenous Australians serving community-based corrections orders was 3,147 per 100,000 adults. For non-Indigenous Australians it was just 286 per 100,000.

That makes the Indigenous rate 11 times higher.

Community-based corrections cover people serving sentences or supervision in the community rather than full-time custody, including probation, parole and community service orders. They are less restrictive than imprisonment, so the two should not be treated as equivalent. But they provide a broader measure of how deeply different populations interact with the corrective-services system.

The longer-term trend is particularly striking.

In 2017, the Indigenous age-standardised community-corrections rate was 2,175 per 100,000, compared with 309 for non-Indigenous Australians — a ratio of 7.1 to one.

By 2026 that ratio had increased to 11 to one. The Indigenous rate rose about 45 per cent, while the non-Indigenous rate fell about 7 per cent.

The divergence appears across every state and territory, although its scale varies considerably. Western Australia recorded the largest 2026 gap at 14.2 times, followed by the ACT at 13.5 and South Australia at 12.2.

This sits alongside an already severe prison disparity. Indigenous Australians accounted for 37 per cent of people in custody in June 2026, with an imprisonment rate of 2,719 per 100,000 adults.

The national Closing the Gap agreement aims to reduce Indigenous adult incarceration by at least 15 per cent by 2031. The Productivity Commission currently assesses progress against that imprisonment target as worsening.

The community-corrections data suggest the policy challenge is broader still.