In the mid and late 1980s the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody band wagon was a popular one with the left. Australian law enforcement authorities were, we were told, murdering our indigenous Australians in prisons and holding cells.

There was an expensive royal commission, and the findings were in 

Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody
National Report
Overview and Recommendations
By Commissioner Elliott Johnston, QC
Australian Government Publishing Service Canberra
(c) Commonwealth of Australia 1991

Section 1.3.1 stated simply:

The work of the Commission has established that Aboriginal people in custody do not die at a greater rate than non-Aboriginal people in custody.

A fact which totally contradicted the hysterical claims of the left, and was therefore simply ignored. It just didn't fit with the politically correct mind-set.

In 2002, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (abs.gov.au) site stated that

At 30 June 2000 there were 4,095 Indigenous prisoners in Australia (19% of the Australian prisoner population).

And also that of 628 deaths in custody between 1990 and 1999, 115 were indigenous. (ie 18.3%).

So the 19% of the Aboriginal prisoners comprise 18.3% the deaths in custody. This is hardly convincing evidence of Aboriginal disadvantage.

But still this argument, and the half-truths which accompany it, get periodically wheeled out by the left as further evidence of racism, genocide and murder.

Political, rather than factual, correctness seems to be the desired goal.

See