In New South Wales, where are the First Nations women? In prison, still discarded and ignored

March 19, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Last week, the New South Wales Auditor General released a report, “Support for First Nations peoples in custody and post-release to reduce reoffending.” To absolutely no one’s surprise, the report shows that the state has failed to address the needs of incarcerated (or any) Indigenous people, or, better put, the state has successfully tortured Indigenous adults and children. As today’s Guardian notes, the “damning” report found “the number of Aboriginal adults in the state’s prisons reached record levels in December, exceeding the previous high that was set six months earlier. Last year also marked a record number of Indigenous deaths in custody, after 12 people died. In the decade to 2021, the number of young people in custody was steadily declining. But data shows trend has now reversed. The number of youths in prison overall increased by 34% in the two years from June 2023. Meanwhile, more than 60% of First Nations adults released from prison in 2023 reoffended within 12 months, according to the latest data.” What the Guardian report missed is the centrality of gender. First Nation women and girls live and die and suffer at the heart of these horrifying, and again altogether unsurprising, numbers. Where are the women?

Consider the numbers: “As at December 2025, 33.9% of adults in NSW custody (4,452 people) were First Nations, the highest number and proportion on record. First Nations women made up 44.8% of all women in custody and First Nations men made up 33.1% of all men in custody…. As at December 2025, 2,196 (36.1%) adults on remand were First Nations (pending further court action, usually after being refused bail), the highest number and proportion on record. 48.7% of all women on remand were First Nations, and 35% of all men on remand were First Nations.”

The report found that First Nation incarcerated adults often have greater difficulties accessing programs and supports because they are “overclassified”. Overclassified means they are disproportionately punished for minor offenses. The study found that between 2023 and 2024, the average rate of First Nations women charged with offenses while in custody was 101; the average rate for non-First Nations women as 51. Again, that means that out of 100 First Nations women, 101 were charged with offenses.

3.4% of the New South Wales population are First Nation adults and young people. In December 2025, 33.9% of New South Wales prison population were First Nations. That is the highest proportion on record.

Again, none of this is surprising. In 2018, Human Rights Watch issued a report, which noted, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population, and 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous peers.” A version of that statement, “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison are the fastest growing prison population”, had appeared in major reports in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,2016, and 2017. Now it’s 2026, and where are the women? In cages that pass for justice, in systems that ignore their needs, desires, lives, humanity, in a world that discards their past, present and future.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Kelly Flannagan, “Trying To Do My Time” / The Torch)

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Landmark case: In Australia, Raya Meredith leads class action case against strip-searches

May 14, 2025 by Leave a Comment

In 2018, at the Splendour in the Grass music festival in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia, Raya Meredith was strip-searched. Not that it matters, but nothing illegal was found. In 2022, then-27-year-old Raya Meredith filed a class action suit against the police of New South Wales, arguing that the strip-searches conducted at music festivals from 2016 to 2022 were unlawful and constituted assault, battery, and false imprisonment. Her landmark suit now represents 3,000 people who were strip-searched. That case is currently being heard in court. Today, Raya Meredith’s attorneys explained that the New South Wales police admitted the strip-search was unlawful but “objectively reasonably necessary.” What?

Kylie Nomchong, Raya Meredith’s attorney, responded to that claim, ““We get to the quite outrageous submissions … where the defendant is asking your honour to infer that it was objectively necessary to search the plaintiff’s breasts and genital area,” Nomchong told the court. It is unbelievably offensive to assert, without any evidence whatsoever, that there was some objectively reasonable basis on the part of the searching officer to inspect the plaintiff’s vagina, to ask her to pull out her tampon, to ask her to bare her buttocks and anal area and to bend over and drop her breasts. It’s just offensive.”

Justice Dina Yehia, the presiding judge in the case, agreed with Nomcholeng, “I’m not quite sure I understand those submissions, given the way this matter has proceeded.”

What else is there to say? For the police, the violation of a woman’s body and person was, and continues to be, “objectively reasonably necessary.” The objective and reasonable necessity of the strip-searches is so self-evident that just days before the hearing began, the police withdrew 22 witnesses, mostly police … because it was objectively reasonably necessary for them not to speak under oath.

Raya Meredith’s attorneys note that strip-searches seldom “work”, as in produce any evidence of illegal activity. But police engage in them anyway. So, what’s the point and purpose of strip-search? A study published in 2021, the year before Raya Meredith’s encounter with the police, considered the scale and scope of strip-searches conducted by New South Wales police from 2014 to 2018, As Raya Meredith’s attorneys suggest, most of those searches produced nothing, other than trauma and pain. Nevertheless, the use of strip-searches “at music festivals, at train stations, in police vehicles and at other locations” increased. What did the few strip searches that did produce any evidence of illegal activity show? 96% involved drugs, either possession or distribution: “It can be inferred from these data that the strip search regime is primarily being used for the enforcement of the summary offence of drug possession, rather than the serious indictable offences for which the power to strip search was envisaged.” A War on Drugs was declared, and strip-searches were normalized, naturalized, deemed “objectively reasonably necessary”.

When the State declares War on its population, as in a War on Drugs or a War on Crime, it declares a state of exception. That is, it declares a crisis so grave, so threatening to the State that the elimination, ostensibly temporary, of constitutional rights and protections is reasonably objectively necessary. The police in New South Wales were just following orders.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Roberto Matta, “Nuremberg Judgment” / MoMA)

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What happened to Mariam Abdullah and Rebecca Maher? Just another death in custody

August 17, 2016 by 18 Comments

Mariam Abdullah

Barely eighteen years old, Mariam Abdullah died, July 19th, while in solitary confinement at the Perryville Prison in Arizona. Rebecca Maher, 36 years old, died, July 19th, while in police custody in the Maitland police station, in New South Wales, in Australia. Though the two never met, the circumstances and date of their deaths joins them in a tragic tale of State negligence and refusal. Both women deserved better, and in both instances, we all share the shame of their deaths and the manner of their deaths, for both of them needed help, and the State refused. Both of them were meant to be protected by State law and policy, and yet, on July 19th, both Mariam Abdullah and Rebecca Maher died … or were killed.

In June 2014, Mariam Abdullah, 16 years old, was arrested. After a year in the Estrella Jail, where juveniles charged with adult crimes are `kept’, she agreed to a plea deal that would result in three years imprisonment. From the moment she entered Estrella, Abdullah was in and out of trouble, which meant in and out of solitary confinement. According to her attorneys and to advocates who met with her, her mental health deteriorated perceptibly. Then she turned eighteen, and was moved to Perryville, and again to isolation. Six weeks later, she wrapped a bed sheet around her neck and strangled herself to death.

On numerous occasions, Mariam Abdullah asked, both in writing and in conversation, to meet with mental health staff. She knew she was [a] having problems and [b] deteriorating. She said so. Other than her lawyers and supporters, no one listened. Prison Law Office attorney Corene Kendrick wrote to Arizona’s Attorney General with concerns about Mariam Abdullah’s situation, noting that the State’s abuse of Abdullah was in violation of earlier court orders, the law, and human decency. Kendrick never received never received a response. Kendrick noted, “She [Mariam Abdullah] just seemed very sad and very isolated [and] was clearly traumatized when I talked to her. She’s a child, and she was being held in isolation conditions worse than what the adults were being held in — not that it’s okay for anyone to be held in isolation, but all of the best practices say to stop using isolation on children.”

Peggy Plews, of Arizona Prison Watch, added, “She was no angel — she’s the first to admit that. [But] she was a sweet kid, wanted to be a firefighter and save other people someday. Instead, we just threw her away. We all broke that kid long before she killed herself.”

Rebecca Maher, Aboriginal, mother of four, was walking home drunk when the police picked her up, ostensibly for her own good, and threw her into a cell, a little after midnight. At 6 am, she was “found dead.” Her death and the last hours of her life are shrouded in confusion and controversy. In New South Wales, if an Aboriginal person is arrested, the police are supposed to use the Custody Notification Service, which immediately contacts the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS). This system is a model. No Aboriginal person has died in police custody since 2000 … until Rebecca Maher. But Rebecca Maher, though in police custody, was never arrested. She was thrown into the cell because she was drunk. The police were “protecting” her from herself, and that is the problem. Many, such as Gary Oliver of the ALS, believe that if the police had contacted them, “there may have been a different outcome. Fundamentally this is a process that has failed because a police officer has not followed a procedure.”

Family friend Kathy Malera-Bandjalan asks, “How do you take someone into custody who’s legally done nothing wrong, then detain them in a cell then they’re dead in four hours. Rebecca’s death is not going to be in vain.” According to Kathy Malera-Bandjalan, the family was never notified of Rebecca Maher’s detention and was notified of her death many hours later.

What happened to Mariam Abdullah and Rebecca Maher? Absolutely nothing, and that’s what killed them. Arizona has specific policies, forced upon it by court decisions that should have ensured Mariam Abdullah’s survival and well being while in custody. Arizona refused to follow its own policies. New South Wales has specific policies that should have ensured Rebecca Maher’s survival and well being while in custody. New South Wales refused to follow its own policies. It wasn’t one staff member here or one there. It was the State that decreed, and decrees that what happens in custody stays in custody, and whatever vulnerable woman happens to fall into custody can expect to suffer and die in custody. That’s the rule of law when the custodians are told they have no custodial responsibilities to care for their residents. So, rest in peace Mariam Abdullah; rest in peace Rebecca Maher. You deserved better. We all do. Instead, we all broke you and just threw you away.

Rebecca Maher

Rebecca Maher

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