Prime Minister of Australia Term of government (1983–1991) Ministries Elections The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) (1987–1991), also known as the Muirhead Commission, was a Royal Commission appointed by the Australian Government in October 1987 to Federal Court judge James Henry Muirhead QC, to study and report upon the underlying social, cultural and legal issues behind the deaths in custody of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, in the light of the high level of such deaths in the 1980s.
The Royal Commission was established following public calls for an inquiry into the apparently high number of Aboriginal people who had died while in custody, whether during an arrest or while under police pursuit, in pre-trial remand or in prison or youth detention centre.
The Commission was established on 16 October 1987,[3] to inquire why so many Aboriginal Australians had died in custody, and to make recommendations as to how to prevent such deaths in the future.
[1] The terms of reference for the inquiry was to inquire into and report on the deaths of Indigenous people in police or prison custody or in any other place of detention between 1 January 1980 and 31 May 1989.
[5] The original terms of reference limited the inquiry to looking at the individual circumstances of each death, but they were later expanded to include looking at any related underlying social, cultural and legal issues.
Commissioner Johnston was critical of the lack of any disciplinary charges against the five officers implicated in the violent death of the Aboriginal boy, calling this "a most unsatisfactory state of affairs".
It also received submissions from organisations and individuals, including family members of victims, and delivered issues papers (46, of which 21 were produced by the Commission's research unit).
The RCIADIC report identified child removal (later dubbed the Stolen Generations) as correlating highly with later likelihood of imprisonment.
Factors such as the economic position, health indicators, housing, their access or lack of it to land and employment, education; and the part played by alcohol and other drugs are all discussed in the report.
One of the outcomes of the Commission was the establishment of a National Deaths in Custody Monitoring and Research Program at the Australian Institute of Criminology.
[3] An in-depth analysis of RCIADIC by Elena Marchetti, Senior Lecturer at Griffith Law School, published in 2005, concludes: "Despite its many flaws – including the fact that legalistic perspectives were generally privileged at the expense of the more non-orthodox points of view – the RCIADIC remains the most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken into the deep disadvantage experienced by Indigenous people as a result of colonisation".