Prisoner advocates have welcomed the decision to launch an independent inquiry into the embarrassing and ongoing high rates of Indigenous incarceration in the ACT, but equally want action taken now - and for problems within Canberra's prison to be an election issue.
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The head of the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal health service, Julie Tongs, has described the latest data released by the Productivity Commission as "shameful" and says she is fed up with so little action over so many years.
"I know there is a view out there that there are no votes in prison issues," Ms Tongs said.
"But this has surely gone on far too long."
The commission's latest data shows shows an Aboriginal person in Canberra is 24.6 times more likely to be imprisoned than a non-Indigenous person. The age-standardised rate of imprisonment for Aboriginal people in the ACT was 19.6 times that of non-Indigenous.
The report also noted that net operating expenditure for the Alexander Maconochie Centre and community corrections in 2022-23 was $100.3 million, with the cost per prisoner, per day at $543.19, the highest in the country.
The ACT government promised before the 2020 election it would commission a review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander over-representation in the justice system if re-elected and released draft terms of reference for the review in June 2023.
But with an ACT election looming in October, Ms Tongs says it's now time to call the ACT government to account.
"There have been so many reports, so many investigations, so many pledges for action but nothing seems to change year after year," she said.
"The ACT has the highest operating expense, they keep locking up the same people time and again. We are spending $100 million a year, but for what?"
She said that any independent review must have genuine powers to force change "because we are caught in this same vicious cycle, again and again".
Her health service works on the frontline and deals with the issues generated by the prison every day.
"There's total boredom, widespread drug abuse, mental health issues; there is progress being made on these issues in prisons all around Australia but not in the ACT," she said.
The comprehensive 2022 Healthy Prison Review by the independent Inspector of Correctional Services noted conditions inside the troubled Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC) had declined in the two years since the previous report.
There is also a continual lack of transparency around issues within ACT Corrections. When asked by The Canberra Times on Friday whether the ACT's Assistant Director of Offender Reintegration was working out of Cairns, the response "the directorate does not comment on private matters related to our employees".
Canberra's prison was never designed to mix those on remand with sentenced prisoners but this breach has now been a common practice for over a decade.
New Corrections Minister Emma Davidson, who is the second Greens member to manage the difficult portfolio, has pledged change, with a stronger reinvestment on justice and "connection to community while in the system".
Criminologist Dr Lorana Bartels said that the answers to many of the prison issues were well documented and the ACT government had a "long track record of looking at things".
"We don't need another inquiry; what's needed is action," she said.
"There is a false narrative that fixing the problems with the prison is all too hard, but it's not; there are answers.
"And yes, some of those answers may involve taking a risk. But these risks can be managed, so why not try something different."
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said that with a small prison population, small shifts have a huge impact on the data.
"We have had some success in particular justice reinvestment areas, but because it is such a small number of people, one or two people leaving the Alexander Maconochie Centre materially shifts the percentages," he said.
"You get 20 fewer Indigenous people [in the prison] ... that significantly shifts the percentage, both of Indigenous people incarcerated and the number of people in the centre itself."
