What Professor Vinson is effectively saying is that governments are still dealing with the symptoms, tinkering at the edges, and totally avoiding addressing the fundamental underlying causes. Professor Vinson compared the sentences of indigenous and non-indigenous inmates. He took into account factors such as criminal record, commission of offences of the same type, number of counts, age, court location and seriousness of the offence. He found that there were no differences in the length of custodial sentences given to indigenous and non-indigenous offenders once allowance was made for age and seriousness of the offence. Professor Vinson also found that, based on his sample of 4,335 male prisoners, non-indigenous inmates were more likely to have been convicted for drug offence and, to a lesser extent, sex offences, fraud and murder and that indigenous inmates were three times more likely to have been convicted for assault.
Governments continue to violate the Recommendations of the Royal Commission.
Jail overcrowding has been one of the contributing factors to the increase in deaths in custody. Building private prisons is not a solution. There is the important question of accountability and a state's legal duty of care for each individual incarcerated by the state. When the Royal Commission released its recommendations, Aboriginal organisations stated that it fell short of the legitimate expectations of indigenous people. They highlighted its major shortcomings, including that the Commissioners recommended the desperately needed changes be left to state governments, which have been the main oppressors and violators of indigenous rights.