Mental health at the intersections: The impact of complex needs on police contact and custody for Indigenous Australian men

Abstract

Indigenous Australians experience significant social risk, vulnerability and disadvantage. Nowhere is this more starkly demonstrated than in the levels of contact that Indigenous Australians have with the criminal justice system, particularly the police. Utilizing a linked dataset of extant criminal justice, human and health service administrative data in New South Wales (NSW) Australia, this paper explores patterns of police contact and custody for a cohort of Indigenous males with complex needs. Four significant factors are identified that alone or in combination appear to impact on the frequency with which these men experience police contact and custody, including young age at first police contact, experiencing out of home care as a child, alcohol misuse, and limited locational mobility. Whilst it might be expected that the presence of mental ill-health and/or cognitive disability would be a key predictor of the frequency and intensity of police contact and custody, the findings suggest rather that the presence of multiple disadvantages beginning in the early years and compounding throughout individuals' lives, in which mental illness may or may not be a factor, is more significant than the presence of any one diagnosis in precipitating police contact and custody for this group.