The claim
As the Voice to Parliament referendum nears, people on both sides of the debate have used the opportunity to shine a light on Indigenous disadvantage.
Speaking on ABC Radio earlier this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese argued that voting No would result in "more of the same" outcomes for Indigenous Australians.
"We know that there's a greater chance of an Indigenous young male going to jail than university," he said.
Loading...That claim is one the prime minister has repeated close to 40 times since May.
But is it correct?
RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
The verdict
Mr Albanese's claim is a fair call.
Although there is no single dataset that allows for a precise comparison, the available data broadly suggests that young Indigenous men are more likely to go to prison than university.
The latest census found that 4.9 per cent of Indigenous men aged 18-34 were enrolled at university in 2021, while 6.3 per cent were in prison on census night.
The census did not collect data on whether Indigenous men had ever been to jail, but revealed that 4.8 per cent of those aged 20-34 held a university degree.
For lifetime incarceration rates, experts pointed to a survey last conducted in 2014-15, which showed that 8.2 per cent of Indigenous men aged 15-34 had been to prison.
That survey didn't provide an age breakdown for those who had attended or were attending university. However, it showed that of all Indigenous men aged 15 and above, 3.5 per cent were studying at university and 3.8 per cent had graduated, while 14.6 per cent had been to prison.
As one expert told Fact Check, despite some improvement in recent years, "you are far more likely to find a First Nations man in a prison cell than in a lecture theatre at a university".
Fact Check's previous findings
This isn't the first time a Labor leader has compared incarceration and university attendance rates among young Indigenous men.
In 2015, then-opposition leader Bill Shorten claimed: "A young Aboriginal man of 18 in Australia is more likely to end up in jail than university."
Fact Check found that claim to be a fair call.
According to experts, it was difficult to assess the "lifetime likelihood" of either outcome with certainty because it involved predicting the future based on past patterns.
However, they agreed that Mr Shorten's claim could be broadly assessed by comparing the proportion of Indigenous men who were or had been in prison with the proportion who were attending university or had completed a degree.
Using a number of official data sources collected by different organisations at different times, Fact Check found that a greater proportion of young Indigenous men had been to jail in the five years to 2008 than had held a bachelor degree or above in 2011.
Meanwhile, data from 2014 showed that a greater proportion of young Indigenous men were in jail than at university.
Experts contacted by Fact Check about Mr Albanese's claim said updated versions of the same data sources would be suitable to assess his recent statement.
'Young' Indigenous males
Mr Albanese referred to outcomes for an "Indigenous young male".
In keeping with previous analysis, Fact Check has sought to compare data for 18-34 year olds where possible.
As Nicholas Biddle, the now-associate director of the Australian National University's (ANU) Centre for Social Research and Methods, previously told Fact Check: "I don't think what the lifetime outcomes of a 55 year old are now would have too much bearing on the outcomes of an 18 year old."
Notably, when it came to the number of people who held a bachelor degree or higher, Fact Check has limited its analysis to 20-34 year olds, on the basis that few males, Indigenous or otherwise, have completed a university degree before the age of 20.
In addition, data for the 18-34 age bracket was not available in all datasets, making it necessary to compare other age ranges in some cases.
Lifetime likelihood
While other datasets consider whether people are currently imprisoned or studying, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS), published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), provides the most useful data for comparing the likelihood of an Indigenous male going to jail or university during their lifetime.
However, the last NATSISS was completed in 2014-15, making it "several years out of date", as Francis Markham, a research fellow at the ANU's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, told Fact Check.
In addition, not all of its data is broken down into more detailed categories of age and sex.
The NATSISS results show that 3.5 per cent of Indigenous men aged 15 and above were enrolled at university, while 3.8 per cent held a bachelor degree or higher. At the same time, 14.6 per cent had been to prison.
When it came to 15-34 year-old males, 8.2 per cent had been to prison. (A comparable breakdown of educational attendance and attainment data by age was not available).
The 2021 census
For a more recent assessment of Mr Albanese's claim, experts suggested analysing data from the 2021 census.
Hilde Tubex, the director of criminology at the Law School of the University of Western Australia, told Fact Check that this and another ABS publication, titled Prisoners in Australia, provided "the most consistent and reliable" point-in-time data on the number of Indigenous men in prison.
Christopher Cunneen, a professor of criminology at the University of Technology Sydney, and Andrew Norton, a professor of higher education policy at the ANU, also pointed to the census for making point-in-time comparisons.
According to the census, 4.8 per cent of Indigenous men aged 20-34 held a bachelor degree or higher in 2021, while 4.9 per cent of those aged 18-34 were enrolled at university.
The census does not collect data on whether people have ever been to jail, but it showed that 6.3 per cent of 18-34 year olds were in prison on census night.
When it came to Indigenous men of any age, the census recorded that 4.9 per cent were in prison, 2.8 per cent were studying at university and 6.0 per cent (aged over 20) had obtained a bachelor degree or higher.
Other data sources
The ABS dataset Prisoners in Australia provides another point-in-time snapshot of the number of Indigenous men in prison on June 30 each year.
According to the latest release, for 2022, the proportion of Indigenous men incarcerated was 4.3 per cent for those aged 20-24, 6.5 per cent for those aged 25-29 and 7.3 per cent for those aged 30-34.
Among Indigenous men of any age, the data shows, 4.3 per cent were in jail.
Separately, the Department of Education provides further data on the number of Indigenous men studying at university, with the latest available figures relating to 2021.
According to that data, which does not include an age breakdown, roughly 3 per cent of all Indigenous men were enrolled at university.
LoadingWhat do the experts say?
Referencing an analysis supplied to Fact Check, Professor Cunneen said the latest data showed that the share of Indigenous men who were or had been to prison, in comparison to those who had been to or were at university, was "not as bad as 15 years ago".
"But the basic fact remains, you are far more likely to find a First Nations man in a prison cell than in a lecture theatre at a university."
According to Professor Tubex, census data confirmed Mr Albanese's claim that a young Indigenous male was more likely to go to prison than university.
She added, however, that measuring whether a person had a university degree was not necessarily meaningful.
"It does not refer to other knowledge systems which might, particularly for Indigenous peoples, have more value," she said.
Rather, Professor Tubex noted, "it can be an expression of the structural conditions, bias, barriers and racism that have led to the statistics, and [also] the need for universities to invest in different entry processes that are more appropriate for Aboriginal students."
Principal researcher: Ellen McCutchan
Sources
- Anthony Albanese, radio interview, ABC Radio, October 3, 2023
- ABC Fact Check, Fact check: Are young Indigenous men more likely to end up in jail than university?, ABC News, December 3, 2015
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey 2014-15, April 28, 2016
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Prisoners in Australia 2022, February 24, 2023
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census, 2021
- Department of Education, Selected Higher Education Statistics 2021, October 30, 2022
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