The state’s top coroner has taken the rare step of issuing an open letter after NSW reached the “profoundly distressing milestone” of recording the highest-ever number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in a single year.

Teresa O’Sullivan told The Sydney Morning Herald after her appointment in 2019 that preventing Indigenous deaths in custody was a priority for her court.

But the number of Aboriginal people in custody has increased by almost 20 per cent in the past five years, while the non-Aboriginal prison population declined in the same period.

“Twelve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have died in custody in NSW so far in 2025 – the highest number ever recorded in a single year, with more than two months remaining in the calendar,” O’Sullivan

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