Less than half of First Nations children who broke the law were not given the opportunity to change their behaviour, despite police discretion to not refer them to court.
NSW Police can deal with alleged offending by children aged 10 to 17 years by opting for a less-drastic option instead of starting court proceedings.
But officers issued a court attendance notice in 68 per cent of criminal incidents involving Aboriginal children compared with 38 per cent of criminal events involving non-Aboriginal children between 2022 and 2025.
Police diversion from children's court, typically for first-time or low-level offenders, avoids the criminal justice system by giving young people a warning, a caution or by entering them into a youth justice conference.
The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research report follows 2025 data finding Aboriginal young people account for 60 per cent of the total youth detention population, despite them being just eight per cent of young people in NSW.
"(In) matters where diversion was available to police, Aboriginal children were still 30 percentage points less likely to be diverted from court," bureau executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said.
"This is concerning given one objective of the Young Offenders Act is to address the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the criminal justice system."
Much of the 30 percentage point gap was due to offence seriousness, bail status and prior contact with the criminal justice system.
But after accounting for those and other observable characteristics, Aboriginal children still remained about eight percentage points more likely to be headed to court.
Ms Fitzgerald pointed to racial discrimination and bias as a possible explanation, cautioning the analysis could not determine whether that was definitive in colouring police interactions with Aboriginal children who had offended.
The report found the disparity in diversions rates was smaller at an offender's first formal police contact, but increased with age.
At ages 10 and 11, 21 per cent of eligible Aboriginal children are issued a court attendance notice compared with seven per cent of non-Aboriginal children.
But that 14 per cent gap balloons to 36 per cent between both groups by age 17.
Even at first formal contact, about 10 per cent of eligible matters involving Aboriginal children proceeded to court, compared with five per cent of non-Aboriginal children.
First Nations youths remain heavily over-represented in detention across Australia, with 25.7 children aged 10 to 17 per 10,000 in custody on an average day in 2024/25.
Australian Associated Press
