First Nations advocates are warning that prisons in New South Wales could exceed the record number of Indigenous deaths in custody set in 2025, after two men died in NSW facilities in July 2026. At least seven First Nations people have died in custody across Australia so far in 2026, amid a record number of people in prison.

Matthew Roberts, a 27-year-old Bundjalung, Yaegl and Gamilaroi man and father of two young boys, took his life inside Lithgow correctional centre on 7 July 2026. He had been remanded in custody — meaning held in prison while awaiting trial rather than after a conviction — since March. Corrective Services NSW said Roberts' death is being investigated and will be considered by the coroner. His mother, Karlene Whitton, said Roberts had been on suicide watch during a previous period he spent in prison some years ago. The Roberts family is being supported by the Dhadjowa Foundation, which is helping them fundraise for his funeral.

Eight days later, on 15 July 2026, a 21-year-old First Nations man died at Clarence correctional centre in New South Wales. Clarence is privately operated by British multinational Serco, which issued a statement extending sympathies to the man's family. A third death followed on 27 July 2026, when an 18-year-old woman died at Dame Phyllis Frost centre in Victoria.

The Dhadjowa Foundation, now supporting the Roberts family, was started by April Day, whose mother Tanya Day, a Yorta Yorta woman, died in custody in Victoria in 2017. The foundation's role in the case connects Roberts' death to a longer lineage of families navigating grief and advocacy after losing relatives inside the Australian corrections system.

These 2026 deaths follow a 2025 that was, by every available metric, the worst year on record for First Nations deaths in custody. Twelve First Nations people died in NSW prisons in 2025, a new record for the state and the culmination of a five-year period of rising deaths. Nationally, the 113 deaths in custody recorded in 2024-25, the highest number since records began in 1980, included 22 deaths in police custody and 90 in prisons. There were 66 deaths in custody and police operations in 2025 overall, 18 more than the previous year. Of the 39 total deaths in Corrective Services custody in NSW in 2025, almost one in four were described as self-harm.

The tracking of these deaths is handled by the National Deaths in Custody Program (NDICP), which is based on death notifications from state and territory police services and correctional agencies. That data collection mechanism is the basis for the figures now being cited by advocates raising alarms about 2026.

The broader context here is one of systemic escalation against a backdrop of already-record-level incarceration. The prison population is at record numbers, and deaths in custody are tracking at or above the trajectory that produced the worst annual figures in four decades. Two of the three July 2026 deaths occurred at a time when the individuals were either on remand or in a privately operated facility, raising questions that the coronial process — the formal inquest conducted by a coroner to determine how a death occurred — will need to address regarding duty of care, suicide prevention protocols, and the role of private operators in managing high-risk inmates.

Roberts' history of suicide watch during a prior incarceration period, as relayed by his mother, introduces a specific question about continuity of risk management across custodial episodes. Corrective Services NSW has confirmed the coroner will consider his death, but the interval between a known risk factor and a fatal outcome in custody is precisely the gap that has driven decades of scrutiny of Australian corrections practice. The fact that almost a quarter of deaths in NSW Corrective Services custody in 2025 were classified as self-harm gives that scrutiny statistical weight rather than anecdote alone.

The involvement of Serco at Clarence correctional centre, where the 21-year-old man died on 15 July, adds a private-operating dimension. Serco issued a statement of sympathy, but the structural accountability questions that attach to privately run prisons — oversight transparency, staffing levels, and the handling of Indigenous inmates — are likely to feature in any coronial examination of that death.

For policymakers and practitioners working in Indigenous justice and corrections, the 2026 trajectory is stark. Seven deaths in the first seven months of the year, following the worst annual total since 1980, places Australia on a pace that could match or surpass the 2025 record. Advocates are not waiting for the year-end figures to make that case.