Indigenous jailing rate to worsen: lawyers

High indigenous incarceration rates will get worse if the federal government proceeds with its controversial plan for a second phase of the Northern Territory intervention, a lawyers' alliance warns.

It is expected that members of the House of Representatives will debate the federal government's Stronger Futures legislation this week.

The legislation aims to extend measures brought in under the former Howard coalition government's NT intervention policy that targeted Aboriginal communities.

Measures in the government's bills include continuing alcohol restrictions and increasing penalties for grog runners, including six-month jail terms.

The laws would also extend welfare quarantining across the NT for parents of children who don't go to school.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance warns in its submission to a Senate inquiry that the legislation will significantly increase the Aboriginal jail population.

Aboriginal people are over-represented in Australian prisons, making up a quarter of the population.

Alliance national president Greg Barns said many of the measures criminalising conduct were regressive and "hark back to the destructive days of the Aboriginal Protection Board".

He said the proposed laws would imprison any indigenous person found carrying alcohol into a proscribed area for up to six months and those found carrying more than 1.35 litres of alcohol could be handed an 18-month sentence.

"Under the proposed laws, judges are also forbidden to consider customary law in sentencing," he said.

"No other group has been singled out in such a manner."

Indigenous community stores would also face heavy fines for failing to present compulsory documents, Mr Barnes said.

"They will also be subject to far greater centralised scrutiny and compulsory documentation than any other small business in Australia," he said.

Mr Barnes said the federal government had ignored calls from indigenous communities who were crying out for subsidised refrigerated freight costs so more fresh fruit and vegetables could be transported into those communities to improve health.

The laws would change nothing but departmental letter heads, he said.

"Stronger Futures is obvious spin," Mr Barnes said.

"The authors are dressing existing damaging Northern Territory intervention legislation in different policy guise to make it more marketable."