The New South Wales Bar Association wants Aboriginal offenders to be given special consideration by the courts in a bid to keep them out of jail.
Current figures show Indigenous people are imprisoned at rates 13 times the national average.
The Bar Association, which represents the state's barristers, has made a submission to a Federal Government inquiry into incarceration rates, which was announced last year.
President Arthur Moses SC said taking indigenous history and disadvantage into account could be an effective strategy.
"What is being proposed by the Bar Association submission is that judges have a statutory duty to consider the circumstances of Indigenous Australians when sentencing those individuals," he said.
"We accept that every person who is sentenced by a court must be treated equally.
"However in relation to Indigenous Australians they have suffered as part of a history of dispossession and exclusion from society, discrimination and economic disadvantage.
"In treating Indigenous Australians differently when sentencing them by taking into account factors relating to their background, that is actually applying a form of equal justice."
Mr Moses said governments needed to move beyond the mantra of being tough on crime.
"These are cheap slogans," he said.
"In order to truly reduce levels of crime, broader reforms must be looked at other than merely proposing higher sentences.
"They do not lead to safer societies."
Special courts on the table
The NSW Shadow Attorney General, Paul Lynch, has called for a designated Koori court to be established within the district court system.
"A bit like the therapeutic model that's currently developed by the drug court," he said.
"So it's not just dealing with someone once only in a sentencing process and throwing away the key, it's actually trying to find ways of stopping the re-offending behaviour.
"Stopping them doing the things that got them into prison in the first place."
