Pounding on doors and shining torches in faces, police target young Aboriginal people in "discriminatory patterns", says a legal group that claims an 11-year-old on bail was checked more than 100 times over seven months.
Young Indigenous people were 11.7 per cent more likely to be checked by police than non-Indigenous youth, according to an analysis of bail compliance checks data in NSW commissioned by the Justice and Equity Centre.
Among those checked, Aboriginal young people were subjected to 42 per cent more checks on average than non-Aboriginal young people, the analysis shows.
The legal group has taken NSW Police to the Human Rights Commission over alleged racial discrimination towards two Aboriginal brothers.
One of the boys, aged 11, was bail-checked 101 times over seven months as he awaited trial for being a passenger in a stolen car, the group says, with 20 of those checks made in a single month.
A senior solicitor at the Justice and Equity Centre said she was concerned police are misusing their powers "to unfairly surveil" young and already over-policed children and their communities.
"It's unacceptable that Aboriginal families feel intimidated by police pounding on doors and shining torches through windows in the middle of the night without good reason," Grace Gooley said on Tuesday.
"Courts, not police, should make decisions about when to disrupt a household with intrusive checking of young people on bail."
The report, co-authored by former crime stats chief Don Weatherburn, used police data on bail checks on young people in their first 30 days of bail when subject to a bail condition.
Nearly one in eight Indigenous children were checked 12 or more times, compared to about one in 20 non-Aboriginal young people, the report said.
Data from the report will be presented in the two brothers' racial discrimination case.
Bail checks are unlawful unless police have court authorisation or reasonable suspicion of a breach, but the Justice and Equity Centre says police are conducting excessive bail checks because offenders are Indigenous.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission savaged the police in a scathing report in April for stretching their authority and powers by relying on a weak legal principle to conduct bail compliance checks.
The state watchdog said that leaves the force open to complaints and claims of trespass if a resident revokes an officer's "implied licence" to enter the property.
In its submission to the commission, NSW Police said it did not accept the watchdog's view the force has been acting "unreasonably".
Each year, police officers in NSW conduct more than 100,000 bail compliance checks.
