Beau Foster, 20, was leaving work with two friends when he saw his bus coming, and he did something we've nearly all done: he ran to catch it.

But what happened late last year is not something that's happened to most of us.

"The policeman come, and full on stop me for no reason, thinking I was up to something because I was running, and he came up straight away and pulled out his baton," said the young Indigenous man.

Upset and shaking, Mr Foster rang Siobhan Bryson at the Weave Youth and Community Centre across the road. As she was approaching, Ms Bryson saw a highway patrol vehicle take off.

"Beau's only crime was running for a bus while being black," said Ms Bryson, Weave's operations manager, who has since tried to identify the policeman and report him.

"My son is the same age, and if he and two friends were running for a bus, nobody would bat an eyelid."

Mr Foster, who grew up in La Perouse, said that "sort of stuff happened to me all the time growing up".

Even as a young boy, Mr Foster, who is now an ambassador for Just Reinvest NSW, would run from the police if he was in trouble rather than running to them for help as most white Australian children are taught.

Indigenous children are 24 times more likely to be locked up than non-Indigenous children. There are children as young as 10 and 11 in detention.

It is 25 years on Friday since the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody warned of disastrous repercussions if nothing was done to stop the problem of "too many Aboriginal people ending up in custody too often."

Aboriginal activists and researchers say the problems have only got worse: since the report, there have been 341 Indigenous deaths in custody, and the number of Aboriginal people in prison has doubled to 27 per cent.

Indigenous children account for 6 per cent of Australia's total youth population, but amount for more than half of those children across Australia who are locked up. In the Northern Territory, they represent more than 90 per cent of those children in detention.

"Our kids are less likely to be cautioned, more likely to end up in detention, and more likely to get caught up in a cycle of reoffending," said Roxanne Moore, an Indigenous rights campaigner with Amnesty International.

Very young children were being detained in police lock ups for no reason, often in breach of the international convention on the rights of the child. She cited the case of a 10 year-old boy arrested in the Northern Territory for sneaking into a movie whose case went to court.

"He could barely see over the bar table (in the courtroom) and he was terrified. This sort of situation doesn't need to be resolved in the justice system," said Ms Moore.

In WA in 2009, a 12 year-old boy who had been given a 70 cent Freddo Frog from his friends, which turned out to be stolen, was charged with receiving stolen goods and faced court. "The charges were ultimately dropped. But he ended up spending a few hours in custody," said Ms Moore.

Early interaction with the law usually foreshadowed problems in adult life.

"If someone enters a juvenile detention centre, they are more likely to enter an adult prison than if they are diverted at an early stage," said Thalia Anthony, an associate professor of law with the University of Technology Sydney, told a public forum, UTSpeaks: Fatal Injustice, held to mark the anniversary.

Young people sentenced to juvenile detention were 74 per cent more likely to end up in prisons than those who were diverted, said Dr Anthony.

Often a long history of prejudice and misunderstanding - on both sides - sets the tone for interactions between police and the local indigenous community.

Youth leader Keenan Mundine, 29, had a troubled youth but has turned his life around. "Police, I had seen them every day, all day, stopping my people, searching my brothers, my uncles, chasing people, kicking doors in," he said of his youth in Redfern.

He spent most of his twenties in prison, including three years on remand while fighting a breaking and entry charge before his case was heard. "That's three years not knowing when this door will open, not knowing when this gate is going to open, not knowing when I am coming home, fighting a breaking and enter charge from behind bars."

A new father, he now studies and works on the Kool Kids Club, a program which helped Beau Foster.

"I am proof that you can turn your life around, it is possible," said Mr Mundine.

Ms Bryson said Weave's programs like Kool Kids had a proven track record, and saved taxpayers money.

Of the children in the program, 40 per cent of children had an immediate family member in jail, and another 40 per cent had a parent or carer who had a drug or alcohol problem.