Australia
Pre-trial detention
Oceania
Mental health
Suicide
Overcrowding
Australia
Overcrowded cells break people — prison suicides linked to worsening mental illness and disrupted sleep are infrastructural failures, writes Gerry Georgatos.
Pre-trial detention
Oceania
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Social ties
Rehabilitation
Australia
Western Australia’s Inspector of Custodial Services has called for an inquiry into the “entirely unacceptable” conditions at Hakea Prison.
Oceania
Justice
Social ties
Rehabilitation
Australia
Australia is confronting a significant issue with reincarceration, with a large number of individuals released from prison each year finding themselves back behind bars.
Women
Oceania
Discipline
Mental health
Material conditions
Suicide
Social ties
Australia
A former incarcerated person says she documented seven suicide attempts in just four weeks inside Victoria’s maximum security women’s prison, amid a wave of lockdowns triggered by staff shortages.
Australia: violent assaults, self-harm incidents, use of 'chemical agents' occuring at Darwin prison
News
Crises
Oceania
Discipline
Health
Overcrowding
Violence
Australia
Violent assaults and incidents of self-harm are occurring regularly inside Darwin’s overcrowded prison, with government documents also revealing the use of “chemical agents” by officers.
Pre-trial detention
Oceania
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Suicide
Overcrowding
Activities
Social ties
Australia
Incarcerated people at a men’s remand prison have limited access to fresh air, excessive lockdowns and unhygienic cells infested with pests, a scathing report from a jails’ watchdog says.
Crises
Oceania
Justice
Facilities
Overcrowding
Alternatives
Australia
Incarceration is a “common sense” policy, despite fuelling cycles of intergenerational poverty, trauma, social exclusion and criminalisation. Instead of governments racing to incarcerate, they could be investing in the social support systems that are needed to curb the prison crisis.
Oceania
Access to legal rights
Mental health
Facilities
Overcrowding
Australia
The Northern Territory’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner has warned the government could be at risk of breaching an international human rights agreement on torture after closing a specialised facility for mentally ill and disabled imprisoned people.
Oceania
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Violence
Australia
Prison guards switched off the water to the cell of a mentally ill and dying man as punishment for his strange behaviour, joked that his repeated pleas for help were “entertaining”, and then left him unobserved to die at Silverwater jail from a treatable illness that was inexplicably missed.
Minors
Oceania
Justice
Material conditions
Violence
Australia
Children have shared their experiences locked up in Banksia Hill Detention Centre in a report that slammed the Western Australian government for “systemic failures”.
Minors
Oceania
Material conditions
Facilities
Australia
Youth people in detention have no air conditioning in their cells at Casuarina Prison’s Unit 18. There are fresh calls for Unit 18 to be closed immediately, with authorities yet to answer questions about what else is being done to help detained people stay cool.