Last month marked one year since the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland governments missed the deadline to meet Australia’s obligations to the United Nations anti-torture protocol, the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).
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For years – to justify spending billions of dollars on prison expansion – governments across Australia have parroted the line that prisons support “community safety”. This premise is false.
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Recently, a report tabled in the Victorian Parliament by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission uncovered serious and systemic wrongdoing in Victorian prisons.
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Laws currently being considered by the Tasmanian government would allow the practice of routine strip-searching of kids to continue. If it’s the government’s intention to enact laws that protect kids, rather than cause them more harm, this opportunity to finally get the law right shouldn’t be squandered.
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Kids should not be in prisons, and they definitely should not be in prisons right now.
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Prisons are fundamentally at odds with the notion of rehabilitation. On the brink of tears, a 19-year-old locked up in Port Phillip Prison recently asked me: "How can I think about tomorrow when I can barely survive today?"
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Our justice system is supposed to represent the best of us: principled, fair, equal and incorruptible. Underpinned by centuries-old common values that bind and protect us all. But 2018 has exposed a chasm between what is officially said, and what is officially done.
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How we treat people in prison matters not just because most will be released back into the community, but because we are all diminished the moment we start picking and choosing who is deserving of dignity, writes Ruth Barson.
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“Tough on crime” was a stance that coloured many policies of the former Country Liberal Government in the Northern Territory. It was sold as the silver bullet to drive down youth crime rates and make communities safer. It was built up to be the solution to community fears of a so-called epidemic in youth crime that was fuelled by a willing media.
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Youth justice in Victoria is at the crossroads. The Supreme Court has ruled, yet again, that it was unlawful for the Victorian government to lock up children at the state’s most notorious maximum security adult jail.
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There is indeed a crisis in Victoria's youth justice system. It is not one, as the Government suggests, of available beds or suitable facilities – these things are imminently fixable with a dose of political will. Rather, the crisis is one of a myopic outlook and a merciless attitude: a willingness to countenance cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Read MoreKelsey Montgomery a law student at the University of Western Australia. She did a placement with the Human Rights Law Centre at the end of 2015 and has since written this piece looking at the legality of solitary confinement.
Read MoreAustralia is locking up more people than ever before and many of Australia's prison practices breach the UN's new standards, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson.
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We can reduce prison populations, prison spending and the crime rate at the same time, writes the HRLC's Hugh de Kretser.
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A stronger, better resourced and human rights compliant parole board would better for community safety, writes the HRLC's Executive Director Hugh de Kretser and Professor Arie Freiberg.
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