Michelle Rowland has described the “unacceptable” dying toll linked to the continued presence of hanging factors in Australian jails as “deeply concerning” and informed state and territory governments to “review their practices”.
The legal professional common has additionally signalled she’s going to push for accelerated justice reforms throughout upcoming conferences together with her state and territory counterparts on the Standing Council of Attorneys-Common discussion board.
“Every death in custody is a tragedy and the unacceptable number of deaths in custody caused by hanging points is deeply concerning,” a spokesperson for Rowland stated.
“The attorney general strongly encourages state and territory governments to review their practices and continue to work toward effective solutions that ensure the safety and dignity of all Australians in the justice system.”
A Guardian Australia investigation final week revealed 57 inmates have died in 19 separate prisons utilizing hanging factors that authorities knew about however didn’t take away, typically regardless of repeated suicides and stark warnings from coroners.
On the Arthur Gorrie jail in Brisbane, the identical ligature level – a set of uncovered bars contained in older-style cells – has been utilized in 10 separate hanging deaths between 2001 and 2020, regardless of warnings to the state authorities as early as 2007 that it “immediately” fund the elimination of the bars.
In a kind of deaths in 2010, an inmate was despatched right into a cell containing the bars regardless of beforehand telling jail authorities that he had considered utilizing them to die by suicide, in response to coronial findings.
Comparable failures had been replicated throughout the state. On the Borallon jail, an inmate hanged himself from an identical set of uncovered bars in 2011, 5 years after the Queensland authorities was informed to “immediately cover with mesh any bars accessible to prisoners in cells”. On the Townsville jail, two inmates hanged themselves from uncovered bars a decade after the federal government was informed to “immediately” act on hanging factors, “including bars”.
The scenario was replicated in nearly each state within the nation. In New South Wales, the Guardian discovered 20 hangings from ligature factors that had been identified to authorities however not eliminated. One other 14 deaths had been recognized in South Australia and 7 in Western Australia.
The failings have prompted pressing calls from consultants and households of the lifeless for motion, together with on eradicating apparent hanging factors, but in addition to enhance psychological well being service supply to jails.
Many of the circumstances recognized by the Guardian revealed failures in psychological well being therapy, danger evaluation, cell placement or info sharing, together with the dying of Gavin Ellis, who died at Sydney’s Silverwater jail complicated in 2017.
Ellis had a longstanding psychotic sickness and had tried to hold himself twice in his first three days of custody.
Regardless of this, he was not seen by a psychological well being clinician for eight days, was not reviewed by a psychiatrist for six weeks, and was then despatched right into a cell with a ligature level that had been utilized by one other inmate in the identical unit of the jail two years earlier.
“The system does not have capital punishment, yet it leaves hanging points for inmates to use,” his mom, Cheryl Ellis, informed the Guardian.
State governments all stated they had been taking the problems of hanging factors severely, and had carried out long-term applications to make cells protected, in addition to investing in higher psychological well being evaluation and therapy.
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Hanging deaths disproportionately have an effect on Indigenous Australians, owing largely to the failure to lower their overrepresentation in jail populations.
In 2023, First Nations Australians accounted for 33% of the nation’s jail inhabitants – a file excessive – however simply 3% of the general inhabitants.
On Tuesday, the previous Labor senator Pat Dodson described the dying toll utilizing identified ligature factors as “totally unacceptable”.
Dodson labored on the royal fee into Aboriginal deaths in custody, which in 1991 informed state and territory governments to take away hanging factors and to enact methods to scale back the incarceration charge for Indigenous Australians.
He joined a gaggle of crossbenchers, together with David Pocock, David Shoebridge, Zali Steggall and Lidia Thorpe, in calling for nationwide management on the problem.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Katie Kiss, stated the elimination of hanging factors from jail cells to scale back self-harm was a “key recommendation” from the 1991 royal fee.
“The failure to implement this and … other recommendations exacerbates the ongoing national shame that is Aboriginal deaths in custody,” she stated.
“The treatment of our people, particularly when it comes to the administration of the justice system, is a deep stain on this country. They are being failed by an oppressive system that continues to deny their rights.”
