Browsing Tag
prison
17 posts
‘Inhumane’: overcrowded watch house conditions exposed
Inhumane, discriminatory and a violation of human rights - two women have described the conditions endured by inmates in a Northern Territory police station. Aboriginal women Deanna, 30, and Simone, 35, were held in the Alice Springs watch house for extended periods from January and late November respectively. Their experiences have been detailed in affidavits submitted to the Alice Springs Local Court in January and made public by Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory. They described hot, overcrowded and poorly ventilated cells crammed with up to 20 women at a time. There was often a shortage of mattresses to accommodate inmates…
NT:’Inhumane’: overcrowded watch house conditions exposed
Inhumane, discriminatory and a violation of human rights - two women have described the conditions endured by inmates in a Northern Territory police station. Aboriginal women Deanna, 30, and Simone, 35, were held in the Alice Springs watch house for extended periods from January and late November respectively. Their experiences have been detailed in affidavits submitted to the Alice Springs Local Court in January and made public by Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory. They described hot, overcrowded and poorly ventilated cells crammed with up to 20 women at a time. There was often a shortage of mattresses to accommodate inmates…
NT:Bail laws crack down halts court as arrests explode
Prisoners howled in the back of court cells, screaming for help, as unprecedented arrests after law changes brought court proceedings to a halt. In the first 24 hours since new breaches of bail laws came into effect in the Northern Territory, police arrested 31 people, causing Darwin Local Court to come to a standstill on Tuesday. NT Legal Aid duty lawyer Laurence Waugh told Judge Greg McDonald when court began at 9.30am only three of the 31 prisoners were in court cells and lawyers were unable to seek instructions from clients. "I mean, the idea of a court dealing with…
Bail laws crack down halts court as arrests explode
Prisoners howled in the back of court cells, screaming for help, as unprecedented arrests after law changes brought court proceedings to a halt. In the first 24 hours since new breaches of bail laws came into effect in the Northern Territory, police arrested 31 people, causing Darwin Local Court to come to a standstill on Tuesday. NT Legal Aid duty lawyer Laurence Waugh told Judge Greg McDonald when court began at 9.30am only three of the 31 prisoners were in court cells and lawyers were unable to seek instructions from clients. "I mean, the idea of a court dealing with…
New bail laws increase pressures in ‘broken system’
Record high prisoner numbers have forced a government to convert a purpose-built police watch house into a temporary jail as new bail laws come into effect. The Palmerston watch house, north of Darwin, will be handed over to the Department of Corrections to house an overflow of prisoners for the "foreseeable future," according to the territory's chief minister. In October the Country Liberal Party repealed bail legislation to ensure anyone committing "serious crime" would face jail time. Those laws came into effect on Monday when seven bail applications made in the courts on the same day were denied or referred…
Defunct jail opens to inmates as prisoner numbers soar
A notorious prison that was only "fit for a bulldozer" is again housing adult prisoners as inmate numbers soar. Fifty adult prisoners have been moved to the defunct Berrimah jail, which was decommissioned in 2012 by then-corrections commissioner Ken Middlebrook, who was recently appointed as an adviser to Corrections Minister Gerard Maley. At the time Mr Middlebrook said the site was "only fit for a bulldozer", but a few years later it became the notorious Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Mr Maley said work at the facility was accelerated to accommodate growing prisoner numbers since the Country Liberal Party were…
‘Exploding with prisoners’: union fights inmate shift
Prison overcrowding has triggered emergency plans for the Northern Territory to shift dozens of inmates but the union for guards is going to court to stop it. Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley has ordered a mass prisons move after NT inmate numbers hit a record high of 2370 on Friday. The record numbers have put "significant pressure" on Darwin Correctional Centre, Alice Springs Correctional Centre and police watch houses. Mr Varley had deemed the current situation posed extraordinary risks that required immediate action, the NT government said. Under his directions, 10 extra prisoners will be placed into the Darwin watch house,…
Plan for 1000 new prison beds in the Northern Territory
After passing a suite of justice repeals in the first week of sittings, the Northern Territory government has unveiled plans to add another 1000 jail beds. Deputy Chief Minister Gerard Maley said the government had come up with a three-point plan to reduce overcrowding, build long-term infrastructure and focus on rehabilitation. "I make no apologies for the tough decisions we have to make to fix this mess," he said. The plan includes moving children from the Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre to Darwin and converting the facility into a women's prison. They also plan to move 200 prisoners back into…
Youth detention in spotlight amid child-crime ‘crisis’
Etched into his bedroom walls is the history of some of Australia's notorious killers. Once an adult prison, the three-by-two metre concrete cage now holds the trembling teen captive. After almost two years of near solitary confinement in Don Dale Youth Detention Centre's notorious H Block, the 16-year-old is wrestling with hope. "He's terrified all the time. He's been self-harming … just to go to hospital and to get out of that cell," his distressed father tells AAP. "He tells me he wants to come out so bad but then sometimes when he does, he just wants to go back.…
NT’s youth crime crackdown ‘locking up a generation’
A planned crackdown on youth crime by the new Northern Territory government has stirred controversy but the voices at the centre of the debate are missing. Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro, who led the Country Liberal Party back to power at last week's election, has vowed to reintroduce spit hoods on children and lower the age of criminal responsibility back to 10. But children affected by these policies can't tell their story - the law prohibits it. A series of archaic rules silence the young people whose stories are condensed into reports and hearings where the only prospects are criminalisation. These…