ABC reports that lockdowns in Victorian prisons are on the rise. They're meant to be used mostly in emergencies but at the state's women's maximum-security prison - they've become a regular occurrence in past months, leaving prisoners locked in their cells, sometimes for days on end. A warning, this story discusses self-harm.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00So we're seeing more lockdowns, particularly at the Women's Maximum Security Prison, Dane
00:07Phyllis Frost Centre. We know that there have been at least 106 lockdowns there since July,
00:14which is a huge increase. We also know that they're leading to quite anecdotally, quite
00:20disturbing self-harm incidents. One of the ex-prisoners we spoke to said that she's recorded
00:26in her diary, seven attempted suicides in one month, which is quite disturbing. Here's
00:36what Kelly Flanagan has to say about this. I suffered really bad with my mental health
00:40with lockdowns. I did self-harm. I cut my wrists on an occasion. Being locked down is exactly
00:50the same as being in solitary confinement. Some of the times we've been locked in, we've
00:54been let out for 15 minutes a day just to quickly go out and get some food out of the
00:59kitchen. You can't make it. You just got to grab something. Then you go back to your cell.
01:03And that happened for, that happened days, like in a row.
01:06So, Hagar, has the Victorian government responded?
01:10Yes, they have. They have said that there's, they haven't recorded any rise in self-harm incidents
01:17within the prison. But they're also saying that other services such as legal services haven't been
01:25interrupted, that meals haven't been interrupted. But we're getting reports that are very contradictory
01:31to what the government are saying. So that legal services are being stopped sometimes or blocked
01:37due to lockdowns, as well as mental health services and other welfare services. Sometimes the prisoners are
01:44not even, don't even have time to grab meals before the lockdowns start. So they're saying that these
01:49conditions are almost worse than solitary confinement. And yet the government's account is conflicting.
01:58I mean, as Adriana McKay from the housing services flat out had to say.
02:02What we're seeing on the ground versus what's being told to us are just, they don't match up.
02:11So, Hagar, are these lockdowns then expected to continue?
02:16Um, they are. We know that in Victoria, bail laws have changed in March. That means they're expecting
02:23a 20% increase in the prison population. Our understanding is that those lockdowns occur
02:29because of staff shortages. So we don't actually know when it's going to end. Reports that we're
02:34getting at the moment show that those lockdowns are getting sometimes even worse.
02:40Um, as the Shadow Corrections Minister, um, David Southwick also told us.
02:46David Southwick The morning comes around and they
02:49haven't got the rosters right or a whole lot of people calling sick
02:52or, um, or they haven't replaced a number of staff. So the safest thing to do is just to
02:57keep prisoners locked away. Now, if it happened once or twice, then that would be okay. But this
03:03has been happening for months and months and months. And with an uptake after the bail laws,
03:09expecting 20% more prisoners to go into the prisons, it's going to be a recipe for disaster.
03:14So that was Shadow Corrections Minister in Victoria, David Southwick.