United Nations torture prevention body scathing of Australian governments

The United Nations torture prevention body released its report today following its terminated visit to Australia in October 2022 after being blocked from accessing prisons and mental health facilities in New South Wales and Queensland.

In the report, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture said:

that it experienced a discourteous, and in some cases hostile, reception from a number of government authorities and officials in places of deprivation of liberty, not in keeping with the collaborative and assistance-based nature of its visit… Such behaviour also raises concerns (as it is assumed to be reflective) of how persons deprived of liberty are treated.

The report adds that the independent body of United Nations experts:

experienced persistent negative media coverage, including pernicious remarks from government officials in certain regions, amounting to what the Subcommittee would qualify as a smear campaign. Such remarks and media reports no doubt contributed in some cases to the hostility faced by the Subcommittee, as evidenced by the repetition of disparaging quotes from government officials by the administrators of some of the places of deprivation of liberty that it visited.

Since its establishment 15 years ago, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture have made over 80 visits to more than 60 countries. Terminating a visit has only happened on one other occasion.

In 2017, Australia ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) which requires every state and territory to designate independent oversight and monitoring bodies to carry out inspections of all places of detention, and is aimed at preventing torture and mistreatment.

The Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture calls for Australian governments to take all necessary measures to implement OPCAT. 20 January 2024 will mark one year since the NSW, Queensland and Victorian governments missed the deadline to implement their obligations pursuant to the protocol. The federal Albanese government must resolve the ongoing funding standoff with the states and urgently commit to effective and independent oversight of all places of detention across Australia.

Other key recommendations made in the Subcommittee’s report include that Australian governments should:

raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 years old;
in recognition of the extraordinary number of persons deprived of their liberty on remand, ensure that detention of people awaiting trial should be the exception rather than the rule;
ban cruel and degrading prison practices, including the use of solitary confinement on children, the routine strip searching of people in prison and the use of spit hoods; and
pay attention to the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Pathways to Justice report, and of the Don Dale Royal Commission in the Northern Territory, and implement schemes to reverse the over incarceration of First Nations communities.

Maggie Munn, Gunggari person and National Director at Change The Record:

“The rates at which human rights abuses occur in places of detention across this country is outrageous. That the opportunity for the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture to closely examine these issues was thwarted by state governments playing politics is shameful.”

“We have been calling on governments for decades to take the deaths, mistreatment and abuse of our people in custody seriously. Implementing OPCAT to ensure there is true independent oversight and accountability of police and prisons is a critical step towards ending the discriminatory laws, policies and practices that cause our people to die behind bars.”

Monique Hurley, Managing Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre:

“The United Nations has shone the spotlight on the callous disregard that governments across Australia have for the rights of people behind bars. Australia is in the midst of a mass imprisonment crisis where human rights abuses are allowed to thrive in the darkness behind closed doors. Right now, people are being pipelined into prisons at alarming rates, children as young as 10 years old are caged in prison cells and people continue to be put at risk of being tortured in solitary confinement, spit hooded and routinely stripped of their dignity.”

“It is a stain on Australia’s human rights record that the independent body of UN experts was forced to terminate their visit, and that the Victorian, NSW and Queensland governments have failed to implement bare minimum safeguards pursuant to OPCAT to ensure that people in places of detention are not tortured. We must expose human rights abuses wherever they occur and end the use of brutal and barbaric practices – like solitary confinement and strip searching – once and for all.”

The Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture report and the Australian government’s response are available here. The submission made by Change the Record, the NATSILS and the HRLC to the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture in 2022 is available here.