We must end torture and mistreatment behind bars
NEWS | Dignity for People in Prison
Last month marked one year since the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland governments missed the deadline to meet Australia’s obligations to the United Nations anti-torture protocol, the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).
Out of sight and out of mind, human rights abuses thrive in the darkness behind prison walls. In Australian prisons, cruel and degrading practices like solitary confinement and strip searching remain commonplace.
This shocking mistreatment is occurring during a mass imprisonment crisis. People continue to be pipelined into prisons at alarming rates. Our governments continue to fail children, locking them away in inhumane prison and police watch house cells across the country.
Due to a toxic combination of the ongoing impacts of colonisation, systemic racism and discriminatory policing, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are over-represented in, and disproportionately harmed by, prisons.
Last month marked one year since the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland governments missed the deadline to meet Australia’s obligations to the United Nations anti-torture protocol, the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).
Aimed at preventing torture behind bars, OPCAT requires the designation of independent oversight and monitoring bodies to carry out inspections of all places of detention.
Australia’s failure to enact bare minimum safeguards to ensure that people in prison are not tortured pursuant to the anti-torture protocol represents yet another blight of Australia’s international human rights record.
We can and must do better.
Governments must urgently establish OPCAT-compliant monitoring and oversight of places of detention in full and transparent consultation with affected communities and alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, legal and human rights organisations.