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).
Read MoreVictoria has some of Australia’s most dangerous and discriminatory bail laws that are disproportionately impacting Aboriginal women and women experiencing disadvantage. The Human Rights Law Centre is advocating with partners for the Victorian Government to implement reforms to make Victoria’s bail laws fair.
Read MoreNo one should be subjected to abuse in prisons and places of detention. Yet cruel and degrading treatment is all too common in prisons and police cells across Australia. The UN’s anti-torture treaty, the Convention Against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), are designed to end the mistreatment of people behind bars.
Read MoreStrip searching is carried out routinely in Australian prisons, despite the availability of non-invasive alternatives. Strip searches rob people of their dignity and can be traumatising for survivors of abuse. The Human Rights Law Centre advocates for an end to the use of routine strip searching in Australian prisons.
Read MoreThe Human Rights Law Centre is advocating to change regressive bail laws across the country that are driving up the number of unsentenced people in prison. These dangerous laws are not making the community safer, instead, they are increasing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prisons and targeting women experiencing disadvantage.
Read MoreFor years – to justify spending billions of dollars on prison expansion – governments across Australia have parroted the line that prisons support “community safety”. This premise is false.
Read MorePeople are innocent until proven guilty, and bail means that the police can release a person from custody on the promise that they will go to court at a later date to face the charges alleged against them. If a person applies for bail and that application is denied, they are detained in prison until their court date.
Read MoreRecently, a report tabled in the Victorian Parliament by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission uncovered serious and systemic wrongdoing in Victorian prisons.
Read MoreRoutine strip searching involves forcing children as young as ten to remove their clothing in front of adult prison guards on a regular basis.
Read MoreLaws currently being considered by the Tasmanian government would allow the practice of routine strip-searching of kids to continue. If it’s the government’s intention to enact laws that protect kids, rather than cause them more harm, this opportunity to finally get the law right shouldn’t be squandered.
Read MoreSolitary confinement is a cruel practice that causes irreparable harm to the people who are subjected to this form of physical and sensory isolation. Governments must ban the archaic and inhumane use of solitary confinement in Australian prisons.
Read MoreAustralia and the world face a public health emergency in coronavirus (COVID-19), but little has been said about the people in our prisons and youth detention centres.
Read MoreIn response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, most states across Australia declared a state of emergency and brought in new laws imposing severe restrictions on civil liberties and an increase in policing powers.
Read MoreWhile politicians say that police are committed to taking a "sensible approach", history has shown that too often marginalised groups are disproportionately punished through an expansion of policing powers. In particular, people living with a disability, women escaping family violence and those experiencing homelessness may be hardest hit. In addition, increased powers - and police discretion - open the way for racialised and discriminatory policing, too often experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Read MoreKids should not be in prisons, and they definitely should not be in prisons right now.
Read MorePrisons are fundamentally at odds with the notion of rehabilitation. On the brink of tears, a 19-year-old locked up in Port Phillip Prison recently asked me: "How can I think about tomorrow when I can barely survive today?"
Read MoreOur justice system is supposed to represent the best of us: principled, fair, equal and incorruptible. Underpinned by centuries-old common values that bind and protect us all. But 2018 has exposed a chasm between what is officially said, and what is officially done.
Read MoreAustralian Governments must prohibit the solitary confinement of children in detention and closely regulate practices that can result in the forced isolation or segregation of a child. So what is solitary confinement?
Read MoreHow we treat people in prison matters not just because most will be released back into the community, but because we are all diminished the moment we start picking and choosing who is deserving of dignity, writes Ruth Barson.
Read MoreEach year thousands of strip searches are conducted on women in Victoria’s prisons. Strip searches are invasive, humiliating and, in many cases, re-traumatising. They require women to strip naked in front of two prison officers. The Human Rights Law Centre reviewed six months of recent Victorian strip search register entries obtained through freedom of information laws from the two women’s prisons in Victoria.
Read More“Tough on crime” was a stance that coloured many policies of the former Country Liberal Government in the Northern Territory. It was sold as the silver bullet to drive down youth crime rates and make communities safer. It was built up to be the solution to community fears of a so-called epidemic in youth crime that was fuelled by a willing media.
Read MoreYouth justice in Victoria is at the crossroads. The Supreme Court has ruled, yet again, that it was unlawful for the Victorian government to lock up children at the state’s most notorious maximum security adult jail.
Read MoreThere is indeed a crisis in Victoria's youth justice system. It is not one, as the Government suggests, of available beds or suitable facilities – these things are imminently fixable with a dose of political will. Rather, the crisis is one of a myopic outlook and a merciless attitude: a willingness to countenance cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Read MoreKelsey Montgomery a law student at the University of Western Australia. She did a placement with the Human Rights Law Centre at the end of 2015 and has since written this piece looking at the legality of solitary confinement.
Read MoreAustralia is locking up more people than ever before and many of Australia's prison practices breach the UN's new standards, writes the HRLC's Ruth Barson.
Read MoreWe can reduce prison populations, prison spending and the crime rate at the same time, writes the HRLC's Hugh de Kretser.
Read MoreA stronger, better resourced and human rights compliant parole board would better for community safety, writes the HRLC's Executive Director Hugh de Kretser and Professor Arie Freiberg.
Read MoreReform of the regulation, training and monitoring of police use of force is necessary to enhance community safety and ensure Victoria Police comply with human rights.
Victoria Police use force, on average, every 2.5 hours. Almost three quarters of these incidents involve the use of capsicum spray. There have been at least 12 people shot dead by Victoria Police in the last decade, while numerous others have died in police custody.
Read the background research paper here [PDF]
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