*** This post was updated on 4 October with Twitter analytics for the event ***
Grave fears for the safety of children and other prisoners held in pandemic lockdown were raised during a public forum hosted by Croakey this week.
Robyn Oxley, a Tharawal and Yorta Yorta woman and lecturer in criminology at Western Sydney University, sounded the alarm about the impact of isolating children in detention as a “health response” to the pandemic rather than releasing them.
Oxley is an Independent Visitor under the Commission for Children and Young People in Victoria, and before the pandemic physically visited youth prisons each month, at Parkville and Malmsbury, to check on Aboriginal children and young people.
Since the pandemic, her contact has been limited to Zoom, she told a Twitter festival launching Croakey’s new #JusticeCOVID publication (download here).
Some children had been seven months with no physical contact with family. “No hugs, no kisses, no contact,” Oxley tweeted.
She said:
Prisons are no place for anyone, let alone children and young people. These children have been in lockdown, far worse than any Melbournian could ever even imagine, for seven months.
These children have been punished enough. They have been exposed to the violence of prisons at such an early age. It is not only time to raise the age of criminal responsibility. It is time to release these children and let them be kids.
We need to be thinking about what it means to be locking kids up! How it impacts their life now and in the future. We need to ask ourselves are we OK with this?”
The Twitter festival, moderated by Dr Tess Ryan, shared wide-ranging discussions from Aboriginal community organisations, prison abolition and reform advocates, public interest journalism advocates, researchers, legal experts and health leaders.
It came as the Sentencing Advisory Council in Victoria released a new report showing increasing numbers of children are being held in remand in Victoria, often because there are inadequate supports for them in the community (see more in this Twitter thread). Many do not end up receiving a custodial sentence.
Dan Nicholson, Executive Director, Criminal Law at Victoria Legal Aid, said on Twitter that too many kids are being locked up because of issues in their lives, such as lack of housing or community support, not the offences they’ve committed.
He said: “Time on remand causes further harm to kids, most of whom have survived trauma or neglect. It makes it more likely they’ll commit further offences.
Imagine if we made better choices with the millions we waste on remanding kids each year? Gave these kids hope and opportunity?”
Below is a full report of the #JusticeCOVID Twitter Festival.
Introductions and official launch
Dr Janine Mohamed, chair of Croakey Health Media
Public interest journalism matters
The Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas
The coronavirus pandemic has had a profound and negative effect on much of the media industry. But, the need for public interest journalism — reporting that ensures the community is well and fairly informed — is as strong as ever.
The Institute has been working to support journalism in Australia throughout the pandemic. We have backed community broadcasting and fact-checking initiatives, as well as helping media organisations engage freelance and casual contributors.
Croakey News freelance journalists, writers and data visualisation designers have done an outstanding job to provide information and expert commentary on prisoner health during the coronavirus crisis.
Their reporting has brought transparency and debate to an important but often-overlooked issue. It is an excellent example of the public interest journalism that is needed at this difficult time.
You can also stay up to date with the Institute’s activities by visiting our website and subscribing for updates.
Another missed opportunity to reimagine the justice system
Nerita Waight, CEO of VALS & Co-chair of NATSILS
Prisons are epicentres for the spread of COVID-19, like aged-care or cruise ships. We’ve seen outbreaks in Victoria, Queensland and NSW; we’ve seen lockdown, solitary confinement. But no proactive measures from governments to stop mob going into prison or reduce prison numbers.
Instead, governments have policed the pandemic.
In NSW, the top 10 areas where fine recipients lived, seven had Aboriginal populations of 1,000+. Suburbs with most fines were the poorest, with no correlation to where the most COVID-19 cases were.
Similarly here in Victoria, Aboriginal people made up 4.7% of the fines, despite making up just 0.8% of the population. Poor communities & South Sudanese people were targeted. Like in NSW, young people are being targeted.
At the height of Stage 4, an Aboriginal man was allegedly knocked off his bike and ended up in hospital with arm injuries. He was an essential worker riding to work. He says police called him offensive names and fined him.
We also saw heavy handed policing at #BlackLivesMatter peaceful rallies including pepper spray, arrests, large numbers of police. Rally organisers were accused of causing spread of #COVID19Aus despite medical evidence saying there was no community transmission.
It’s heartbreaking to see State Budget after State Budget invest billions in new prisons and extending old ones and yet so little on prevention, diversion and transition supports. It has turned the criminalisation of communities into an income stream for companies.
Meanwhile in prisons, punitive restrictions have caused harm to our people. There have been over 40 positive #COVID19Aus cases connected to prisons here in Victoria, including 19 children testing positive. Kids have been held in isolation in tiny cells for weeks.
In Queensland, 130 children, some as young as 13, were held in solitary confinement after a #COVID91Aus outbreak at Brisbane Youth Detention Centre. We know the devastating lifelong damage solitary confinement has on kids’ mental health.
Aboriginal people are most at risk of dying from #COVID19Aus due to effects of colonisation like chronic illness. This is compounded by our overincarceration. We’ve called for governments to act to release mob from prison to prevent black deaths in custody. We can’t afford to wait.
My question to our governments remains the same: are they truly committed to keeping everyone safe during these unprecedented times? And do our governments value the lives of people in detention?
Will they show courage and leadership, and immediately decrease the number of people in detention to mitigate Victoria’s collective harm and loss? They need only look overseas, to the many countries adopting decarceration strategies, for guidance and inspiration.
Places of detention are not insulated from the rest of the community; people enter and exit places of detention on a daily basis, including people who are released back into the community and people who enter detention upon arrest or sentencing, as well as staff and contractors
The porous nature of detention facilities makes it highly likely that any COVID-19 outbreaks in detention will spread to the community. The health of the people in custody is inextricably linked to the health of all Victorians during this pandemic.
We have seen the devastation that comes with the spread of COVID-19 in detention in countries such as the US.
An American Civil Liberties Union study concluded that ‘COVID-19 could claim the lives of approximately 100,000 more people than current projections stipulate if jail populations are not dramatically and immediately reduced, according to a new epidemiological model.’
In a joint media release on 20 July 2020, VALS, Human Rights Law Centre, Fitzroy Legal Service, Inner Melbourne Community Legal and Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre recommended that the number of people in detention be reduced by:
- Granting administrative leave on health grounds to those most at risk of COVID-19 and most impacted by restrictive measures – like increased use of solitary confinement – being used to try to contain the virus.
- Priority in this process should be given to elderly people, people with chronic health conditions, people with disability and mental health conditions, children, young people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- Using existing legal powers to grant 14 days early release to people in prison who are close to the end of their sentence. Granting parole or leave to people in prison who pose a low risk to the community if released;
- Granting parole or leave to children and young people, so that they can be with, and be supported by, their families and community during this ongoing public health emergency; and
- Making bail more accessible for children, young people and adults on remand, who are yet to be found guilty of any criminal offending and who pose a low risk to the community if released.
Bail reform will advance the decarceration strategies crucial to keeping all Victorians safe.
@thevalsmob and the legal sector have made a number of recommendations on previous occasions in relation to the need for bail reform. The pandemic only makes the issue of bail reform more urgent, and the Government should not wait until after the pandemic to address the concerns.
Around half (46.2%) of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people in prison (and 61.4% of Aboriginal women) are in prison purely on remand and may be released never having been sentenced to imprisonment.
Governments must prevent more #deathsinside. Back the call of First Nations families whose siblings, cousins, parents and partners have died in custody by signing the petition to #CleanOutPrisons.
Until there is an end to police investigating police nothing will change. There must be independent investigation of police & referrals for prosecution where there is sufficient evidence.If anyone is interested in the work VALS does please check out our website here and our Twitter handle is @thevalsmob. NATSILS is the national peak for our ATSILS across Australia and does incredible work advocating on justice issues affecting our mob. Their twitter handle is @NATSILS_ and their website.
Stand with us. And clean out prisons
Tabitha Lean, Gunditjmara woman
I want to challenge the belief that caging, exiling and controlling people makes us safe. Abolition is an invitation to imagine a different kind of world-a world with communities grounded in love and care.
I’m a formerly incarcerated woman having spent almost two years in Adelaide Women’s Prison and Adelaide Pre Release Centre. I have also done almost two years on Home Detention and will be tethered to the system for three more years on parole (or as I call it, open air prison).
Because right now, what we have is lethal for black fullas…even breathing in front of a cop is a risk. We must abolish systems that are anti black and hell bent on killing us.
That’s why I am proudly part of the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls convened by the formidable and indefatigable Debbie Kilroy.
We are fighting to have our voice heard. We believe that centring the voices of those with lived experience has the capacity to change the face of (so called) justice in this country.
It might sound Pollyanna, but in my mind, the key to health, safety, stability and liberation has never and will never be found in punishment and imprisonment.
I believe that prisons and police are part of the arsenal of the settler colonial war machine. If we dismantle systems that cage and punish, we can explicitly fight genocide and dispossession and create a world focused on radical reciprocity and accountability.
In our article published by Croakey, Debbie Kilroy, Vickie Roach and I lay out the National Networks call to decarcerate…now…and especially during a pandemic. While we call for widespread releases and total decarceration, we also lay out a ten point plan governments could use to stage releases, given we know they like the path of least resistance
So what do I mean when I say the PIC? The prison industrial complex is the entire overlapping interests of state and industry that employ policing, surveillance, imprisonment and punishment as a means of controlling populations and furthering the colonial project.
In my view the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through the machinations of power: punishment, violence and control
And I have no interest in reforming a white supremacist system built with the purpose of oppressing, controlling and facilitating the premature death of our people.
Abolition as a movement is anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, anti-misogynist, anti-transphobic, anti-homophobic- it has to be internationalist, pro-cooperation and feminist
And you know abolition might sound like a radical idea, but people have been working towards it for decades. Certainly, Aboriginal people have been fighting against the enslaving and incarcerating of our people for 232 years
So stand with us. With all of you standing by our sides, shoulder to shoulder, we can pull down this brutal, violent and deadly industry. Let’s open up dialogues of curiosity and possibility. Abolition can be fun if we all muck in. Let’s make it happen. 
Calling for real action on prisons, policing and injustice
Robyn Oxley
Ngumbi!!
My name is Robyn Oxley. I am Tharawal and Yorta Yorta woman. I grew up in Minto, NSW and my family still live on country. I am a lecturer at Western Sydney University in Criminology.
I would like to acknowledge the land on where my teaching, learning & research is undertaken – Wurundjeri Land, part of the Kulin Nations. I would like to pay respects to the Wurundjeri Elders & my Elders, Tharawal & Yorta Yorta, past and present.
I would also like to acknowledge that I will be spending the next 15 minutes tweeting about children and young people and recognise that many children, since colonisation, never made it home and the ones that did make it home or still trying. We see you and we love you!
My research areas include but are not limited to: Aboriginal affairs within the criminal justice system. My Masters thesis examines pre/post release support for Aboriginal people who are in prison or about to leave. Self-determination as opposed to inclusion within the criminal justice system!
Today I want to share my involvement with the criminal justice system as an Independent Visitor (IVP) under the Commission for Children & Young People.
Being part of the Independent Visitor Program, I am usually able to physically visit the youth prisons each month, at Parkville & Malmsbury, to check in on the Aboriginal children and young people.
Since COVID-19 lockdown, this has only been able to be completed by Zoom. Not only are we able to check in, make sure they have access to legal representation, their human rights met, access to family and enough things to keep them busy.
Parkville and Mamsbury have not been able to have any outside visitors – which means NO FAMILY – since March. That’s seven months with no physical contact with family. No hugs, no kisses, no contact.
Prisons are no place for anyone, let alone children and young people. These children have been in lockdown, far worse than any Melbournian could ever even imagine, for seven months.
At any given time during COVID – there seems to be around 100 at each facility. That’s total of all children and young people. But, naturally, it fluctuates every day.
When they ‘arrive’ at either Malmsbury or Parkville, they begin their 14-day isolation. As a child outside prison, it impacts mental health, significantly. My 10-year-old is suffering re lockdowns so I cannot imagine what it would be like for any child in prison.
Isolation has been used as a behavioural tool in prisons and now we see it being used in relation to a health response. It simply is not good enough that these children are kept in prison.
Read the Twitter thread here.
There were many calls to release people in prison as there were positive tests from workers of youth prisons, exposing children and young people to COVID-19, in a confined space that could spread through every Unit quite easily and quickly.
We saw this happen in Brisbane about a month ago. The response around COVID-19 in prisons in Australia has been limited with the only solution, isolating children even more as the ‘health response’.
The response should have been to release young people. Not allow them to be exposed to a deadly virus and continually isolate children from family and the time of disconnect they have endured since the Melbourne lockdown began.
These children have been punished enough. They have been exposed to the violence of prisons at such an early age. It is not only time to raise the age of criminal responsibility. It is time to release these children and let them be kids.
We need to be thinking about what it means to be locking kids up! How it impacts their life now and in the future. We need to ask ourselves are we OK with this? And if you are ok with this – why?
What is a child ‘offender’? Even the word ‘offender’ leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It doesn’t exist for children or adults who are in prison. They are not offenders they are people.
We need to be very careful with the language we use to ‘describe’ or ‘title’ people. We know the damage of using psychologically demeaning words has on the mental health of people so why do we do it to people in prisons?
This country is obsessed with punishment. There is an unhealthy relationship with prisons in the form of over-reliance, overfunding and overuse of prisons. It is not the only way to address ‘crime’!
We have seen curfews enforced re COVID-19, with no real use and no explanation as to why they were imposed. Just the acceptance of society that it be done. No questions asked!
So why do we continue to allow children in prisons with a real threat of COVID-19 spreading in an institution that punishes and has continued to punish when there should have been a health response to a health issue.
If you want to listen to a seminar on “The ‘myth’ of a child ‘offender’” please click on this link.
Public health lessons from “the world’s leader in incarceration”
Dr Lesley Russell
I follow politics and policy issues across both Australia and the United States and have done a series of analyses contrasting / comparing coronavirus responses in both countries for @USSC. You can find them here –https://ussc.edu.au/experts/lesley-russell
Coronavirus in prisons poses an additional threat to racial minorities and First Nations people – significantly over-represented in incarcerated populations in US and at increased risk from coronavirus infection and death. https://ussc.edu.au/analysis/how-bad-is-coronavirus-in-jails
Situation in US jails, prisons, correctional institutions, detention centres (operated by feds and states) bad from beginning, data inconsistently reported. Best sources @nytimes @MarshallProj @uclaprisonlaw – more reliable than @CDCgov @OfficialFBOP
Current estimates US prisons and jails: 218,000+ people infected; 1265+ inmates & staff died. Many prisons county hotspots as inmate and staff churn means infections travel to/from communities.
Facilities are very overcrowded; significant numbers of older, sicker inmates; poor hygiene and healthcare facilities; insufficient PPE. When families can’t visit, no extras like soap, handwipes etc
Trump has implemented some criminal justice reforms but much less action than he claims. At same time Republicans are trying to prevent those released from voting.
Will #BlackLivesMatter be the catalyst for change? Lots to discuss around this. https://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/upl
And don’t forget: Even less known re what is happening in immigration detention and processing. ICE now reports some statistics, but how accurate? https://ice.gov/coronavirus 50% of all individuals tested until June 4 tested +ve.
An opportunity for public policy change
Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT)
Like much of Australia, AMSANT has spent the best part of 2020 consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought to the forefront issues on which AMSANT has been advocating for years. We’ve been asked to share our experiences of this for #JusticeCOVID.
The pandemic has highlighted serious inequities in access to healthcare, housing, food security and wealth distribution that have placed many Aboriginal communities at significantly greater risk from health threats for years https://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/indigenous-australians-and-covid-19-crisis-perspectives-public-policy
Socioeconomic, political, cultural and geographical barriers for Aboriginal people accessing healthcare have been highlighted during COVID-19. Distances from services, workforce shortages &inequitable resource distribution present major challenges for COVID-19 control.
ACCHSs have been working tirelessly through this period to get and keep staff on the ground. Efforts must now be made to sustainably boost local workforce capacity to ensure it meets the health needs of the communities it serves, both in the time of COVID-19 and beyond.
A COVID-19 outbreak in an Aboriginal community with overcrowded housing would be very difficult to contain. The present housing situation is a breach of fundamental human rights and is an issue AMSANT continues to advocate around #JusticeCOVID.
On a jurisdictional level, AMSANT has been advocating with and on behalf of ACCHSs for the NT Govt to adopt measures to keep COVID-19 out of NT communities. We’ve had success on issues such border control, quarantine, pandemic planning and the biosecurity restrictions.
ACCHS worked with other Aboriginal organisations to advocate for a closed border and later for a cautious reopening.
@CAACongress also developed an outbreak strategy that will work in communities with overcrowded housing and this has been adopted by the NT Govt.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been leading the way for immediate solutions to the COVID-19 crisis. Moving forwards, there is much to learn from the successes of the ACCHS sector and from Indigenous health leadership.
Space has been created for long-term solutions that address the deeper drivers of ill-health including housing, poverty, racism and unemployment. We must seize this opportunity to build a more equitable future for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.
Data gaps
Associate Professor Megan Williams and others also raised concerns about inadequate data on prisoner health, especially during the pandemic.
Other issues raised
In conclusion
Dr Tess Ryan
During the pandemic, we’ve heard so much about other at-risk populations, such as people in aged care and healthcare workers. Where is the concern for those held in prison and detention? The pandemic has taught us that the health of the most vulnerable matters for everyone.
During this health crisis, that is what has kept me awake at night. We should be carefully considering what kind of future society we want, and taking ownership of what got us to this point. Humanity should always be at the front of any choice.
Rather than address #JusticeCOVID concerns, we’ve seen punitive policing and policies that have exacerbated rather than addressed concerns about prisons, especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Those not within the prison community have used words of feeling oppressed, controlled, ‘in prison’ even. If we are feeling that sense of policing and enforcement, together with fear, what is happening in the minds of those prisoners? and why don’t we seem to care?
So shocking to hear about the punitive approaches taken to children and young people in detention and prison during the pandemic. It’s critical that governments #RaiseTheAge and provide care, rather than punishment for at-risk children
In a previous work life I worked in out of home care and child protection. I saw first hand the impacts on children, some placed in detention as young as 12-years-old. It left me as a worker with trauma. The trauma children must feel in detention currently would be terrible.
Download the #JusticeCOVID publication.
Twitter analytics
According to Symplur, 414 Twitter accounts engaged with the #JusticeCOVID hashtag between 27 September and 4 October, sending more than 2,000 tweets and creating more than 16 million Twitter impressions.
See the Twitter transcript here.
For more information on the #JusticeCOVID project, see the stories published, read this media statement and follow the news at the #JusticeCOVID Facebook page.
The project was supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.
