- The Guardian
- Issue #2107
Abolish The Monarchy Melbourne/Naarm Rally September 2022. Photo: Matt Hrkac –flickr.com (CC BY 2.0)
Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) has welcomed the announcement of the closure of Port Phillip and Dhurringile prisons, saying that prisons represent sites of significant harm and suffering for Aboriginal people. Prisons do not rehabilitate people and they do not make communities safer.
VALS contends that the two sites should be recommissioned and decolonised, the Victorian government should support Aboriginal communities to self-determine how these sites should be transformed into places that support community members involved in the criminal legal system. Instead of being sites associated with suffering and harm, they should provide supports that are trauma-informed with therapeutic interventions that focus on healing mob, and healing Country.
It is significant that this announcement comes with no new prisons being built, as the current correctional infrastructure available is enough to house the numbers of people in prison. The Western Plains Prison, which has sat empty since it was built in 2022, will house those who are currently incarcerated in the privately run Port Phillip Prison.
VALS hopes that the transition of those currently incarcerated in Port Phillip Prison to a publicly run facility will result in safer conditions including access to adequate and culturally appropriate healthcare. Healthcare for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people in Western Plains Prison should be delivered by Aboriginal Community Controlled Heath Organisations (ACCHOs), and should include holistic cultural support programs, as recommended in the Cultural Review of the Adult Custodial Corrections Systems.
Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people are the most incarcerated people on earth. There is an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander death in custody once every three weeks in Australia. Despite representing less than 2 per cent of the Victorian population, Aboriginal people represent approximately 20 per cent of the people in Port Phillip and Dhurringile Prisons.
The closure of these two prisons is a strong acknowledgment of the recommendations from Aboriginal community organisations, including VALS, the Aboriginal Justice Caucus, and the Yoorrook Justice Commission. The decision also reflects the concerns raised by the Cultural Review of the Adult Custodial Corrections System.
VALS continues to call on the Victorian Government to commit to moving towards a zero prison population, arguing that prisons are inherently violent and corrupt places.
VALS is encouraging the Allan Labor Government to establish an independent detention oversight body so that the well-documented failures of Port Phillip and Dhurringile Prisons are not simply transferred to Western Plains. The legal service has said that it is open to working with government to ensure that the implementation of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), a treaty designed to stop places of detention becoming places of torture, is done adequately, with the expertise of VALS’ Wirraway Prison and Police Accountability Practice and informed by the many coronial inquest findings for Aboriginal people.
Nerita Waight, VALS CEO has said that closing the prisons is “the right call”, but added that the closure “needs to be backed up with investment in Aboriginal-led, self-determined early intervention and community-based supports that rehabilitate and heal.”
She added that “Privately run, profit-driven prisons are extremely unsafe places for our people. A prison sentence shouldn’t be a death sentence, and our peoples’ lives are not something to profit from.”
Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
