Thursday, 2 November 2023

Corrections system

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (17:37): (574) My adjournment this evening is to the Minister for Corrections. The Commission for Children and Young People’s annual report 2022–‍23, released yesterday, was full of information, some encouraging, some concerning and some absolutely appalling. In January 2023 prison officers used a spit hood on a child that was being held in an adult prison in Victoria. In a 24-hour period following the use of the spit hood that child was deprived of water for 22 of those hours. The only reason we know about these abuses is that the child had the resilience to report it and that there was a subsequent investigation by the commission. The inquiry found that the spit hood was applied despite the youth not having been involved in spitting incidents. The same child was also kept in effective solitary confinement for 24 weeks – for six months ‍– during an eight-month period. The report goes on to state:

… he had little contact with other prisoners, was confined to his cell for 22 or 23 hours per day, and had no access to education and limited access to programs.

Victoria’s commissioner for children and young people Liana Buchanan is on the record saying:

I was appalled and, to be honest, I almost didn’t believe it …

…

We like to think in Victoria that we avoid the very worst abuses of children in custody, that sometimes unfortunately we see in other parts of the country. This case unfortunately showed me that is not true.

South Australia become the first state to enact an absolute legislative ban on spit hoods in 2021. They did so because Wayne ‘Fella’ Morrison, an Indigenous man, died in custody after a spit hood was used on him. Australian Federal Police also stopped using the devices in 2023 after finding:

… the risk of using spit hoods ‘outweighed the benefits of their use …

The use of spit hoods and restraint chairs was described as inhumane by a Queensland royal commission back in 2017. The national Ban Spit Hoods Coalition, which is made up of legal, Indigenous and human rights organisations, says:

We continue to call upon Victoria, and indeed all Australian states and territories, to legislate the ban on spit hoods once and for all.

Such barbaric practices have no place in any corrections system. My adjournment to the minister is to enact a legislative ban on the use of spit hoods on all persons – children and adults – in all Victorian prisons and to ask for Victoria to advocate for a national ban.