Adelaide University lecturer Elizabeth Grant has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship grant to continue investigating her PhD work - the first empirical study on how to reduce the amount of Aboriginal people who hurt themselves in prison.
[What about how many Aboriginal people who are killed in custody? You ignorant bastards. Get it right. White people commit suicide as well as black people because prison is a hellhole not fit for any animal. For instance when an isolated prisoner is sick and they press the emergency button in cell and no one attends? Segregated and isolated in solitary confinement indefinitely or even for punishment doesn't help. Why waste taxpayer’s money on propaganda!!! How about why authorities refuse to adopt the recommendations into Aboriginal deaths in custody? Because no one gets a grant to filibuster. There is no such thing as a culturally appropriate prison.]
She has found that Australian prisons are not culturally appropriate and that contributes to feelings of isolation and desperation.
"Prisoners need to stay connected to their own country," she said.
"So they need to be located in places that are really appropriate to those groups of prisoners.
"Prisons quite often disconnect Aboriginal prisoners from their family and they need to find ways to make them more connected.
"That may mean the design of visit areas ... that may mean putting Aboriginal prisoners together so they can remain connected."
Ms Grant says her work will be used to design future jails in Australia and she says countries like Denmark, Canada and New Zealand have much to offer.
"In New Zealand they've actually got what are called the Maori focus units and they are specifically separate facilities - therapeutic environments - which are developed in consultation with the local Maori communities," she said.
"What I'm interested in there is how you use culture to design a prison because this is something that is uncommon in Australia.
"In Canada they've been running since 1995 legislation to allow Aboriginal communities to run their own facilities and they are called healing centres and they are quite often designed using Aboriginal people's traditions and oral knowledge and some of them are magnificent."
Updated: 8:15pm (AEST)
Police probe prisoner death
Investigations are underway into the death of a prisoner in far north Queensland today.
Corrective services say a 33-year-old man was found dead in his cell at the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre in Mareeba, shortly before 3:00pm AEST..
The state coroner will investigate how the man died.
Related:
Aboriginal inmates '22pc and rising' of prison population
The Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health says new research is urgently needed to address the worsening rate of Indigenous incarceration.
Review of the Royal Commission Inquiry
During April 1991, the Commissioners handed down their collective wisdom in the form of 339 Recommendations. Roughly half of these dealt with the so-called justice system for Indigenous people. These Recommendations were mainly intended to keep Aboriginal people out of jail and stressed the need for prisons as a last resort. They were aimed at bringing about change relating to the involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with the police, courts and jails. With what success? Tragically, none at all. Indigenous involvement with the white justice system has alarmingly increased in all areas. Black incarceration has risen dramatically. Not only for our males and females, but also for our youths. Deaths in custody, whether lock-up, jail or juvenile centres has more than doubled since May ‘89. So what happened to the Recommendations?
Securing care for patients in prison
“At our recent meeting, doctors and other stakeholders from across Australia, many of whom work in the correctional system, came together to advance the development of standards to ensure that people in prison have access to quality health care.
UN Torture Committee Blasts Australia
HRMU at Goulburn, inmates can be kept in inhumane conditions for an indefinite period. Last year, the NSW Coroner was also highly critical that mentally-ill people are placed in isolation in the supermax prison,” Mr Murphy said.
We owe prisoners more than jail
Prisons are too important to be left to jailers, for the simple reason that the standard prison magnifies social problems. It is a congregation of people with an accumu–lation of risk factors for crime.
Insane Hours: solitary confinement cells
DEBORAH RICE, PRESENTER: It's insane. That's what critics are saying about a new routine that keeps some of the state's worst mentally ill patients locked up in solitary confinement cells for eighteen hours a day.
You Tube version part 1
You Tube version part 2
2nd Renaissance -38
The prison system has never been reformed except in name. The prison system is, by now, incapable of reform, and the same can be said for the law enforcement and justice systems which feed it. This reality applies in most nation states within the old Level 3 Civilization, it is not confined to Australia, Britain and the USA. But that doesn't make it right for those administrations to be engaging in the incarceration of women and children. The practice is barbaric wherever it is practiced and by whomever it is authorised and administered.
International Conference on Penal Abolition
The full agenda for ICOPA is now online, and pending any further changes, the line-up is looking like we're going to have a fascinating conference. With speakers coming to present papers from Brazil, Trinidad, Canada, Australia, USA, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa plus many more including the UK, we are really looking at a truly international conference.
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