Christmas Island like a prison: Amnesty

Our refugee coordinator Graham Thom, along with our national director Claire Mallinson and board vice president Jim Sharp, has just visited the new Christmas Island detention centre. These are their observations.

There are a few things that strike you about Christmas Island and its new detention centre. Firstly, the island's remoteness from the Australian mainland, and the logistical difficulties in getting there, are brought home when you depart Perth's international airport, passport in hand.

You have to complete an immigration departure card, despite the fact you are flying to an Australian territory ('excised' of course), before embarking on a five hour flight to the island.

On 13 August, Amnesty International Australia joined a number of other NGOs, UNHCR, HREOC and the Ombudsman's office on a visit to the newly completed Christmas Island detention centre. The visit was organised by the Department of Immigration.

Harsh and soulless

Once on the island you are struck by not only the remoteness of the new centre to anything else on the island but also the high level of security surrounding the centre. (Where would anyone escape to?) Two high fences, the second one an electric fence, circle the perimeter. Despite landscaping in the "green heart" of the centre there is an all pervasive feeling of concrete and steel, particularly in the accommodation compounds.

Despite recent efforts to improve the feel of the centre you cannot escape the sense you are in a medium security prison. The level of fencing and surveillance make even the recreational areas, including sewing room and beauty saloon, feel like you are in an expensive cage. In the accommodation rooms the small windows are covered by steel mesh that obscure the view to the nearby fence and then the larger electric fence beyond that.

Most confronting of all is the arrivals area, the "at risk" area and the high security "red one" compound. It is difficult to imagine how traumatised asylum seekers would react when first brought into the centre. This arrivals area at best can be described as harsh and soulless, but at worst, for someone who has previously suffered torture or trauma in their homeland, it would be anywhere from intimidating to frightening. Even the light fittings are surrounded by cages.

The "at risk" rooms are part of the modern medical facility. These are rooms where people who it is believed could potentially self harm can be monitored. The rooms themselves again demonstrate the priority of security over individual well being. This is reinforced when you go out to the adjacent open small caged area, designed to let those in the at risk area go "outside". How it is envisaged that people suffering mental health concerns will improve in these conditions, rather than go into serious decline, is difficult to comprehend.

The "red compound" where those who pose a security concern, or behave violently, is also very confronting. Again, the thought of anyone's "behavior" improving in such a maximum security environment is difficult to imagine.

Long way from the vision

Amnesty International Australia has consistently raised concerns about detaining people in remote locations, particularly in dehumanising environments. The damage this has done to the detainee's mental and physical health has been documented time and time again. The high security nature of the new centre is clearly reflective of previous detention philosophies and we believe is a long way from the current vision of a more humane approach to detention outlined recently by the Minister.

While on Christmas Island we were also shown some of the other alternative detention arrangements available for use on the island, including duplexes situated in the community and the previous phosphate hill facility which has recently had a number of the fences removed. This would enable any future detainees to come and go from the facility during the day.

While the remaining fenced in areas still feel confronting the rest of the basic cabins in the centre makes it feel like an old school camp ground. It is envisaged that if people are brought to the island these facilities would be used in preference to the new $400 million centre, which would only be used as a last resort.

The clearly more humane approach that is being taken with other detention alternatives on the island again brings in to stark contrast the absurdity of building such a harsh, high tech, high security facility like the one that has just been completed. The resources within the new centre, computers, sports equipment, sewing machines and the cost of maintaining them while the centre remains empty is a situation that can best be described as extraordinary.

Flying back to the Australian mainland, passing the duty free before again clearing customs, it is difficult to image a more remote part of Australia to build a high security detention facility. Maybe that was the point seven years ago, it is now time for the current government to abandon that approach and treat all those who are fleeing to this country in search of safety with the same level of dignity and respect as everybody else.

International Conference on Penal Abolition

Full agenda announced

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.

Topics being discussed will include:

* Deaths in Custody
* Prisoners’ Families and Penal Abolitionism
* Prison gangs, human rights and the need to abolish imprisonment
* Gender and victimisation
* Abolishing prisons: a necessary path to respect fundamental rights and improve democracy

Plus many more (can’t fit them all on here!)

To see the full agenda please click here

We will be adding synopses and biographies of speakers within the next few weeks, so please keep checking back for more information.

Key themes and plenary sessions for the conference include:

* Creating a scandal - prison abolition and the policy agenda
* Prison and the politics of poverty
* The role of privatisation and capitalism in penal policy
* Penal abolition, the media and the public

Confirmed speakers so far include:

* Professor Thomas Mathieson, University of Oslo
* Professor Joe Sim, Liverpool John Moores University, trustee INQUEST
* Julia Sudbury, Mills College, co-founder Critical Resistance, board member Justice Now
* Stephen Nathan, Editor, Prison Privatisation Report International
* Moazzam Begg, Former Guantanamo detainee and spokesperson for Cageprisoners
* Raphael Rowe, ex-prisoner, Journalist, BBC
* Professor David Wilson, Birmingham City University and vice-chair, The Howard League for Penal Reform
* Professor Barry Goldson, The University of Liverpool
* Professor Phil Scraton PhD, Queen's University, Belfast
* Clive Stafford Smith, Director, Reprieve
* Imran Khan, leading human rights lawyer
* Caroline Newman, solicitor and campaigner
* Pauline Campbell, mother of Sarah Campbell who died 'in care' of Styal Prison

To book a place at this stimulating and thought provoking conference, please click here.
For more information on ICOPA XII, including the chance to book place at our evening Thames River Cruise, please visit the website or email hannah.mcfaull@howardleague.org

Jail parents of truants, says Iemma

EDUCATION and welfare experts have ridiculed Morris Iemma's plan to send parents to jail if their children repeatedly miss school, saying the policy is "heavy-handed" and will only hurt the most disadvantaged students.

Primary school principals backed the Premier's move yesterday but the Federation of Parents and Citizens' Associations attacked it and Tony Vinson - who has spent 30 years researching education and disadvantage - said it could do more harm than good.

"It is impossible for me to see how a threat like this is going to enhance the life prospects of a child," Professor Vinson said.

Gloria Larman, the chief executive of Shine for Kids, a support group for the children of prisoners, said: "Children with a parent in jail are five times more likely than an average child to end up in jail themselves. Are they going to send the minister for community services to jail because he is the legal guardian of many kids that don't go to school?"

Mr Iemma revealed he would strengthen Education Department powers to allow it to seek court orders to force a parent to enrol their child in school. If parents disobeyed, they could face jail.

"We're not talking about kids that wag the odd day," Mr Iemma told Parliament. But "if counselling, mediation and second chances" did not work, the next step for parents could be prison.

"Schools will now have the support they need to get their students back into class, where they belong, where they can be protected and where they can develop and thrive," he said.

When pressed on how the laws would work? Which of two parents might be found culpable and sent to jail? Might both parents be jailed? If so, who would be left at home to ensure the child was sent to school?

A spokesman for the Education Minister, John Della Bosca, said it would be "highly unlikely" that both parents would be jailed because "there are significant therapeutic options for the courts" and it was probable that care orders would already be in place requiring the child to be looked after by someone else.

The Opposition said it would hit the disadvantaged, especially Aborigines, and that the Government should enforce existing laws on truancy. Mr Della Bosca's spokesman said 34 parents had been fined between $200 and $1100 over truancy, but it was expected prosecutions would rise to about 250 under the new laws.

The president of the NSW Primary Principals' Association, Geoff Scott, said jail would be the only deterrent for some parents.

"Certainly you don't want to be sending parents to jail but that is way down the track. But it's really something we support because we know that kids will succeed best if they come to school."

Mr Scott said most schools would have a child who needed to be rescued from truancy.

But Andrew McCallum, chief executive of the Association of Childrens Welfare Agencies, said it would only worsen the problem of disadvantage. "Truancy is a social problem and it won't be attacked by heavy-handedness."

Last year the Education Department admitted that seven-year-old Shellay Ward, who was found dead at Hawks Nest in November, had never attended school. It had put various options to her parents, it said, but none was accepted.

The new law will allow independent medical experts to assess if a child is "too sick" to be enrolled rather than taking the word of parents. It will give extra protection to people such as neighbours who report chronic truancy.

The president of the P&C federation, Dianne Giblin, urged the Government to focus on better co-operation between its agencies, including Health and the Department of Community Services.

Judges depart Red Mass

Several hundred members of Sydney's legal community attended the 78th annual Red Mass, led by Wollongong bishop Peter Ingham.

Supreme Court justices and judges and magistrates from the district and local courts wore traditional robes as they led Tuesday morning's procession into St Mary's Cathedral in central Sydney. Judges attend the Mass, which signifies the commencement of the law term, to seek divine guidence in the legal profession.

Bishop Peter Ingham reminded the Judges about locking up the mentally ill in prison and that they should not be dishing out double punishment to them.



Jails Fail Mentally Ill

Australia: Aborigines comprise 25pc of jail population

A Bureau of Statistics report suggests Indigenous people were last year 13 times more likely than non-Indigenous people to have done time in prison.

The information on Indigenous law and justice finds Aboriginal people are over-represented in prisons and make up a quarter of jailed offenders.

A 2002 survey used in the bureau's report shows the biggest law and justice problem for Indigenous people is witnessing violence.

Other problems include suffering abuse or violent crime, trouble with the police and having a family member in jail.

The survey results show Indigenous people in remote areas are much more likely to face these issues.