QCCL calls for Independent Inspectorate of Prisons

Today’s Courier Mail report (15/3/21)that a prisoner hung himself from the same hanging point inside the same cell at Wolston Prison in Brisbane just weeks after he was rescued from an earlier suicide attempt has reignited calls for the State Government to set up an Independent Inspectorate of Prisons as a matter of urgency.

Civil Liberties Council Vice President said that it is bad enough that this obviously disturbed person was put back in the same cell weeks after an earlier suicide attempt but it is inexcusable that a recommendation by prison officers that the inmate be transferred to the crisis support unit of Woodford jail was not acted upon.

“We are seeing the typical response from Queensland Corrective Services in declining to answer questions as to why the hanging point had not been removed and why the prisoner had not been moved to a crisis support unit by the standard non-informative information blocking response about not answering questions concerning apparently serious failures by Corrective Services by kicking the can down the road for eighteen months to two years with Corrective Services saying that it is a matter for the Coroner’s Inquest.”

“It is systemic failure and neglect that the Independent Inspectorate that was first recommended by the 2016 Sofronoff Review into Queensland Prisons and Parole Laws has not been acted upon five years later” Mr O’Gorman said.

Mr O’Gorman said last week it was reported in the Courier Mail that even though there is current budget money available to establish the Inspectorate a spokesman for Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman could not even give an indication when the Inspectorate would be set up.

“Queensland prisons are seriously overcrowded and clearly unable to properly care for suicidal prisoners on the known facts of this most recent suicide in custody” Mr O’Gorman said.

Mr O’Gorman said if the Independent Inspectorate had been established when it was recommended in 2016 the failures so evident in the known facts of this case would have been referred to the Inspectorate of Prisons as a priority and remedied thereby avoiding a tragic death in custody.

Mr O’Gorman said that the Attorney-General should immediately indicate an urgent timeframe for the establishment of the Inspectorate in order to end the ‘out of sight out of mind’ mindset of Queensland Corrective Services who are refusing today to answer questions about the very serious failings behind this person’s suicide in custody.