Australia’s review by the anti-torture watchdog has—again—shone the spotlight on the human rights abuses permitted in the darkness behind prison walls, and provides clear guidance on how governments across the country can prevent torture and mistreatment—and be held more accountable when they do not—in compliance with international human rights standards. These standards should set the floor rather than the ceiling when it comes to upholding and protecting human rights

On December 17, when we reach the end of the state of emergency declared under the Biosecurity Act 2015, prisons will continue to permanently traumatise over 42,000 prisoners held across so-called Australia, as well as over 1400 prisoners detained in immigration prisons.

We are systematically broken down to a six-digit number. I know because I am #177057. I am one of this country’s disposable people. And every single week I struggle to survive a system designed to kill, dehumanise and eradicate my kind. And this is why abolition is the only common-sense option for me. This is why I argue that abolition might be the only thing that breathes life back into my communities and into the lungs of my people.

We, the undersigned, call on the Andrews Government to: Stop the proposed 106 bed expansion of the Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison in Melbourne’s north west announced by the Andrews Government on 19 March 2021. Divert the funds for expansion of the women’s prison to building and supporting 1,000 new public homes.

A new cartoon by Sam Wallman (after William Waltzman) for the Homes not Prisons campaign

One of the starkest and potentially lethal failures exposed by the pandemic is the broken and bloated prison industry, filled with the people successive governments have let down, from ten-year-olds to the elderly. Prisons were failed, overburdened institutions before the pandemic, and they are even more dangerous now.

The Indigenous death in custody of Wayne Fella Morrison occurred less than a year after that of David Dungay. Both deaths evidence lethal practices of structural repetition in the correctional management of Indigenous inmates. Both deaths bring into focus the serial nature of the violence deployed against Indigenous prisoners across Australian states.

In a first for the inmates of Rimutaka Prison – one of New Zealand’s largest carceral sites located thirty kilometres north of Wellington – a house constructed with prison labour was recently added to the stock of Housing New Zealand. The house was lifted over the razor wire and out of the prison compound by crane, and politicians and prison officials were on hand to make the most of the moment.

The letter was written secretly in my cell in ‘A’ Division when I was a prisoner in Pentridge Gaol with two comrades, Brian Pola and Fergus Robinson. There was no shortage of time to write it, as we were in solitary confinement, in our separate cells, for sixteen hours each day.

Transformative justice acknowledges both the harm and violence caused by individuals upon one another, as well as the harm and violence inflicted upon individuals by prisons and structural factors, that can cause social isolation and may contribute to harmful behaviour. Rather than isolating and punishing the person who has caused harm, a transformative justice approach asks, on both an individual and structural level: Who was harmed? How can we facilitate healing? How can we prevent further harm in the future?