With people in prisons across the country being subjected to an “epidemic of prison lockdowns”, it is important to note that bare minimum safeguards exist in law, in most jurisdictions, that purport to guarantee at least some time ‘in the open air’ each day for people behind bars.

There is a lot of talk about human rights in prison – with things like ‘the Mandela Rules’, ‘the principle of equivalence’, and access to health care without discrimination.

Procedural fairness, often called “natural justice”, is a collection of rights, established under common law in Australia around the 1980s.

Generally, debts can be put into two categories. First, there are private debts (e.g. from a bank, a landlord, a car dealer, or ‘Afterpay’). Second, there are debts owed to the State (e.g. unpaid fines).

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