News and Investigations

In July 2025, four organisations came together to make sure the truth about prisons, policing and criminalisation in Australia was heard on the world stage.

In October last year, thousands of New South Wales prison officers also went on strike, plunging incarcerated people into abrupt and extended lockdowns.

Australia is in the midst of an epidemic of prison lockdowns. There is often little or no warning that these lockdowns are going to happen, leaving many people in virtual solitary confinement for hours or days.

The true cost of phone calls in prison has been revealed for the first time.

More than eight years since Ravenhall prison opened, recidivism rates at the prison are higher than those at public prisons.

An Ombudsman investigation has found people in Canberra’s only prison paid nearly $125,000 to make phone calls across two years when this should have been free.

Should going to prison mean never being allowed to hug your partner or child? Is denying physical contact a just punishment, or does it harm families and human dignity? And what do human rights have to say about it?

While for the most part calls to mobiles are becoming cheaper, we clearly still have a long way to go.

Including seven children escaping youth detention in Tasmania, two men being charged over prison murder in Queensland, a coroner pushing for bans on spit hoods in prison in the Northern Territory and more.

Currently, people in prison serving a sentence of fewer than three years in the state can vote in state and local government elections, as well as federal elections. This plan would restrict voting rights to only those serving a sentence of one year or less for state elections.