Each edition contains news articles and investigative pieces. These are topical stories that are usually about prisons and criminal justice.
We also summarise the latest criminal justice news around the country.
In nearly every Australian state and territory, there are thousands of people facing prison time due to unpaid fines.
Including a Corrections Minister stepping down in WA, inmates helping raise orphaned lambs in NSW, mandatory sentencing for gun theft in TAS and more.
Welcome to Coronial Corner, where we chat the coroners’ courts and what they say about preventable deaths in custody and the broader system.
In prison, time is both punishment and currency. It is counted in courtrooms, crossed off calendars and measured against the possibility of release.
On an average night, there are about 900 children in youth detention around the country.
Long wait times to access rehabilitation and wellness programs and a lack of even basic pre-release support is contributing to high recidivism rates in Queensland, the state’s Auditor-General has found.
A successful Australia-first drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in a WA prison will soon shut down due to overcrowding.
The state government introduced legislation to Parliament last week that allows for people in prison’s legal right of one hour in the open air every day to be limited due to a range of reasons.
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A man was unlawfully kept in a South Australian prison for months after his release date due to a “systems error”, and was not told about this for five years, an Ombudsman investigation has found.
In early December, the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited Australia. Their purpose was to provide guidance on how international human rights standards apply to prisons and places of detention.
“It is our assessment that Victoria Police did not comply with the Surveillance Devices Act when installing and maintaining integrated listening devices,” the report said.
Under a state-wide policy, Victoria Police officers wake up those being held in watch houses overnight every hour to check on their welfare, either by having a torch light shone on them, speaking to them or asking them to move or stand up.
We put a call out for messages from loved ones of people in prison across the country, and more than 100 people responded. We hope these brighten your day.
Including smoking being banned in WA prisons, a death in custody at Mary Hutchinson in TAS, a painkiller trial hailed as a success in QLD and more.
Nothing warms my heart more than the selflessness of good people doing good deeds for our sisters and brothers in prison.
Every year in early December, a group of volunteers come together to pack a hamper for every woman in prison in Victoria.
The NSW Government has moved to make it easier to find incarcerated people guilty of a “prison offence”, against the advice of independent experts.
First Nations people and those of African descent are far more likely to be searched by Victoria Police and have force used against them, a new report by a community volunteer group has found.
A man on remand at a privately-run prison in Victoria was “punched in the face” by a supervisor and then blocked from accessing a medical appointment, the state Ombudsman has found.
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