It’s daunting enough when you get arrested by police, then placed into custody and thrown into a cell. Then you have to go through a degrading strip search.

In New South Wales, there were previously three levels of protective custody for vulnerable inmates, such as myself, who have autism spectrum disorder and other mental health issues.

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.

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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There are a number of groups around the country that inspect prisons and provide feedback and recommendations to governments. These often involve visiting prisons and talking directly to people in custody.

In my speech, I emphasised that strip searching is sexual assault disguised as prison safety. Strip searching is not about safety – and the data proves it.

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.

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?

A number of Victorian prisons may have to be renovated or rebuilt after the Supreme Court found that no “open air” was being provided to inmates in multiple units.

“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.

As the months went by, I started to think about what could be done in that time. I started to see time in a different light.

In recent years, regressive reform of parole laws in many places has made it increasingly difficult for people in prison to access parole.

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.

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

The concern for those who are subjected to government decisions is that they often do not get to see the integrity of the information which was considered by the decision-maker and don’t get to check if it’s correct.

One of the most important aspects of self-advocacy in prison is to understand the rights of prisoners and the limitations of power of prison authorities.

Strip searching is a security practice purportedly used by prison authorities to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering prisons.

All people behind bars should be treated with dignity.

This article discusses some of the human rights that may be relevant in prison with reference to human rights protections under the Human Rights Act 2019 (QLD) in Queensland.