Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about a tragedy in Western Australia: another death in custody in the women's prison just yesterday. It is a tragedy and really does need the urgent attention of the Western Australian government.

As I have spoken about in this place before, WA has a range of mandatory sentencing laws. In addition, in WA its harder to get bail or parole and people end up in prison for the nonpayment of fines and for relatively minor offences such as breaching a move-on order. All of this adds to our prison population, and more recently those of us who support justice reinvestment over incarceration have been absolutely alarmed at the growing number of women incarcerated in WA.

WA continues to have deaths in custody. All of this should lead to a compassionate government taking serious stock of what is happening to its citizens and why it is happening. Yet, unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears with the Premier and the corrective services minister calling for more prison sentences for minor offences. And yesterday there was another death in custody: a 50-year-old woman who I believe suicided at Bandyup Prison. What a tragedy—an avoidable tragedy. I offer my condolences to the family and friends of this woman.

Last year the Inspector of Custodial Services described Bandyup as the harshest and most neglected prison in the state. The report went on to characterise women's imprisonment in WA as a crisis and Bandyup as bearing the brunt of that crisis. The number of women in prison has been growing rapidly at twice the rate of men. Bandyup is the mirror to the Barnett government's harsh sentencing laws, its tight bail and parole and its push for more mandatory sentencing.

The prison has a design capacity of 183. In December there were 348 women at Bandyup. More than one third of those women are on remand; 121 women are almost enough to fill the jail in their own right. This means women sleep on mattresses on the floor in cells designed for one that have two crammed into them, with their heads up against the toilet. This is clearly unacceptable, yet no action has been taken to address this overcrowding, apart from the Department of Corrective Services being ordered by the minister to look at options within current prisons. One of the options is to build a wall down the centre of the male prison and that option was put up last year. How long does it take to build one wall? Only 10 per cent of Bandyup's prison population is maximum security but, of course, it is required to operate as a maximum security facility because of this figure, and this, of course, disadvantages women who are in medium and minimum security.

The inspector's report is chilling, and in April the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee of Western Australia reported in a news release:

We hope it will not take a death in Bandyup before the government acts on the numerous suggestions, reports and recommendations on women's imprisonment in Western Australia.

Well, yesterday that tragic death, a suicide, happened.

It is time for the Barnett government to review its bail and parole procedures, and it is time to stop jailing people for the non-payment of fines. Deaths in custody in WA police cells and WA jails must stop. How much longer do we wait for justice for Ms Dhu, Mr Wallam and how long will we wait for this woman?