Officers indifferent to prisoners' well-being, inquest hears

Malcolm Brown | SMH | July 28 2011

Two prison officers who were escorts to a group of prisoners when one of the prisoners died of a heart attack received withering criticism from counsel in the Coroner's Court in Glebe today.

Ragni Mathur, representing the family of the deceased prisoner, Mark Holcroft, said the officers, Peter Sheppard and Clive Bateman, had demonstrated an "indifference" to the welfare of the prisoners they were escorting.

The trip, on August 27, 2009, was from Bathurst jail to Mannus Correctional Centre near Tumbarumba in southern New South Wales. It lasted four and half hours and, according to evidence before Deputy State Coroner Paul MacMahon, the prisoners were not given water or allowed a toilet stop.

Mr Holcroft, 59, who was starting a seven-month sentence for a drink-driver offence, suffered a heart attack towards the end of the trip.

Despite screaming and thumping on the sides of the van by the seven other prisoners in Mr Holcroft's compartment - a commotion lasting about 40 minutes and still continuing when the truck arrived at Mannus - officers Sheppard and Bateman did not stop.

Officer Sheppard, who was monitoring a video camera surveying the compartment where Mr Holcroft was being transported, has told the inquest that he did not see anything unusual. Both officers have said that they heard the thumping and thought the prisoners were just acting up. They could not find the handset for the two-way intercom system and had no way of communicating with the prisoners.

Why are deaths in custody rising?

Inga Ting | Crikey | 15 April 2011

Twenty years today after the Royal Commission report into Aboriginal deaths in custody was released, fatalities in prison custody are rising and inmates are still dying as a result of the same lethal practices the Commission sought to eliminate.

According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, which is responsible for compiling national statistics on deaths in custody, the number of prison deaths since 2006 has risen nationwide, despite the size of the Australian prison population remaining fairly stable. In the decade to 2008 — the last year for which verifiable figures are available — 471 people died in Australian prison custody, an increase of nearly 50% from the decade to 1989, when the Royal Commission was conducting its investigations.

The AIC has not yet released statistics for 2009 and 2010. But figures obtained by Crikey — a spreadsheet can be downloaded here (4.4MB) — reveal deaths in prison custody have increased by about 50% in the past decade in both NSW and Queensland, the two states with the worst records in the country. NSW — which accounts for more than one third of the 1260 prison deaths recorded between 1980 and 2008 — recorded 161 prison custody deaths in the decade to 2009, compared to 106 during the time of the Royal Commission. Ninety-two people have died in Queensland prison custody in the decade to 2009, compared to 64 during the time of the Commission.

While figures for 2009 could only be obtained for half of all Australian jurisdictions, data provided by state and territory coroners indicates more than 438 prisoners died in Australian jails in the decade to 2009, compared to 323 in the decade to 1989. Twenty-six prison deaths were reported to coroners in NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT in 2009 — 12 in NSW, 12 in Queensland, one in Tasmania and one in the ACT. The Northern Territory, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia refused to supply figures to Crikey.

Fremantle-based PhD law researcher and convenor of the Human Rights Alliance, Gerry Georgatos, says Australia has one of the world’s worst deaths in custody records and a Senate inquiry is urgently needed. Georgatos has been independently monitoring Australian deaths in custody through information published on Corrective Services websites, media reports and other sources.

“During the last two years there have been an additional 160 deaths in custody Australia-wide. The annual average of deaths in custody in 1991 was 71; it is now 78, with the last verifiable year, 2008, recording 86 deaths,” he said, adding that 63% of deaths in custody occur in prisons.

“From February 20 to April 4, 2010 there were six prison deaths in Queensland, WA and NSW jails, plus a seventh death in NSW of an 18-year-old escapee shot to death — this high rate is left unexplored.”

The rate of death in privatised prisons is far higher than in state prisons, which Georgatos cites as a serious concern given the drive towards privatisation in NSW and other states. “People die in privatised prisons at three times the rate they die in government prisons: 4.5 deaths per 1000 prisoners in privatised prisons in Australia, compared to 1.3 in government prisons,” he said.