A leaked report shows staff shortages have created rolling lockdowns at a Melbourne prison, where there have been numerous suicide attempts and limited access to water.
As many as seven prisoners a month are attempting suicide at a women’s prison on the edge of Melbourne, where staff shortages mean women are being kept in lockdowns that resemble solitary confinement.
Prisoners report shortages of food and a lack of access to clean drinking water during these lockdowns.
“We were going days without water,” says Ashleigh Chapman, who was released from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre last month. “We were getting quite sick and a lot of us had lost a lot of weight.”
Chapman says that as the lockdowns escalated this year, the water in her unit turned green and was not drinkable, but prison officers were not allowed to fill up her water bottle. She says the water was turning her sink green and had a strong metallic taste. Prison officers were told about the issue on multiple occasions.
Kelly Flanagan, who was also recently released from the prison, said there was green water in her cell. She says it smelt strongly of sewage and was making people ill.
Chapman says prison officers initially filled up drink bottles for the women from taps outside the cells, but were eventually instructed not to do this, leaving the women able to buy water from the canteen only once a week.
The lockdowns at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, Victoria’s only maximum security women’s prison, are not due to the behaviour of women or any unrest in the prison. Instead, they have been attributed to staff shortages, with large numbers of prison officers calling in sick, meaning not all parts of the prison can be unlocked.
Ordinarily, cells are opened about 8am and women are given about 11 hours out-of-cell time a day. During this time women attend appointments for housing, addiction, mental health and legal support, as well as visiting with loved ones and making phone calls.
Nerita Waight, chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, says the organisation is deeply concerned about the conditions in the prison, with clients reporting that programs, calls and visits are still being disrupted.
“It is unacceptable to punish the women further for the sheer incompetence of the department to manage its staffing requirements,” Waight tells The Saturday Paper.
Source: Exclusive: Female prisoners going without food and clean water | The Saturday Paper