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Prisoners With Disabilities Are Routinely Abused in Australia

According to a new report from Human Rights Watch.
Image via Human Rights Watch

Prisoners with disabilities are being held for years in solitary confinement, and are at high risk of sexual assault from fellow prisoners and staff, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.

The report describes life inside Australia's prisons for people with disabilities—outlining horrific incidents of abuse, neglect, and assault. HRW found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners with disabilities were at even higher risk of abuse than their peers.

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"Four officers tackled me. I had played up the day before so they were trying to teach me a lesson," a male Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoner told HRW. "The senior officer stood on my jaw while the other hit my head in and restrained me. They said, ‘You don’t run this prison little cunt, we do,’ and they cut my clothes off."

Sexual violence was also common, with HRW documenting 32 cases of sexual assaults that prisoners said were carried out by fellow prisoners or prison staff.

"I got hit on sexually by officers quite regularly, even though I’m old. Male predators work in that jail [a women’s prison] next to young vulnerable girls," one female prisoner told the organisation. "They catch you when you’re working by yourself and touch your boobs, bum, or put a hand around your waist. Or they make stupid comments like, ‘You’ve been here a while, you must be horny.’"

The reports also highlights concerns about prison carers, who are fellow able-bodied prisoners assigned to help disabled inmates with day-to-day tasks like cleaning their cells. HRW found a number of prison carers were people previously convicted of sex crimes or accused of sexual violence in prison.

Most prisoners with disabilities that Human Rights Watch spoke with had spent time in solitary confinement. These solitary confinement units saw prisoners isolated for 22 hours a day, and almost all of them were full at the prisons HRW visited.

Overcrowded prisons have increasingly become an issue in Australia, as the country's prison population reached an all-time high of 41,204 in 2017. People with disabilities are disproportionately represented in Australian prisons—representing 50 percent of the prison population and just 18 percent of the broader population.

In its report, Human Rights Watch suggests a number of recommendations, including ending the use of solitary confinement for prisoners with disabilities.

You can read the full report here.