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This newsletter has been delayed a few months due to our energy and time being directed towards the continuing and escalating crisis in Victoria's private prisons system. Those of you who have been reading newspapers and/or watching television would have seen the horrific happenings at Port Phillip Prison (operated by Group 4) and the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre (operated by CCA).
The Port Phillip Prison opened in September last year and has had seven deaths in custody, about 12 fires, over 100 incidents of self harm, a riot and numerous other incidents. The prison is in crisis.
The Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre has also continued to have serious problems including the recent announcement by the General Manager of the prison; Mr. Kelvin Anderson, around the 8th March that contact visits between women and their children were being stopped. What we understand is that the six hour contact visits on weekends are no longer allowed, that there are no other visit times for women to see their children other than Sundays 3pm-6pm and all visits are to take place in the visits centre. If you have seen the visits centre you would know that the centre is small and there is no way that all the women with children could possible have a visit during this very limited time span (70% of women in prison are mothers). The effect will be that women will not be able to see their kids, nieces, grandchildren and kids are being denied access to their mothers.
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