Law
Implementing Human Rights in Closed
Environments Conference
Dr Bronwyn Naylor
Associate Professor, Law Faculty, Monash University, Victoria

The research question

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The prison-based research
Victoria and Western Australia
Policy makers – interviews
Prison Governors – interviews
Staff – surveys
Prisoners – focus groups
Questions:
Identifying important rights
Current practices/ policies
Culture change and training (management)
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Some preliminary themes – the prisoner voice
‘ We are in gaol but ...’
 Family visits
 Prison conditions
 Respect
• Health care; staff relations; cultural understanding
 Effective grievance and enforcement avenues
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Family visits and contact
– Not being able to touch/hug
– Strip searches
– Indigenous prisoner being held ‘out of country’
– Visitors being treated disrespectfully in some prisons
• There should be a ‘Right for your visitors to be treated humanely’
– In other prisons – good facilities for family interaction:
• ‘you feel like you’re out in society’
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Prison conditions
– Overcrowding
– Double bunking, smokers and non-smokers
– Heating/ cooling; airconditioning for staff but not prisoners in hot climates
– Court custody conditions
• Food; medication; facilities
• Ombudsman reports
• Consequent difficulties in focussing on court case
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Respect and humane treatment
 Health care
 Quality of medical treatment in prisons;
 Access to own medical records
 Access to specialist treatment outside prisons
 Treatment with respect when attending outside appointments
 Impact of overcrowding – multiple impacts
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 Staff relations
 Cultural understanding – sense of discrimination amongst Indigenous prisoners.
– Indigenous practice
– Attendance at funerals
– Eating habits
• A ‘right not to be grossly humiliated in front of others’.
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Effective complaints enforcement avenues
 Clear rights with clear avenues
 Avenues that can produce results
 Safe avenues – no recriminations
 Prisoner rep meetings with Governor –‘it makes you feel like, well, he acknowledges that we have some rights ...’
 Prisoners involved in new staff induction – seen as leading to more respectful relations with that cohort.
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The meaning of ‘human rights’
 Meanings
– A ‘rights’ claim with international legitimacy (prisoner)
– A threat/lever to use to obtain response (prisoner)
– An extra compliance requirement (staff)
– A claim to unmerited entitlement (staff);
– Staff rights being overridden by prisoner rights (staff);
– Meaningless – ‘security always wins’ (prisoner)
– Meaningless – no means of enforcement (prisoner);
– Increased formal access to management but only for unchallenging requests (prisoner)
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 Language – ‘Human Rights’ language not initially recognised by prisoners
 Language ‘Healthy Prisons’ (posters in Victorian prison)
 Language – ‘choose respect’ (sign in regional WA prison)
 Disconnect between ‘human rights’ and management language and the practical meaning of being treated with respect
 Prisoner access to human rights information – some prisons provide; others query prisoner request for information.
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 It’s not like outside... [there] if you brush it off, two minutes later you go on your way. [Here] you’re constantly thinking about [it] think all day every day.
 ‘You need somewhere to let off steam – there is no privacy.’
 In the end ‘I’m still human.’
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