Kelly Flanagan remembers the screams from the cell next door and despairing at being locked away in her own small room as guard shortages meant prisoners weren’t allowed out into common areas.
“You’ve got this constant mindf--k of them not telling you when you’re coming out,” Flanagan says. “It literally is easier for some girls to think about killing themselves rather than constantly not knowing.”
Wiradjuri woman Kelly Flanagan, a recent prisoner at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
The Annual Prisons Statistical Profile – updated on August 1 to include the 2023-24 financial year – reveals the rate of prisoner self-harm has remained stubbornly high. The figures come as the Allan government’s tougher bail laws put more people behind bars.
The Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum security prison for women in Ravenhall in Melbourne’s west, recorded 54.5 self-harm incidents per 100 prisoners – double the rate two years earlier.
Indigenous women were particularly vulnerable: the First Nations share of Victoria’s prison population has almost doubled over the past decade, and the self-harm rate at Dame Phyllis Frost was the highest of any Victorian jail.
The overall rate for the state’s prisons was 9.7 incidents per 100 prisoners, up from 7.4 in 2016-17. The Melbourne Assessment Prison followed Dame Phyllis Frost with 45.8, followed by Port Phillip Prison with 17.1.
The Department of Justice told The Age the rate at Dame Phyllis Frost had decreased by almost half in the last financial year, but this was not included in the most recent statistical profile.
Flanagan was released from the centre in March and said the situation was still unacceptable. She believes high self-harm rates were linked to increased lockdowns as well as a lack of guards to allow prisoners out of their cells.
She now fears the Allan government’s toughening of bail laws will mean more people will be exposed to these conditions, making rehabilitation harder and leading to more recidivism, trauma, crime and deaths in custody.
“This is going to kill our people,” says Flanagan, a Wiradjuri woman. “Look at the self-harm now ... then, imagine what it’s going to be like when the prison population is doubled. They can’t manage what they’ve got now.”
The Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison at Ravenhall.Credit: Joe Armao
A Department of Justice spokesman said many people entered custody needing mental health support and there were systems in place to deal with this.
This year’s state budget included a $779 million expansion of the prison system and an $8000 sign-on bonus to recruit new guards.
“We’ve hired over 1000 new staff across youth justice and corrections in the past year, and new recruits are due to start next month at [the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre],” the spokesperson said.
However, prisoner advocates believe Victoria has taken the wrong approach.
Adrianna Mackay, acting executive officer of Flat Out, which helps women get out of, and stay out of, jail, said the latest data was alarming and reflected rising homelessness, poverty and family violence around Australia.
“Instead of addressing these issues through housing, healthcare, and support services that prevent harm, the government continues to double down on punishment and incarceration,” she said.
“Prisons are not designed to care for people in crisis – they only deepen trauma.”
Mackay believes conditions at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre have worsened, despite the death in custody of Veronica Nelson in 2020 having increased scrutiny.
“For over a year, women have faced near-daily, unplanned lockdowns, restricted phone access, invasive strip searches, and lost parole opportunities – often because they cannot secure housing amid a worsening housing crisis,” she said.
Nerita Waight, chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, also blamed lockdowns for increased self-harm.
“Being confined to your small cell and being unable to leave for days at a time stops women from being able to attend appointments, programs or make phone calls to loved ones,” she said.
“I could not think of anything more harmful to someone’s mental health. There is a complete lack of mental health supports for women at [the centre].”
Waight said Aboriginal women were some of the most vulnerable prisoners as they had often experienced family violence, housing instability and displacement and were fighting the removal of their children.
Corrections Minister Enver Erdogan told state parliament’s public accounts and estimates committee last month that a lockdown at Dame Phyllis Frost was recorded on 249 days of a 303-day period between July 1 last year and April 30.
A lockdown can last as little as 15 minutes, but Erdogan said the average length was three hours and 21 minutes.
He said standard operational reasons such as bad weather and emergencies accounted for a substantial portion. Out-of-cell time at Victorian prisons was about an hour above the national average, he added.
At a hearing on June 4, Corrections Victoria Commissioner Larissa Strong said lockdowns at Dame Phyllis Frost were related to staff shortages but confined to specific units and had covered the entire prison only once in the last financial year. Strong said the prison had stopped hiring guards because prisoner numbers declined during the pandemic.
“We were proposing to close some large units and we did not want to impact on staff, so we were deliberately not recruiting,” she said. “Now we are pivoting.”
Kelly Flanagan, however, said lockdowns had caused her to miss appointments to arrange housing so she could be released on parole, prolonging her jail time and worsening her mental health.
Now she’s been released after being sentenced to 3½ years’ jail for armed robbery, assault and false imprisonment, she is trying to turn her life around. But she worries about those still inside.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” she said.
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN: 13 92 76
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