By Edward Johnston
BRISBANE — Seventeen inmates from the 20-cell Maximum Security Unit (MSU) at the Woodford Correctional Centre in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland, refused food from April 4 in protest at conditions in the US-style "supermax" unit. The hunger strike ended on April 13 when the jail's general manager and corrections department senior executives agreed to talk to the prisoners about their demands.
The Prisoners' Legal Service (PLS) has launched a test case representing one prisoner, James Kreutzer, in the Queensland Supreme Court challenging the legality of the MSU. State prisons minister Russell Cooper, speaking in parliament on April 22, accused PLS solicitor Karen Fletcher of involvement in a "criminal conspiracy" with "rapists, murderers and bank robbers" because she supported the prisoners' campaign against their indefinite "lock-down".
Fletcher told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly the case aims to show that the MSU is not legal under the Queensland Corrective Service Act because that act states prisoners may be "separately confined" — held in solitary confinement — for a maximum of seven days.
"In the MSU, prisoners can be confined for 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives. The cells are sound-proofed and designed to prevent any visual access to anywhere outside the cell. These sensory deprivation chambers would drive most people raving mad in a matter of days."
Access to a TV is a "privilege". Only two books at a time are permitted from the prison library. No property whatsoever may be sent to prisoners from the outside. From February, prisoners have been denied contact visits with their families. "They get an hour a fortnight, through a glass wall. We believe that the unit is inhumane, dangerous, illegal and in breach of the UN's minimum standard guidelines for prisons", Fletcher said.
The hunger strikers' demands included an independent assessment of the compliance of the unit with the law and, in the interim, reinstatement of their contact visits, measures to increase their mental and physical exercise and more time outside their cells for contact with other prisoners.
In response to Cooper's claim that she is part of a "conspiracy" to "incite violent riots", Fletcher said, "We are prisoner advocates and prisoners are always the target of both the Coalition's and Labor's 'law and order' campaigns. 1998 is an election year in Queensland and the law and order auction is well underway."
Fletcher explained that both the Borbidge government and the previous Goss Labor government allowed massive overcrowding in prisons "in order to be seen as the toughest crime fighters since Batman and Robin. In the 1995 election campaign, the ALP government abolished the principle of prison being a last resort for offenders under 25. Judges and magistrates are now encouraged to imprison young people."
The government recently passed a raft of amendments to various acts introducing a category of "serious violent" offences punishable by stiff mandatory sentences for which no remission is available and parole eligibility is pushed back until the last months of the sentence. Last year, the government sacked the entire state parole board because a person on a community release program committed a violent offence. The new board is not granting parole to anyone with a history of violent offences.
The prison population has more than doubled in the last three years, to more than 4500, and it continues to increase at the rate of 100 a month. The government has allocated the lion's share of the state capital works budget to building new jails.
Cooper "has gone mad with additional security" since the escape of prisoner Brendon Abbott, Fletcher said. He has authorised millions of dollars for armoured cars, a special "flying squad", and acres of razor wire and reinforced mesh. "In B-Block at Longlands, where Abbott escaped from, the whole unit is now covered with close-weave steel mesh which no natural light or air can penetrate. It's a stinking, overcrowded, violent, hopeless hole. And Cooper has the gall to say it's PLS who's inciting a riot!".
The hunger strikers and the PLS have been defended by the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties and the Coalition for Criminal Justice. The National Network of Criminal Justice Activists, formed at the 2nd National Conference of Criminal Justice Activists in Brisbane in March, have also been "very supportive", said Fletcher.
A group of former prisoners, in cooperation with community radio station 4ZZZ's prisoners' program, have formed the Prisoners Action Group. A meeting to organise a campaign will be held at the Catholic Prison Ministry on May 1. Phone the PLS on (07) 3846 3384.