Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung independent Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe secured Senate support on September 19 to require the Attorney-General to provide quarterly reports on deaths in custody, coronial inquests and incidents of self-harm, miscarriages and stillbirths in prisons.
Labor Senators, including the new minister for Indigenous Australians, voted against the motion.
Thorpe said “human right abuses [in prisons] are kept hidden from public view.
“People are dying preventable deaths, women are being denied proper care during pregnancy and childbirth and self-harm is widespread.
“We need a strong federal response and nation leadership on these critical issues. Transparent reporting and oversight is a crucial part of this.â€
Thorpe said she expected Labor will come up with an excuse to not table quarterly statements in the Senate, adding that it would be easy as the Attorney-General meets regularly with states and territories and can request the data.
“This is not about a few bad jurisdictions or a few bad facilities. This is a national human rights and public health crisis. It needs national attention.â€
The reports would detail the number of: deaths in custody, including breakdown by age groups and cause of death; ongoing coronial inquests; incidents of self-harm in custodial settings; and miscarriages and stillbirths in custodial settings.
While deaths in custody are reported by the Australian Institute of Criminology, there is currently no publicly available systematic data on self-harm, pregnancy, childbirth, or pregnancy-related outcomes including live births, stillbirths, and miscarriages in prisons.
In July,  evidence of a pre-term miscarriage at Dillwynia women’s prison in Sydney. A recent  of the corrections system heard that women  while in labour. In 2018, after an Aboriginal woman  in a prison cell.
Similarly, incidents of self harm, are not publicly reported.
Thorpe has been pushing government to take a lead in reforming the criminal legal system. In March she gained crossbench support for stronger federal action on deaths in custody.