The Northern Territory Government denied a United Nations team from visiting its prisons, juvenile detention centres, and watchhouses on Sunday.
It comes two weeks after the acting NT Ombudsman released a report revealing “unacceptable” conditions for people held in police watch houses.
NT Shadow Attorney General Chansey Paech said the blocking of the UN team is “serious andunprecedented.”
UNWGAD
Two members of the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) are currently visiting Australia, looking into the “deprivation of liberty” — i.e. imprisonment.
The UNWGAD investigates cases of “deprivation of liberty” that may be inconsistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The group planned to meet with officials and collect information from prisons, juvenile detention centres, and police watch houses (intended to hold people for short periods of time).
Prison visit
On Sunday, the NT Government blocked the UNWGAD from visiting correctional facilities.
Corrections Minister Gerard Maley told TDA the Territory Government is “unable to accommodate detention facility visits by the UNWGAD” because of “operational capacity, safety and workforce resourcing priorities”.
It is the second time an Australian government has denied the UN from visiting its prisons.
In 2022, a group from the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (UN SPT) was blocked from entering places of detention in NSW and Queensland.
The UNSPT then suspended its tour of Australia.
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Australia is one of four countries where the UNSPT has had to cancel or pause a visit.
Report
In late November, Acting NT Ombudsman Bronwyn Haack released a report finding that despite police watch houses being designed for short stays, people are being held there long-term.
Haack found these watch houses are over-crowded, and that people detained in them have limited access to privacy, clean clothes, showers or toothbrushes.
Some told Haack’s team they had been detained in a watch house for two months, with “practically no time outside [a] cell”.
Haack recommended removing people sentenced to prison time from police watch houses “as a matter of urgency.”
Other recommendations included improving access to basic needs and more space for prisoners.
Maley welcomed the report, saying that since coming to power last year, the Country Liberal Party “has increased our correctional capacity... easing the pressure on watch houses.”
“If you do the wrong thing, we will find you a bed,” he added.
Opposition
Shadow Attorney General Chansey Paech said denying the UNWAGD is “a serious and unprecedented step for the Northern Territory.”
Paech said the Ombudsman report “highlighted serious concerns about conditions in detention, yet instead of addressing them, the CLP is now blocking the UN from seeing those conditions for themselves.”
