Making new designs on prison safety

Architecture

New University of Adelaide research is pointing the way for increasing safety in prisons and reducing deaths in custody.

Elizabeth Grant is studying the issue of prison safety for her PhD through the University's School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. (She is also a Lecturer in Aboriginal Architecture at the University.)

As part of her studies, she is undertaking the first ever interviews of Aboriginal prisoners to identify ways of providing safe and culturally appropriate prison design, with the aim of reducing self-harm and suicide.

Despite a Royal Commission and numerous recommendations from coronial findings into Aboriginal deaths in custody, many of South Australia's prisons still have hanging points in cells or other areas where distressed or depressed prisoners are left unattended and unobserved.

She said while Victoria has committed $50 million to improving prison design after a tragic series of deaths at Port Phillip Prison in 1998, South Australia is yet to commit funding to making its prisons safer.

"The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody took place 14 years ago, but mortality rates are still very high - we have reached a stage where the media does not even report deaths in custody anymore," she said.

"I wanted to look at solutions to this problem from an architectural perspective, by talking to end-users of the prison system.

"This type of consultation has never taken place before. An architect who is building a house sits with a client and discusses their needs, but it is obviously very unusual for a prisoner to be asked these questions.

Ms Grant has visited every prison in South Australia, interviewing Aboriginal prisoners about their culture and living conditions.

"Currently, there are no standard rights to a safe environment for prisoners - this is something that needs to be addressed urgently," she said.

"Many of South Australia's prisons only got toilets in the last few decades.

"Think about the effect such conditions have on people who are often already at the lowest point in their lives.

"Sending people to a very depressing environment when their lives are at a crisis point, and where suicide can appear to be the only solution to their problems, is not humane.

"This is something that applies to all prisoners, but even more to Aboriginal prisoners, who live quite differently to European Australians, with relationships to each other, and to the country, central to their survival."

Ms Grant has just been awarded an Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Research Grant that she will use to explore existing precedents in prison design around Australia.

"Some states have already introduced design concepts that open up views of natural environments around the prisons and cell design allowing Aboriginal prisoners to share space, which is culturally important to them, rather than isolating the prisoners in one-person cells," she said.

"Outdoor fires are also being allowed in cases where this is appropriate and safe, so that Aboriginal prisoners can gather in an environment that is culturally appropriate."

"The introduction of art created by the prisoners is another concept that dates back to the 1800s in some prisons in Western Australia and is something that could be easily integrated into prisons in South Australia."

Ms Grant said she is concerned at the conditions she has seen through her research, with many prisons being used as mental institutions, leaving vulnerable people to exist without support in what are often quite dangerous environments.

"Ideally, the findings from this research will assist with the creation of safe environments that don't contribute to suicide and the creation of facilities that treat, rather than punish, the psychiatrically or psychologically ill," she said.

"The provision of proper detoxification facilities is also a key factor in many Aboriginal prisoners' adjustment to incarceration."

Story by Lisa Reid