Watch Committee for Victoria

Watch Committee for Victoria

MELBOURNE — Around 50 people attended a January 28 meeting to establish an Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee for Victoria.

Late last year, five men and one woman died in private prisons. The usual standard of issuing a press release after a death was not followed after three of the five men's deaths.

Speakers at the meeting included Ray Jackson, who represented the NSW Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee in a 1996 speaking tour of Victoria; Debbie Brennan, a member of Radical Women and coordinator of the speaking tour; Bridget Riggs from Campaign Against Racism; and Catherine Gow, representing People's Justice Alliance, a group campaigning against prison privatisation.

Important recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody have not been followed in the new private prisons.

From GLW issue 304