Death in custody in private prison
MELBOURNE — George Drinken, a 28-year-old remand prisoner, was found hanged in his cell at Port Philip Prison in the early evening of October 30.
The Port Phillip Prison, a 600-cell maximum security and remand prison in the outer western suburb of Laverton, was opened on August 18 and has been receiving prisoners only in the last six weeks.
Drinken's death is the first suicide in a private prison in Victoria, and the 18th death in custody in a private prison in Australia since 1992.
Drinken was in the mainstream "Scarborough" unit. On the day of his death, it is alleged that there were four serious bashings and one stabbing within the Scarborough unit alone.
Serious concern has been expressed over the existence of six horizontal metal bars on the inside of each cell window in 580 cells at the Port Phillip Prison and 490 cells at the Fulham Correctional Centre in Sale, managed by Australasian Correctional Management (ACM).
The director of Group 4, the company operating the Port Phillip Prison, when questioned by the Corrections Working Group of the Federation of Community Legal Centres about these hanging points, replied that the bars were necessary for the purposes of "waterproofing the building".
George Drinken is the second person this year to die in private prison custody while on remand. Cheryl Black died at the Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre on March 28. There have also been a number of suicides and attempted suicides in police cells in the past 18 months.
The use of police custody and remand clearly needs extensive re-examination. Victorian Police's use of "zero tolerance" — saturation-style policing reliant on the use of police and remand custody — is producing exploding numbers of predominantly young people in custody.
Additionally, the increasing over-representation in custody of people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities, compounded by savage Legal Aid cuts, indicates the misuse of the remand system.
[From the People's Justice Alliance and Prisoners' Action Group.]