Deaths in Custody !

The death penalty was abolished in Australia and it is no longer on the statute books as punishment  for any type of crime, but " death by neglect " seems to be a replacement when people sentenced to prison are denied medical attention, and that seems all too common if the prisoner is Aboriginal.

The state coroner has released her findings into the death of Aboriginal man Eric Whittaker (36 ) who died of a  ruptured brain aneurysm while he lay shackled in a hospital bed.  It was the events that preceded Mr Whittaker's removal to hospital that drew gasps of horror in the coroner's court.

Mr Whittaker made twenty emergency calls for help over the intercom in his prison cell and officers waited for a shift change before attending to him.   When an attending officer finally arrived at  his cell he found the prisoner crouched at the rear and it was obvious that he had urinated, defecated and vomited on himself..  This visit occurred at 8-08 am, shortly after the 8 am changeover and the officer failed to understand that Mr Whittaker needed medical attention.     Despite the prisoner shouting for help for over three hours no action was taken to bring him to the attention of the  clinic staff.

The court listened to a recording of those desperate cries for help and when the prison staff finally responded and despatched him to hospital in an unconscious state he was shackled to the hospital bed by leg restraints.  He became just another " death in custody " statistic.

Thirty years ago we had a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and it seems very little has changed.   Aboriginals are still massively overrepresented in the prison population and  death in custody seems to rarely invoke any sort of crime investigation.  The fact that a prisoner serving a sentence died because of neglect does not seem to warrant a criminal investigation, nor is anyone personally held to account.

Such is the anonymity of the prison system.  It is beset with rules and regulations but responsibility fails to rest on individual shoulders.  The best outcome to come from Parklea Correctional Facility where the prelude to this death occurred is a vague promise that changes will be made to address shortcomings that occurred at the time of this death.

Prison officers do a demanding job in difficult circumstances, and they have considerable political muscle.  Their union is closely associated with the police union and the one thing that strikes absolute fear into any government is the thought of a police strike.  It is that thin blue line that stands between the lawmakers - and the mob !

We will not eradicate this indifference to prisoner health outcome until responsibility rests on individual shoulders.  A group of officers decided not to respond to calls for help because they could leave it to those shortly arriving to commence the next shift. When that happened, there was an inadequate response to what was needed.

This Coroner's inquest system is configured to safely deliver the blame on the dysfunctional prison system itself rather than individual participants.   Nothing will change until any death in custody provokes an immediate criminal investigation that results in failure of duty that in any way resulted in that death resulting in an outcome.

So far, no government has had either the courage or the integrity to apportion blame to the individuals who failed to carry out their legal duties.