Latest news with #HakeaPrison
ABC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Dire conditions in WA prisons will have consequences for everyone
Most Western Australians are within driving distance of human rights abuses. That's the confronting reality brought into sharp focus by the prison watchdog this week. Few would expect prisoners to get an easy ride, but what is going on behind taxpayer-funded barbed wire fences at Hakea Prison is much worse — both for those inside, and the rest of us outside. Days without fresh air, sleeping on the floor next to a toilet, having to block your ears so cockroaches don't crawl in, extremely limited access to phone calls and almost non-existent education and support programs. "The conditions are still in breach of international human rights," Inspector of Custodial Services Eamon Ryan said on Tuesday, noting he'd raised similar concerns more than a year ago. Those concerns were especially significant, he said, because almost everyone who goes into prison will one day come out. How they are treated while locked up, he said, is what decides who you might be standing next to in the shopping centre or driving alongside one day. "And right now, the conditions in Hakea just simply don't provide any sort of rehabilitation, any sort of possibility for men to improve themselves so they don't return to a life of offending when they're released," he said. That's not good news for anyone, especially because the rest of the prison system is also in a pretty poor state. These issues are almost certainly not intentional. But they are an entirely predictable outcome of two key choices made by successive governments of both stripes. The first part of the problem is that WA's imprisonment rate has been increasing recently from an already high base. It rose 16 per cent between 2022 and 2024, mainly due to the rate of prisoners on remand exploding by 41 per cent. The Justice Department has said those increases can at least be partially attributed to a rise in family and domestic violence offences. Few would argue against those laws — but prison pressures would indicate they were introduced either without understanding the impact they would have on prison populations, or without regard for that impact. The same can be said of other laws which have been introduced over recent years to make it harder for some people to get bail, or to increase the length of their sentence. Hakea is particularly vulnerable to increasing remand rates because it mostly houses prisoners who are yet to be sentenced. Looking across the state though, all but two prisons are either over capacity or above 95 per cent. "The prison system is full and there is no spare capacity for more prisoners," Inspector Ryan wrote. "Likewise, there is no infrastructure capacity available should the need arise in response to a major incident." That squeeze is also raising the risk of a major incident — as shown by a riot at West Kimberley Regional Prison at the weekend. An increasing population isn't a problem in and of itself though. The problem is that sufficient capacity hasn't been built to avoid the situation where three or four prisoners are being crammed into cells designed for one or two people. And this isn't new, with Inspector Ryan's predecessor Neil Morgan calling for urgent funding for new prisons in 2016. No new prison has since been built, just additions to existing facilities. The government has begun work to turn things around at Hakea and more broadly. A state-wide infrastructure plan has been prepared by the department and is currently sitting with government. Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia told Parliament earlier this month it "seeks to address the challenge of more prisons". Then staff will need to be found and trained to run that prison — a challenge when the WA Prison Officers Union estimates the state is about 1,200 officers short already. And Papalia has said the Corrective Services Academy is running at capacity. "We need to be encouraging people to come into the job," secretary Andy Smith told ABC Radio Perth this week. "People don't go through high school thinking 'I'd love to be a prison officer' [like] they do for police, ambos, teachers, nurses, doctors. "But we've got to do something to get people into this job." Similar resourcing issues plague emergency services, education and health. All are just as important to a well-functioning society. The difference is how they affect a government's chances at the ballot box. As the family member of one recent Hakea inmate said this week, he couldn't have cared less about conditions behind bars until he personally knew the person experiencing them. Regardless of how prisons impact politicians' fortunes though, there's no excuse for a system which breaches human rights. Western Australia does not have poor finances to blame. Instead, the reported human rights abuses — which will only result in angry prisoners more likely to reoffend — are the result of choices by those in power.
ABC News
7 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Hakea Prison still breaching national and international human rights standards
Conditions in one of WA's busiest prisons are continuing to breach national and international human rights standards, according to the prisons watchdog. An inspection found Hakea Prison in Canning Vale remained overcrowded, with some cells holding three prisoners despite being designed for one. "The conditions are still in breach of international human rights," Inspector of Custodial Services Eamon Ryan told the ABC. "The prison is full, way over capacity, and the prisoners that are being held there are not getting any sort of effective rehabilitation. The prison is the state's main remand facility, mostly holding inmates who are yet to be sentenced. Mr Ryan said the problem with a lack of rehabilitation went beyond individual prisoners. "Most people who are in prison will one day be released from prison, and they'll be standing next to you in the shopping centre or on the street," he said. "And if they don't get effective rehabilitation, they're more than likely to come out worse than they went in." Longstanding problems came to a head in mid-2024 when Mr Ryan issued a show cause notice to the government over its running of the facility — one of the strongest warnings he can issue. Since then, he said, there had been increased recruitment of prison officers to address staffing pressures and the creation of a task force to tackle other issues. "Despite this, the men at Hakea are still being held in conditions that do not meet the basic level of decent treatment required under national and international human rights and standards," Mr Ryan's report reads. "There is limited evidence available to me to show that the significant system level reform and change needed is likely to be achieved." The report's first recommendation is for the government to hold a "formal inquiry" into problems at Hakea to work out a path forward. "The problems in Hakea are symptomatic of the broader problems within the justice system," Mr Ryan said. "I think we need to have a circuit breaker. "We need to look at all options, not just how to manage prisons, not just how to have increased bed capacity. "We need to look at diversion programs, we need to look at pre-release programs, we need to look at programs and rehabilitation within prison, and then better support once people are released from prison to help them not return to prison." A family member of a prisoner who was recently in Hakea has described conditions as "barbaric", echoing many of Inspector Ryan's concerns. The ABC has referred to the family member as Darren because he asked to remain anonymous due to an upcoming sentencing hearing. "The conditions in the cells are unhygienic. There's cockroaches everywhere," he said. "[They said] on one occasion there were 40 cockroaches overnight that they caught in one room, and three [people] to a cell. Darren said he had tried to visit the family member six times over about two months, but half were cancelled before he could attend, which he blamed on short-staffing and lockdowns. He said he used to believe in locking up prisoners and throwing away the key, but seeing a close family member's experience first-hand had completely changed his views. "We should be putting money into the prisons to do rehabilitation because all we're doing in there is breeding offenders and turning them against the custodial system," he said. The family member had recently been transferred to a different prison, Darren said, where they were doing "much better". In a statement, the Justice Department said it was "actively implementing changes" at Hakea, including efforts to improve medical and custodial staffing. "We remain committed to addressing issues identified by [the Inspector of Custodial Services] and delivering better conditions and outcomes for Hakea Prisoners," Director General Kylie Maj said. Corrective Services Commissioner Brad Royce said a Hakea task force was working to improve the safety, care and welfare of prisoners and return to normal daily routines. "Beyond Hakea, the department is also strategically managing the overall adult prisoner population across WA through a newly established adult prisoner population co-ordination working group," he said. "This initiative demonstrates our commitment to systemic, state-wide solutions." The department supported or supported in principle all of the recommendations it was responsible for, including allowing all prisoners access to at least one hour of fresh air each day, ensuring access to clean clothes and increasing access to social visits.
BBC News
16-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
The convicted ex-bike gang member playing at The Open
Media opportunities with golfers do not generally cover gangs and prisons, but Ryan Peake's path to his major championship debut has been anything but normal. In fact, when Royal Portrush last staged The Open in 2019, Peake had just completed a five-year sentence for serious assault at Hakea Prison in Western Australia. A talented junior golfer who turned professional aged 19, a "burnt out" Peake drifted away from the game and joined the Rebels, an outlawed motorcycle gang, when he was does a promising young golfer from Perth become a "bikie"?"I was just normalised to it," said the 31-year-old, who won the New Zealand Open to qualify for The Open at Royal Portrush. "It wasn't abnormal from where I was from to hang out in that sort of scene with my friends."It's something that I did find love in and I did enjoy it. I was interested in it and I just found something there that I felt like I hadn't found anywhere else." 'I wanted to achieve better things' For Peake - who began playing golf aged 10 - being a "bikie" was like having a "hobby that you live and breathe as well".However, aligning himself with that lifestyle ultimately landed him in jail for his part in assaulting a rival gang member who, in his words, was making "threats towards us". "We just went to deal with it, and honestly, it wasn't meant to happen like that," Peake recalled. "We were generally just going there for a chat and he was probably going to get a couple of punches along the way and it was left at that."It just happened to be that the threats he threatened us with were true. He was armed and it escalated from there."Having played in the same Australian junior golf teams as future Open champion Cameron Smith, adjusting to "appalling conditions" in a maximum security correctional facility represented a dramatic downfall. But while inside, he began the process of rehabilitation. "I wanted to achieve better things in my life as far as I was never going to profit from being a bikie, and I didn't profit from being a bikie," said Peake. "I enjoyed the lifestyle while I was living it, but it wasn't going to get me ahead in life, and I was just always going to fall further and further behind and probably lead to more jail. "But I've had great support networks that have always helped me. And this time I took the advice that they were giving me and followed the path they were trying to pave for me."'They' include Ritchie Smith, the experienced Australian coach who contacted Peake while he was in prison. Smith, whose students Min Woo Lee and Elvis Smylie are also competing in Northern Ireland this week, believed there was a way back to golf for Peake. "I obviously didn't believe it at the start, but like he says, he did," explained the heavily tattooed left-hander."And, you know, like I said before as well, he coaches major winners. He coaches the world's best. He's not going to dedicate his time in something that he doesn't believe in himself, so that's what got me believing it would happen."I gave it a go. I probably didn't think it was going to exactly get to where it's got to now, and we're trying to progress further obviously, but it was definitely a stepping stone, and it came from there." Having regained pro status in 2022, the most significant moment of Peake's career arrived in Queenstown in early March, where he holed an eight-foot par putt on the last to win the New Zealand Open by a shot. His story has naturally attracted interest, and while Peake could have chosen not to discuss his past, he says he "just likes honesty". "It's me. I guess I got out of the [motorcycle] club from being honest as well," he added. "It's hard to kick someone that's honest, yeah?"And it's just my view and it's my life, it's my story. I'm not essentially embarrassed about it. It's something that I've done. I've owned it."Peake's British passport - his father was born in England - helped with his entry to the United Kingdom, where he finds himself competing for golf's oldest will play the first two rounds alongside six-time major winner Phil Mickelson - teeing off at 07:19 BST in round one on Thursday - and has already secured DP World Tour membership for 2026 after finishing second on the Australasian Tour Order of Merit. It is all a far cry from his incarceration, but Peake doesn't seem overly interested in soaking up adulation for turning his life around. "I'm not trying to be a role model, be someone's superhero, anything like that," he said. "I'm just basically living the best life I can, and whatever people see from that, that's what they see."Now that he is here, what does he expect from himself this week? "Obviously, I want to make the cut. My expectations are basically I just want to be able to get on that first tee and feel myself and just play my golf," he said."Feel comfortable, just play my game and be within myself and the result will be what it will be. I don't want to get caught up in anything, I just want to play my golf, I just want to be free."If I can do that, I won't have to worry about the result - it'll speak for itself."
