MAGISTRATES DEMAND PRISON REFORM

Chronic overcrowding in Victoria's prisons has led the state's deputy
chief magistrate, Mr Brian Barrow, to express grave concern for
vulnerable offenders, and to call for a new facility to deal with the
overflow.

Mr Barrow said that all magistrates, including the chief magistrate,
Mr Michael Adams, felt "very strongly" about overcrowding causing
increasing numbers of vulnerable offenders, particularly the young and
women, to be kept too long in police cells.

Mr Barrow made the comments while attending a recent meeting of the
criminal law section of the Law Institute of Victoria.

Mr Barrow said courts were taking a proactive stand by alerting prison
authorities to people with intellectual disabilities, psychiatric and
personality disorders.

The Law Institute yesterday called on the incoming Government to do
something immediately by transferring low-risk offenders to a
temporary facility, and introducing heroin safe houses.

Magistrates, police and lawyers are increasingly concerned about
prisoners in 100-year old police cells for weeks instead of the
maximum three-day limit prescribed by government guidelines, because
of the lack of prison beds. The cells have no natural light, and there
are no exercise or medical facilities.

A young offender sentenced to 102 days spent 97 days being shuffled
between police cells. Last week, a prisoner attempted suicide after
being held in a police cell for 28 days.

The president of the Law Institute, Mr Michael Gawler, said a new
facility was needed immediately for low-risk offenders.

Mr Gawler said the heroin problem was central to the overcrowding
problem, and that the drug should be legally available through
pharmacists. "You solve the drugs problem and you solve the prison
population problem," he said. "We call on the new Government to find
some immediate solution."

The chairman of the institute's criminal law section, Mr David Grace,
QC, said Mr Barrow made his comments at a meeting to which he had been
invited by the institute. "Magistrates are very concerned about what
is happening," he said. "The mixing of violent criminals and
first-time offenders is something that can have devastating outcomes."

Mr Grace cited the case of Mr Michael Tully, a 43-year-old
schizophrenic, who was bashed unconscious in a holding cell at the
Melbourne Custody Centre, and now has permanent brain damage.

Mr Grace said the Government should legislate to include home
detention as a sentencing option to alleviate overcrowding. Practised
in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, home detention
involves close monitoring of offenders through the use of electronic
bracelets and random phone calls.

Lawyers and police have become increasingly concerned over the chronic
overcrowding in the past six months. One lawyer, Mr John Bushby,
recently put a magistrate at Dandenong Magistrates Court on notice
that he would sue the state if anything happened to his client, who
had been beaten in a police cell.

The Police Association has written to alert the human rights group
Amnesty International to the conditions in Victoria's police cells,
after a near riot at Ringwood Police Station.

The Federation of Community of Legal Centres is considering
last-resort common law action, Habeas Corpus, over prisoners being
unlawfully detained because of the cell conditions.

"We are breaching our international obligations and drastic steps have
to be taken," a spokeswoman for the federation, Ms Pauline Spencer
said.