On a 38-degree December day in the middle of the desert, 15 people incarcerated at Alice Springs Correctional Centre used t-shirts and pedestal fans to rip a hole in a ceiling, in a desperate attempt to escape the stifling heat of their overcrowded cells.
The incident reignited calls to air-condition the prison – one recommendation of the Northern Territory Ombudsman, and firmly in step with the Territory’s human rights obligations to people deprived of their liberty.
At Jesuit Social Services, we support the call to immediately air-condition a facility described by the Ombudsman as exacerbating “notoriously challenging” environmental conditions, which will only worsen as the climate deteriorates.
This is one example of how climate change intersects with criminal justice. It reveals the daily challenge to the health, safety, dignity and human rights of incarcerated people.
Our justice systems must adapt to protect people from extreme heat. Air-conditioning Alice Springs Correctional Centre would be one small step towards a system-wide transition away from harmful and ineffective policies that disproportionately impact the most marginalised members of our society.
But this is only a first step. This crisis of social and environmental justice won’t be solved by better or cooler prisons alone.
More fundamentally, we must move away from our reliance on prisons and instead address factors that drive offending behaviour.
Jesuit Social Services has worked alongside people in contact with the criminal justice system over our entire 47-year history, including 14 years in the Northern Territory.
We know Australia’s prisons are filled with some of the most marginalised and ostracised members of our society. We also know that prisons, as they currently operate, are ineffective and harmful. Across the country, recidivism rates underline that the justice system is not working and, in particular, incarceration is an expensive failure. In Northern Territory, for example, a 56 per cent recidivism rate means that people who enter prison are more likely than not to re-offend after leaving. We acknowledge prisons have a role to play, but far too many people cycle in and out, compounding existing trauma and further isolating them from necessary supports without making a positive impact to disrupt offending behaviour. As climate conditions become more extreme and prison populations grow, incarcerated people will endure increasingly inhumane conditions without achieving the outcome of shifting behaviour that the broader community wants to see.
Jesuit Social Services’ discussion paper, “Prisons, climate and a just transition“, revealed the overlapping social and ecological harms done by our criminal justice systems, and shone a light on what people in detention have a right to expect from society.
Jesuit Social Services calls on all Australian governments to fully implement the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which would help ensure humane standards inside prisons, including adequate cooling and heating. We support a move away from justice systems focused on imprisonment and towards a system where prisons are used as a last resort.
Ultimately, we seek a just transition – to move away from inequitable economic and social systems towards a more sustainable world. We need policies in place to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable people in our society, including those caught up in the criminal justice system.
A just transition can transform society, giving us the opportunity to reconsider how we relate to each other and our environment.
