A delegation of United Nations inspectors has delivered a scathing assessment of Australia’s treatment of prisoners and other detainees, following a 12-day visit to the country.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) visited 16 detention facilities, interviewed 89 people behind bars and met with multiple government, judicial and civil society groups across Australia.

Its chair, Ukrainian lawyer and former European Human Rights court judge Dr Ganna Yudkivska, and vice-chair, New Zealand academic Dr Matthew Gillett, found “much to commend” about the independence of Australia’s judiciary and respect of due process.

But they expressed serious concerns about its transparency and treatment of people in locked institutions and warned Australia’s mandatory detention regime for refugees and asylum seekers was violating an international human rights treaty.

Dr Ganna Yudkivska and Dr Matthew Gillett visited Australian detention facilities. (ABC News)

While the Commonwealth, New South Wales, the ACT and Western Australia allowed the inspectors to access some or all their respective secure facilities, the Northern Territory barred all access to inspectors in a worldwide first.

“In over 30 years of UN detention monitoring worldwide this is the first time an entire region of the country had completely refused co-operation with our working group,” Dr Yudkivska said.

Australia is the only country, other than Rwanda, to have the UN terminate a visit, after a separate delegation was denied full access to some Queensland and New South Wales facilities in 2023.

The aim of the visits to Australia’s detention facilities was to assess the country’s fulfilment of its human rights obligations.

Although the commonwealth government has suggested states and territories are responsible for their own justice systems, the WGAD warned Australia cannot use this as an excuse to avoid accountability to its international human rights obligations.

Here is how the UN assessed Australia’s protection of human rights at prisons and watch houses, youth detention facilities, immigration detention centres and secure mental health facilities.

Immigration detention and offshore interceptions

The WGAD was unequivocal: Australia’s long-running mandatory detention regime for people who seek asylum in Australia by boat is a violation of international human rights, under an international treaty it chose to sign up for.

There are a number of immigration detention facilities across Australia. (ABC News: Abbey Haberecht)

The group also heard “disturbing” reports that the Australian Border Force (ABF) was detaining people intercepted at sea on rubber mats inside cages aboard boats, sometimes for weeks on end.

“The opacity surrounding this form of detention is of extreme concern and we call on the Commonwealth government to disclose the numbers, duration and conditions of such detention at sea.”

Those reports are backed up by a report released following an inspection by the Commonwealth ombudsman earlier this year.

The WGAD also found oversight bodies lacked “effective controls” over ABF’s detention-related activities, and urged Australia to adopt a legally-enforceable right against arbitrary detention.

Prisoners

As of March, the delegation said 42 per cent of prisoners were unsentenced in Australian prisons and correctional facilities.

Dr Yudkivska said that meant almost half of the country’s prison population was “legally innocent”.

A significant proportion of people held in Australia’s prisons are on remand. (AAP/Human Rights Watch, Daniel Soekov)

“Bail laws have been repeatedly tightened, often because of what we see as populist reactions to some headlines in media about high-profile crimes rather than based on evidence,” she said.

“In fact, research actually shows even short periods in remand can increase risk of reoffending, so these tough on crime reforms may make communities less safe, not more.”

The delegation was particularly alarmed by the over-representation of First Nations people in prisons, after Australia this week recorded the highest annual number of Indigenous deaths in custody since 1979.

Ganna Yudkivska says “populist reactions” have lead to tightened bail laws across several Australian jurisdictions. (ABC News)

Dr Yudkivska said the prisons the delegation visited were “generally well maintained” and offered rehabilitation programmes.

However, the delegation was scathing about the NT’s prison system, which they could only evaluate through publicly available monitoring reports and meetings with civil society groups.

“It compares to a country in a situation of crisis, such as after a hurricane or severe flooding and not the way that a regular, functioning police facility or any other government facility should be operating,” Dr Gillett said.

Palmerston watch house is one of many Australian detention facilities that has experienced overcrowding. (Supplied: NT Ombudsman)

The NT government previously cited safety and capacity concerns in justifying its rejection of the delegation.

However, during roughly the same period the Corrections Department confirmed officials from the United Arab Emirates were allowed to visit, along with representatives of Port Adelaide Football Club delivering an anti-domestic violence program.

NT Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley said on Friday he “didn’t see the need” for the UN scrutiny, having allowed the UN in on a previous visit and recently removed prisoners from police watch houses and expanded the prisons’ capacity.

“My experience is that we have a robust oversight mechanism, there are numerous groups that come into the prison,” he said.

Matthew Varley said he saw no need for the UN delegates to visit NT prisons. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)

Youth justice

Dr Gillett said the treatment of children and teenagers in the justice system was a “stain on Australia’s reputation”.

He said it was “egregious” that children as young as 10 could be charged with a criminal offence in most Australian jurisdictions.

The NT became the first jurisdiction to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility in 2024, followed by the ACT and Victoria, before reversing the policy following a change in government.

The panel also took aim at ‘adult-crime-adult-time’ laws such as those enacted in Queensland.

The United Nations delegates were refused access to the infamous Unit 18 at Casuarina Prison in Western Australia. (ABC News: Andrew O’Connor)

They criticised the Western Australia government for denying the delegation access to the notorious Unit 18 youth detention facility inside Casuarina men’s prison and Banksia Hill youth detention centres.

A coronial inquest into the death of First Nations teenager Cleveland Dodd this week recommended Unit 18’s urgent closure.

The WGAD is calling on the government to ban placing children in solitary confinement

People with disability and secure mental health facilities

The WGAD found the forensic mental health facilities it visited in the ACT, NSW and WA “generally demonstrated high quality, therapeutic care environments”.

“By contrast we were concerned to learn that the Northern Territory lacks any dedicated forensic mental health facility,” Dr Gillett said.

Matthew Gillett says generally the forensic mental health facilities he visited provided “high quality” care. (ABC News)

Dr Gillett said the working group also found there were high rates of prisoners with psycho-social disabilities within general prisons nationally.

The delegation also found chronic shortages of treating psychiatrists and limited access to healthcare inside prisons in some states.

“Particularly in relation to First Nations people who often did not receive culturally appropriate forms of this attention,” he said.

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