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Three ways we can halt the explosion in prisoner numbers
Prisons are fundamentally at odds with the notion of rehabilitation.
On the brink of tears, a 19-year-old locked up in Port Phillip Prison recently asked me: “How can I think about tomorrow when I can barely survive today?”
- Ruth Barson
- The Age
He talked about eating mouldy food, people locked in solitary confinement for months on end, being routinely strip-searched, non-existent mental health care, chronic over-crowding and being too ashamed to have his family visit.
This is the everyday brutality of life inside a prison.
This is the crushing reality of Victoria’s lurch towards caging people at rates not seen in over 100 years.
Imprisonment rates have…