Show Cause Notice – Hakea Prison, Casuarina Prison and Melaleuca Women’s Prison

Hakea Prison: ongoing human rights concerns A routine inspection of Hakea Prison in 2024 found that prisoners were being held in conditions that were cruel, inhuman, or degrading. These were not short-term issues, but entrenched and worsening problems, including excessive lockdowns, limited access to education and rehabilitation, restricted family contact, and basic failures such as …

Systemic deterioration as grounds for statutory intervention Nearly two years after a Show Cause Notice was first issued in respect of Hakea Prison, conditions have not materially improved and, critically, the same risk factors are now evident at Casuarina Prison and Melaleuca Women’s Prison. What began as a facility‑specific failure has escalated into a system‑wide …

Recommendation 1 The Government must formally commit to and fund the system-level reforms required to address the concerns identified at Hakea, Melaleuca and Casuarina prisons, and across the adult custodial system more broadly. Within six months of the tabling of this report, the Department must develop, approve, and publicly release a comprehensive, costed reform implementation …

Taken together, the evidence indicates that Hakea, Casuarina and Melaleuca are operating under extreme and sustained pressure, with population growth (driven by unprecedented rises in remand numbers), chronic staffing shortages and capacity constraints fundamentally undermining prisoner and staff wellbeing. Overcrowding has become routine, lockdowns increasingly normalised, and time out of cell, access to healthcare, family …