Prison healthcare whistleblowers have accused the companies operating the nation’s biggest jails of a culture of medical neglect and cover-up that has cruelled attempts to bring down the number of Indigenous people dying in custody.
Hills said staffing at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne was often woeful, and a failure to employ Indigenous support workers or those with appropriate health expertise exposed vulnerable inmates to preventable harm.
Hills said CorrectCare and the jail had attempted to cover up medical neglect. She observed a prison doctor fail to get off his chair and deliver appropriate medical support to the desperately unwell Nelson. Instead, Nelson died in a cell after calling for help more than 40 times over three days. She also said a CorrectCare manager laughed at her when she pushed for appropriate COVID-19 protective wear.
Williamson, who was recently appointed director at another Victorian government department, made his comments on the eve of coronerThe inquest findings into the death of Nelson “and every other [Indigenous] death in custody” around Australia needed to be viewed together as an urgent catalyst for change, he said.
In his findings, McGregor referred CorrectCare for possible prosecution and concluded that if the recommendations of the 1991 royal commission had been properly implemented, Nelson would probably still be alive. He said failings by CorrectCare in Victoria left prisoners in “great pain waiting for an ambulance because I didn’t have adequate painkillers to treat them”, and in two cases may have contributed to potentially preventable deaths, which the doctor had disclosed to the state coroner.
“He was in absolutely enormous pain when I met him. And I believe he would’ve been that way for quite some time,” Rattray-Wood said.Credit:“Now, to leave someone like that … for three days going bad before they were found by accident, is not something you want to see in the First World in the 21st century.”
Another with melanoma was not given his chemotherapy medication for six weeks. One woman was double-dosed and prescribed 28 Valium tablets over three days. After Rattray-Wood confronted the most senior officials at the jail with his concerns, prison general manager Glen Scholes said Serco had made mistakes in its delivery of healthcare when the jail opened.Senior Serco manager Andrew Mead said there were a “lot of things that we didn’t do right”.
Karen Blanket and Connie Moses-Penny at Fremantle Cemetery, where their sons are buried. Both young men died at Acacia Prison east of Perth.Connie Moses-Penny, the mother of Stanley Inman, said family members warned Serco of the 19-year-old’s mental state just hours after he had told his sister: “I don’t feel like being alive”.
Malaysia Latest News, Malaysia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
‘Patients aren’t guinea pigs’: Medical staff blow whistle on prisonsGRAPHIC CONTENT: Unnecessary pain, suffering and death is rampant in prisons because of understaffing and indifference, particularly towards Indigenous people, whistleblowers say.
Read more »
Talk around gender identity might feel new, but trans people have been around for a really long timeFrom Indigenous culture to colonial times to modern celebrities, there's plenty to learn from and to celebrate in the long history of trans and gender diverse people.
Read more »
Sports fans to be ‘bombarded’ with divisive ‘virtue signalling’: Rita PanahiAustralian sporting bodies are certain to alienate “huge segments of the community” if they go ahead with “dangerous and divisive” plans to support the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Rita Panahi has argued.
Read more »
'Treated like third-rate citizens': Uncle Danny is hopeful about Voice to Parliament - others are not so sureArtist Uncle Danny Eastwood hopes an Indigenous Voice to Parliament will help educate people across Australia, but some people are uncertain about how it will work.
Read more »
Australia's first robotic rehabilitation clinic opens in MelbourneThe machines use artificial intelligence and machine learning to create interactive games for people with conditions such as stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and long COVID. 9News
Read more »
The court case that threatens to unleash a payroll tax grabA challenge to moves by states to impose payroll tax on medical centre operators could turbocharge a growing revenue grab by governments around the country.
Read more »