The National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls condemns the Northern Territory Government’s announcement that it will build another 1,400 prison beds at Holtze, including a 1,200-bed privately operated men’s remand and intake prison and a new 200-bed women’s prison.
This is not an investment in community safety. It is an investment in incarceration.
‘At a time when Aboriginal people are already imprisoned at catastrophic rates in the Northern Territory, the government has chosen to plan for even more imprisonment, and, extraordinarily, to create a model in which a private corporation can profit from people being locked in cages,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
The National Network rejects the premise that rapidly growing prison populations create an inevitable “demand” for more prison beds. Prison populations are not natural phenomena. They are produced by political decisions: bail laws, sentencing laws, policing practices, criminalisation, poverty, racism and decisions about where governments choose to invest public resources.
Governments create the conditions for prison expansion and then point to overcrowded prisons as evidence that more prisons are required.
A 200-bed women’s prison should terrify us
The announcement of a dedicated 200-bed women’s prison demands particular scrutiny.
Women’s imprisonment in Australia cannot be separated from gendered violence, poverty, homelessness, child removal, disability and the criminalisation of survival. Nor can the imprisonment of Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory be separated from colonisation and the ongoing operation of the criminal legal system on Aboriginal communities.
‘Building 200 beds for women is not simply responding to an existing population. It establishes physical capacity for the state to incarcerate hundreds more women for decades to come,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘We should be asking why a government is planning for a future in which it expects to need that many prison beds for women,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
Every new prison creates an institutional expectation that it will be filled.
Once governments commit enormous amounts of money to prison infrastructure, the political pressure is no longer to reduce imprisonment. It is to justify the investment.
Prisons for profit
The National Network is equally alarmed by the decision to deliver the 1,200-bed men’s facility through a Public Private Partnership under which a private company will design, finance, build, operate and maintain the prison.
‘There is something fundamentally abhorrent about creating a commercial relationship around human captivity,’ said Tabitha Lean.
A private prison operator makes money because people are incarcerated. The continued existence of imprisonment becomes part of a business model.
The government’s claim that there will be “no cost to the Territory on construction and design” should not obscure the obvious reality: corporations do not finance, construct and operate billion-dollar-scale infrastructure as an act of charity.
The public deserves complete transparency about the length of the proposed contract, projected payments to the operator, guarantees concerning prisoner numbers or occupancy, performance payments, termination provisions and the total anticipated cost to the Territory over the life of the agreement.
‘The deprivation of liberty must never become an investment opportunity,’ said Tabitha Lean.
You cannot build your way out of mass incarceration
The Northern Territory already incarcerates Aboriginal people at devastating rates.
The answer cannot be another prison.
The government says the new infrastructure will allow greater access to rehabilitation, education and programs. But people should not have to be imprisoned to receive housing, education, health care, mental health support, alcohol and other drug services, employment opportunities or culturally safe support.
If those things produce safer communities, then invest in them before somebody enters a prison.
Take even a fraction of what will ultimately be spent constructing, financing, maintaining and operating 1,400 prison beds and put it into Aboriginal-controlled organisations, housing, health services, community-led responses to violence, education, disability support, youth services and supports for people leaving prison. That is infrastructure for safety.
Prison expansion creates its own future
We reject the language of a correctional system “designed for the future” when the future being designed is one in which thousands more people are expected to be incarcerated.
Prisons are long-term political infrastructure. The decisions made today will shape policing, bail, sentencing and incarceration for generations.
‘A government genuinely committed to reducing offending would be setting targets to close prison beds, not announcing 1,400 more,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
A government committed to Aboriginal justice would be asking how to dramatically reduce Aboriginal imprisonment, not constructing the infrastructure necessary to sustain it.
And a government committed to women would be investing in keeping women with their children, families, communities and Country, not preparing another 200 cages for them.
The National Network says: stop building prisons
The National Network calls on the Northern Territory Government to halt the proposed prison expansion and undertake transparent, community-led consultation about alternatives to incarceration.
That process must centre Aboriginal communities and organisations, alongside people who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. The people most affected by prisons must have a meaningful role in deciding what should be built instead.
We refuse the idea that prison expansion is inevitable.
We refuse a future in which governments manufacture harsher laws, imprison more people and then tell us there is no alternative but to build more cages.
And we absolutely refuse a future in which corporations are invited to make money from that cycle.
There is always another choice.
Build houses.
Build community-controlled services.
Build healing spaces.
Build schools.
Build health services.
Build pathways home.
But stop building prisons.
For further comment, please contact Debbie Kilroy on 0419 762 474 or Tabitha Lean on 0499 780 226.
