News and Investigations

Cells at the courts are so full that people can’t be taken there from prison to attend their hearings.

Project: herself is an organisation I set up to advocate and support women to have self-determined lives. We do that through a couple of things – including storytelling advocacy and frontline service delivery.

Including a death in custody at Acacia prison in WA, Victoria spending the most on youth detention, remand numbers skyrocketing in NSW and more.

In July 2025, four organisations came together to make sure the truth about prisons, policing and criminalisation in Australia was heard on the world stage.

In October last year, thousands of New South Wales prison officers also went on strike, plunging incarcerated people into abrupt and extended lockdowns.

Australia is in the midst of an epidemic of prison lockdowns. There is often little or no warning that these lockdowns are going to happen, leaving many people in virtual solitary confinement for hours or days.

The true cost of phone calls in prison has been revealed for the first time.

More than eight years since Ravenhall prison opened, recidivism rates at the prison are higher than those at public prisons.

An Ombudsman investigation has found people in Canberra’s only prison paid nearly $125,000 to make phone calls across two years when this should have been free.

Should going to prison mean never being allowed to hug your partner or child? Is denying physical contact a just punishment, or does it harm families and human dignity? And what do human rights have to say about it?