Altcourse Prison, UK
April 28, 2008 BBC
A man accused of raping an 18-year-old woman has died after apparently hanging himself in his cell. Mathew Le Cras, 21, of Newborough on Anglesey, was taken to hospital on Thursday from Liverpool's Altcourse jail where he was being held on remand. Doctors are thought to have switched off his life-support machine. He had been charged with the rape of the woman near Gaerwen and had been due at Mold Crown Court for a preliminary hearing on Friday. A spokesman for GSL, which runs the private jail, confirmed Mr Le Cras had died. He had been held at Altcourse prison for a week He is thought to have been found by a prison officer.

April 27, 2008 Daily Post
A 21-YEAR-OLD man accused of raping an 18-year-old woman on Anglesey has died. Matthew James Lecras, of Church Street, Newborough, was rushed to hospital early on Thursday, hours before he was due in court. A spokeswoman for Global Solutions Ltd, the private company which runs Altcourse Prison, Liverpool, where he was being held, said that Lecras had been found in his cell by a member of staff during a routine check. Lecras was being held on remand accused of raping a woman at Gaerwen on April 14. The hearing at Mold Crown court continued in his absence on Friday after the judge heard he was seriously ill in hospital.

April 26, 2008 Daily Post
A 21-YEAR-OLD man accused of raping an 18-year-old woman on Anglesey was in a critical condition last night in hospital. Matthew James Lecras, of Church Street, Newborough, was rushed to hospital early on Thursday, hours before he was due in court. A spokeswoman for Global Solutions Ltd, the private company which runs Altcourse Prison, Liverpool, where he was being held, said that Lecras had been found in his cell by a member of staff during a routine check. It is unclear why he had to be taken to hospital. The spokeswoman said: “He is in a life threatening condition in hospital and an investigation into the circumstances is underway.”

March 26, 2006 Wales on Sunday
A WOMAN whose husband threatened to kill her then committed suicide in jail, is fighting his corner for the sake of their young daughter. Vowing to sue the private prison where her mentally ill ex hanged himself in the days following their divorce, Karen Crabtree wants justice for their four-year-old girl "who has lost her daddy". The Llandudno mum-of-one was devastated last summer when Altcourse Prison in Liverpool told her Lee was dead. The troubled 32-year-old - who believed Karen was the devil - was found hanging from a bunk bed by a fellow inmate's shoelaces in July.

March 23, 2006 BBC
An inquest has heard of concerns of a prison officer and a cellmate for the mental health of a remand prisoner, who was later found hanged in his cell. Lee Crabtree, 32, from Llandudno, had been placed on suicide watch at Altcourse Prison, Liverpool, last July. He was seen several times by medical staff during his time in prison. His cellmate said that he was "depressed to death". The inquest in Liverpool continues on Thursday. Mr Crabtree was discovered in a cell on "Beachers Block", the unit which normally holds remand prisoners and young offenders. The inquest heard how prisoners on suicide watch are supposed to be placed with cellmates, but Mr Crabtree was alone on the day he died because his cellmate was in court. In a statement, his cellmate Raymond Smith said Mr Crabtree was "depressed to death," and "sick in the head". He added: "He had said the devil was playing games with him and that he was being tested."

September 23, 2005 BBC
Ten prisoners who rioted after they claimed guards tried to lock them up early on New Year's Eve have been sentenced by a court. The men caused damage costing £17,500 after barricading themselves inside a wing at Altcourse prison in Liverpool. They staged a sit-in protest after guards attempted to lock them up for the night on 31 December 2004. Mr Davies said the prisoners took over the wing for more than four hours before a team of 50 officers, known as the Tornado Team, took back control. The prison wing had descended into chaos with inmates smashing windows, destroying pool tables and lighting fires.

September 2, 2005 BBC
An investigation is under way following the death of a remand prisoner in a hospital, the Prison Service has said. Robin Spavold, 44, from Llandudno, North Wales, was held at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool on 18 August after being charged with criminal damage. He was taken to the prison's health centre because he was suffering from severe bruising. Mr Spavold was transferred to the nearby Fazakerley Hospital, and died on Thursday. He suffered a cardiac arrest.

August 16, 2005 Daily Post
PRIVATELY-RUN Altcourse Prison has been named the most overcrowded in the country with figures showing that last month it held 50% more inmates than it was designed to hold. According to Home Office statistics, more than 933 prisoners were crammed into the Fazakerley jail, which was built to accommodate 614. The figures show that Altcourse was full beyond even its safe over-crowding limit of 903. Anything above that limit is considered a serious risk to "good order and security" Last night Walton MP Peter Kilfoyle, who has both Altcourse and Walton prisons in his constituency, said: "There has to be a suspicion that in a private prison such as Altcourse, the more prisoners they take in, the more money they get.

July 13, 2005 BBC
An inquiry has been launched after two men were found hanged in their cells at a prison in Liverpool. Lee Jason Crabtree, 32, from Llandudno, Conwy, was found dead on Monday at HM Prison Altcourse. David Oakes, 25, from Warrington, Cheshire, was found on Tuesday. The two deaths are not thought to be linked. The privately-run jail has recently been praised by prison inspectors for its good environment and work with mentally ill inmates. But the report, by the Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers, also highlighted bullying among prisoners and criticised procedures for inmates' first night in jail.  

Australia Immigration Department
October 31, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
THE Federal Government is winding back private management of immigration detention centres after years of controversy over the compromised health and psychological care of detainees. The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said yesterday the Government was relieving a private company of its responsibility for health and psychological services, which would be transferred to the direct control of her department. The move follows the recommendations of a review triggered by the Palmer report into the deficiencies of care in detention highlighted by the case of Cornelia Rau, the psychiatric patient whose illness went undiagnosed for several months. Global Solutions Ltd, whose management of health services has drawn criticisms of care standards and conflict of interest, denied the loss of services was "in any way the result of dissatisfaction with the services provided" by Global Solutions. A company spokesman said the review of the centres had not criticised the health and psychological services it managed. But the company's management of the centres and detainee health services had represented a "fundamental conflict of interest", said Louise Newman, a psychiatrist and a member of a government expert advisory panel on detention health. Professor Newman said the failings in health care and psychological services, highlighted by the Rau saga and other cases of inadequate care, had resulted in "incalculable" suffering for detainees.

March 2, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
The immigration department made an unexplained $5.7 million payout to the company that used to manage Australia's detention centres, an audit has found. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has identified a series of anomalies, potential conflicts and inadequate record-keeping in a review of the department's contracts with companies paid to run the centres. The department put detention centre management out to tender in 2001 and a $400 million, four-year contract with Global Solutions Limited (GSL) was ultimately signed in August, 2003. But the ANAO has found DIMIA, now DIMA, wanted to "encourage" the former contractor to end its management of the centres with a contract "completion payment". As a result, Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) received a payout of almost $6 million. "DIMIA was not able to provide evidence of the criteria it used to make its determination to pay ACM $5.7 million in contract completion payments," the ANAO said in its report. "The basis on which DIMIA made these payments was doubtful," it said. Labor says the audit's findings are a scandal. "What we have is nothing short of a scandal in the way the government has handled this," opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said. "The people who were involved in the negotiations of the contracts on behalf of the department became horribly compromised. "Records weren't kept, records were lost, and some of the records that we have are conflicting."

July 29, 2005 ABC
Detention centre operator to pay for maltreatment.  The private operators of Australia's detention centres, Global Solutions Limited (GSL), will be penalised more than $500,000 for poorly handling five immigration detainees.  The GSL officers have been accused of treating the detainees in an inhumane and undignified manner when the detainees were being transferred from Maribyrnong detention centre in Victoria to the Baxter centre in South Australia in September 2004. An investigation has found that the GSL officers used force against one detainee.  It has also found that overall they failed to provide adequate medical assessment, deprived the detainees of toilet breaks, did not allow them to rest and did not give them enough food during a seven-hour road trip.

July 14, 2005 Daily Telegraph
THE federal government has apologised to Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez for their treatment at the hands of the immigration department.  Prime Minister John Howard said both women were owed an apology.  "Both Cornelia Rau and Mrs Alvarez are owed apologies for their treatment, and on behalf of the government I give those apologies to both of those women who were the victims of mistakes by the department," Mr Howard told reporters.  Mr Howard and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today released the Palmer report into the immigration department, which catalogues a litany of failures that led to Ms Rau being wrongly detained for 10 months, and Ms Alvarez, also known as Vivian Solon, being wrongly deported. In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Senator Vanstone said the pair would receive assistance.  Mick Palmer, a former federal police commissioner, was appointed to look into the case of Ms Rau.  His inquiry was later widened to include the case of Ms Alvarez.  After criticising the government's contract with Global Solutions Limited (GSL), which runs the immigration detention centres, Mr Palmer recommended an expert group review the company's contract.  Senator Vanstone said Mr Palmer was critical of the department's policy of 'exception reporting', where instead of outlining what should be done, the contract outlined what must not be done to make it as flexible as possible.  "But Mr Palmer's not of the view that the other regulations surrounding detention allow that flexibility to be there," Senator Vanstone said.

Baxter Immigration Facility, Australia
November 14, 2007 The Age
THE Federal Government faces another humiliating compensation payout that could run into millions of dollars as a result of court action taken by a Vietnamese-born man. Tony Tran, 35, was unlawfully detained for more than five years and badly bashed in early 2005 at the Baxter Detention Centre by a mentally ill inmate with a history of violence, a statement of claim filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria says. He was also separated from his son Hai and not told by the Government in 2000 that Hai, then two years old, would be taken by the boy's mother to South Korea, the country of her birth. Three years later the boy was left by his mother with Mr Tran's brother in Australia and later placed in foster care for 14 months after the brother could no longer care for Hai. Mr Tran is seeking compensation from the Federal Government for physical and psychological damage. If successful, any compensation was likely to run into millions of dollars, said litigation expert Anne Gooley, from Maurice Blackburn Cashman. "How do you compensate somebody for detaining them unlawfully for five years?" she said. Ms Gooley expects the case to be settled before it goes to a full hearing.

April 9, 2007 The Australian
THE Federal Government says it is still waiting for a list of claims from the lawyers for Cornelia Rau, an Australian resident detained as an illegal immigrant. Ms Rau's lawyers said today they would sue the Government over her treatment, amid difficulties in reaching a negotiated resolution. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said the Government still hoped to reach an out-of-court settlement. "The Government has written to Ms Rau's lawyer a number of times over the past few months seeking to obtain a list of claims to enable the Commonwealth to settle this matter," Mr Andrews said through a spokeswoman. "We wish to settle it as expeditiously as possible. "We're just waiting on Ms Rau to provide us with a list of her claims. We can't process a final settlement ... quickly without actually receiving a claim for what she may wish to have compensation for. George Newhouse, one of Ms Rau's solicitors, said the Government's contracting out of Baxter detention centre's operations to Global Solutions Limited appeared to have complicated his client's compensation claim. "The Commonwealth Government has its own financial arrangements with the operators of the detention centre that appear to be complicating Cornelia's case," he said. "That's not Cornelia Rau's problem. It was the Commonwealth Government that set up this ridiculous system of immigration detention. "She shouldn't suffer because of the Commonwealth Government's privatisation of detention."

December 12, 2006 ABC News
More than 30 detainees are reported to be staging a protest at the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia. A caller to the ABC, who says he is a detainee at Baxter, says a group of detainees has blocked the front gate of the detention centre, and others are on a hunger strike. He says the protest follows reports of several detainees harming themselves to draw attention to their frustrations. "It's just a process of long-term immigration detention, it's unnecessary, it's unreasonable," he said. "Any other country in the world - and Australia is a wonderful country - but any other country in the world, they detain you for 30 days, they identify you, then they release you. "There is no purpose for us being here. "We have been vilified by the Government in order to justify our detention. This is unfair." The Immigration Department says there have been five incidents in the past four days. The Department says this morning a detainee was taken to hospital after an incident that is still being investigated. It says two detainees jumped from the roof on Friday, a detainee climbed a tree on Saturday and was treated for heat exhaustion when he came down, and on Sunday another man climbed onto a roof before coming down again.

March 20, 2006 The Age
AT LEAST two long-term immigration detainees — one held for 6½ years — are in a psychiatric hospital after developing mental problems while in detention, the Greens claim. The man who has spent more than six years in detention, a 34-year-old from Bangladesh, was moved from Baxter detention centre last August to Adelaide's Glenside psychiatric hospital. The other man, whose family are Australian citizens, has been detained for more than two years. "This period of time in detention makes this man another Peter Qasim, the long-term detainee who was recently released after seven years," Greens senator Kerry Nettle said. Their cases have been raised by the Greens as up to 100 detainees at Sydney's Villawood detention centre entered the fourth day of a hunger strike aimed at forcing the release of mentally ill detainees held for more than two years.

March 3, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
A DAY of turmoil in the nation's immigration system ended with the Federal Government backing down on several fronts yesterday. It agreed to pay damages to a boy traumatised in detention and allowed a deported Melbourne man to return to Australia on humanitarian grounds. A damning report released by an independent auditor yesterday also raised questions about a successful 2003 bid by the immigration detention contractor GSL, whose contract the Government refused to renew on Wednesday. In Sydney, an 11-year-old Iranian, Shayan Badraie, was offered damages for trauma he suffered in Woomera and Villawood detention centres. The move comes after a 63-day Supreme Court hearing. While in detention between March 2000 and August 2001, the boy became severely traumatised after witnessing riots, a stabbing and a string of other disturbing incidents. He subsequently spent 94 days in hospital, and still requires treatment. Commonwealth lawyers approached lawyers representing Shayan this week to offer a settlement for damages. The exact sum will be fixed at a hearing this morning but is expected to be more than $1 million. Meanwhile, the immigration detention contractor GSL was found to have been hired even though it was more expensive and provided inferior services to competitors, the National Audit Office announced yesterday. GSL's bid was $32.6 million higher than that of the incumbent detention centre operator, ACM, when the latter's bid expired. The audit office found the basis on which ACM was paid $5.7 million after it missed out on the contract was "doubtful", since the department was only required to compensate for matters pertaining to detention. Immigration could not provide evidence of the criteria under which the sum was paid. The audit also found the head of the steering committee, which was heavily involved in the evaluation of the bids, gave a reference for ACM's bid. An independent probity adviser told the steering committee seven months later that this should not happen again.

March 2, 2006 The Age
THE CONTROVERSIAL private operator of Australia's detention centres will not have its lucrative $90-million-a-year contract extended. An independent review, carried out in the wake of the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon scandals, found that changes to the contract were required. Yesterday Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said all detention services would be re-tendered as part of sweeping reforms to prevent a repeat of the problems that engulfed the Immigration Department last year. GSL, which also operates Victoria's Port Phillip Prison, took over the running of Australia's detention centres in late 2003. The company has come under intense scrutiny, with critics claiming it has introduced a punitive prison regime to detention centres, including the use of solitary confinement. In July last year GSL was penalised more than $500,000 after a report said five detainees endured 6½ hours in the back of a van with no toilet breaks and no food or water while being transferred between the Maribyrnong and Baxter detention centres. Senator Vanstone said that although there was an option to extend the contract with GSL when it expired late next year, the Government had decided to re-tender after a report by former Health Department deputy secretary Mick Roche found changes to the contract were required.The Palmer report on the treatment of Cornelia Rau, an Australian resident wrongfully detained for 10 months in a Brisbane jail and the Baxter detention centre, was scathing about the inadequate health care she received at Baxter. It also said the Government's contract with GSL was "fundamentally flawed" and failed to deliver the immigration detention policy expected by the Government. A damning Auditor-General's report last year said health standards in detention centres were not clearly spelt out in the contract. Another National Audit Office Report, to be tabled in Parliament today, is also expected to be critical of the detention services contract.

January 31, 2006 Scoop
The Victorian Greens Spokesperson on Refugees, Peter Job, today expressed his concerns about growing discontent amongst asylum seekers about their treatment in Baxter detention centre due to the Intransigent policies of the Department of Immigration and its subcontractor Global Solutions Limited. Mr. Job explained that he had just completed a three day visit to Baxter, during which he met with over twenty detainees from a variety of backgrounds. “Despite claims from the Department to be cleaning up its act, the detainees I spoke to claimed the situation in Baxter is actually getting worse, giving consistent accounts of increasingly repressive and heavy handed treatment by management,” Mr. Job said. “They spoke of increasingly intrusive and undignified searches of their bodies and property, especially when accessing the visitor’s compound. They spoke of run down facilities, where broken telephones, kitchen items and leisure facilities were not fixed for months, despite continued requests from detainees. They also continued to complain about the appalling quality of the food, which they claimed had not improved despite the Minister’s assurances to the contrary. “Above all they pointed to a culture in which their opinions and complaints are belittled and ignored, where incidents of discontent are further provoked rather than deescalated, and in which detainees are given little respect as human beings.”

November 23, 2005 Green Left Weekly
I wasn't involved in the asylum seeker debate in 2001 when the government's actions on Tampa were, in their opinion, decisive in getting them re-elected. It was an accident of circumstance that my family was given a voice this past year: we had an obligation to point out the hypocrisy of having one set of rights for citizens and another for suspected "illegals" who are left to rot for years in detention centres without the rule of law to protect them. Even though it took months for all the nasty specifics of Cornelia's treatment to emerge, the broader themes were clear from the outset: the lack of morality - not to mention the expense - of detaining innocent people and hiding them away in the desert; the overall levels of secrecy; the farming out of detention centres to for-profit corporations; the use of punitive isolation to control behaviour; the unchecked power of ill-qualified immigration bureaucrats and privately employed security guards; and the absence of judicial review. The failures exposed by Cornelia's case have hardly been addressed. The reforms emanating from Mick Palmer's inquiry into the wrongful imprisonment of Cornelia have given a greater review role to the federal ombudsman (but only after someone's been detained for two years) and many long-term detainees are being quietly released. A couple of sports fields have been added to Baxter and some of the razor wire in Villawood coming down with great fanfare - only to be replaced by electrified fence. In detention centres, the lack of palatable food has been a deeply felt source of contention. The food issue, so seemingly trivial when compared with indefinite detention, can lead to avoidable tension and abuses. This has not changed. Cornelia's case: In early February, Cornelia was just another non-person in Baxter, receiving no treatment for a florid psychosis. The rest of our family was living in suburban obscurity. We were dragged into public life in early February 2005 when the media became interested. Even before the government announced the Palmer inquiry - only five days after Cornelia was identified - we were getting calls from people with information about what had happened to her during her brush with DIMIA. I was determined to expose the more appalling misuses of power during Cornelia's time behind the wire, much of it in punitive isolation. In the first few days, Senator Amanda Vanstone's office put out various bits of misinformation about how wonderful DIMIA had been to Cornelia and to us. No-one had contacted us. We learned of the phantom medical care being given to detainees. There were horrific cases of neglect: the young child with a broken thumb, which turned purple and swollen in the week it took for him to get medical attention; the man complaining of severe headaches who was fobbed off with Panadol for two years until he collapsed one night between compounds and started to turn blue after which he was finally rushed to hospital where neurosurgeons operated for 12 hours to contain the burst aneurism. There was the woman in Villawood in NSW who couldn't establish breastfeeding with her newborn because guards were in her hospital room 24 hours a day. During the delivery, a guard even gowned up to watch the caesarian, worried no doubt, she might jump up from the table and abscond during the procedure. There were stories of sexual assaults by guards, and in one case, a hastily arranged abortion. Many of our interviewees were worried about repercussions and asked for confidentiality. The former detainees and their families were able to tell us how places like Baxter really worked in practice, how the medical services that DIMIA described in such glowing terms, breached the duty of care requirements. Interview transcripts and court affidavits, including from DIMIA staff that flagrantly contradicted the sort of eyewitness evidence we were getting, were passed onto the university. One such chilling document was the "Behaviour Management Plan" (BMP) from Global Solutions Limited (GSL, the company that runs Baxter among other corrections institutions), which set out rules for detainees in the punishment compound at Baxter, Red One. This is where Cornelia spent 94 days in a psychosis, which had been discerned by other detainees. Evidence we were given showed GSL even flouted its own management plan for much of the time Cornelia was in Red One. For example, detainees have to sign a consent to the BMP before they enter the compound. Cornelia signed no such document. Under the strictest stage of the plan, detainees are allowed four hours out of their cell. In Cornelia's case, we were told by eyewitnesses that on many days she was given only two hours' egress, or none at all. At least on one occasion, Cornelia was punched in the chest so hard she fell backwards into her cell so the guards could lock her inside. [Abridged from a speech by Christine Rau, Cornelia's sister, to the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House on October 18. For the full text see <http://www.qpilch.org.au/>.]

November 14, 2005 The Age
THE Immigration Department says it will have no hesitation in pursuing criminal charges against detainees who allegedly lit a series of fires at the Baxter detention centre. One detainee was taken to hospital and five others were treated for smoke inhalation on Saturday as a result of four fires that destroyed 14 accommodation rooms and forced the evacuation of 58 detainees at the South Australian facility. The Immigration Department said the damage bill was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fires forced the removal of 54 detainees to other parts of the centre. Four who are of interest to the police have been isolated and are under constant watch. The fires began in a kitchen, and fire authorities have said the fact there were a number of separate fires suggested there was some unrest at the centre.

November 12, 2005 The Age
One man has been taken to hospital and five others treated for smoke inhalation after a series of fires forced evacuations at the Baxter Detention centre in South Australia. Fifty-eight men being held in detention were evacuated from the White One compound after fires started at the Port Augusta centre around 4am local time a spokesman for the immigration department said. Six of those evacuated were treated on the scene for smoke inhalation with one of them taken to hospital for further treatment. The four separate fires caused more than $25,000 worth of damage and were probably deliberately lit, according to a fire services spokesman.

November 2, 2005 Sidney Morning Herald
Laws that follow through on the government's compromise deal with rebel backbenchers over its tough immigration detention policy were introduced to the lower house on Wednesday. Three-month time limits on deciding protection visa applications and decisions by the Refugee Review Tribunal are two of the major changes introduced in the bill. In addition, the department will be able to release the identity and photographs of people being detained when all other efforts to identify or locate them have failed. This is to rectify the reluctance on DIMIA's part to release information about the mentally ill Australian resident Cornelia Rau who was wrongly locked up in immigration detention for 10 months. Labor's immigration spokesman Tony Burke described the bill as "an incremental step in the right direction". Mr Burke wants the government's contracts with the private company running Australia's immigration detention centres, Global Solutions Ltd, terminated and the management of the centres returned to government hands.

September 13, 2005 The Australian
ILLEGAL immigrants held in detention will be offered taste testing of prospective menus and weekly barbecues in a further attempt by the Howard Government to soften its hardline image on asylum-seekers. The move follows complaints from detainees about the quality of food, including reports of maggot-infested meat, at the privately run Baxter Detention Centre at Port Augusta, South Australia. A confidential government report found food quality had been so bad at Baxter - administered by British conglomerate Global Solutions - that consultants witnessed three-quarters of meals being thrown in bins, with some detainees reporting they were prepared to eat only three or four main meals a week. The report says meals at Baxter often developed a "stewed" appearance, with food "very wet at times, the sauce unthickened and tasteless, or dried out". Immigration Department deputy secretary Bob Correll said yesterday food at Baxter had not been provided to standards required under the contract with GSL. He said there was a direct link between unrest in detention centres and food quality. "Sometimes food has not been served at correct temperature or it is bland," he said. "Special requests in relation to cultural and religious issues were also not being met." The federal Government's $300million contract with GSL is under review. The Palmer Report into the case of Cornelia Rau - a mentally ill Australian resident wrongfully detained at Baxter - found that GSL's contract had "little emphasis on service quality or the establishment of an equitable detention environment".

September 6, 2005 The Age
CONDITIONS at Baxter detention centre are not conducive to good mental health, with more than a fifth of detainees on tranquillisers and anti-depressants, a damning report by a bipartisan parliamentary committee says. The joint standing committee on migration, chaired by Liberal backbencher Don Randall, spoke to about 25 long-term detainees during a visit to Baxter detention centre, near Port Augusta in South Australia, in April this year. "For the committee the three main concerns to emerge from the inspection were the length of detention, mental health in detention and the possibility of physical abuse," Mr Randall says in a report tabled in Parliament yesterday. "The committee cannot deny the impact of long-term detention." When the committee visited Baxter on April 19, more than 50 of the 240 detainees were on anti-depressants and many slept for long periods during the day. The report comes two months after the scathing Palmer inquiry into the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau, which found mental health care at Baxter was inadequate by any standards.

August 26, 2005 The Age
Police have launched an investigation into claims that guards at South Australia's Baxter detention centre deliberately twisted an asylum seeker's leg until it broke. The Immigration Department has confirmed Peter Mode, a 24-year-old from Zimbabwe, suffered a broken fibula during a violent incident involving three detainees and several guards at the centre on Tuesday. South Australian police are investigating the incident and Mr Mode plans to make an official complaint. Mr Mode said he was assaulted by guards when he sought to protect another inmate, named John, after he threw his meal against a wall, complaining the fish being served to detainees tasted of dust. Mr Mode said seven guards arrived at John's room on Tuesday night to take him to the Red One maximum security unit. "I started arguing with them; 'No you can't take him out of his room, he had an operation last week'," Mr Mode told ABC Radio. "And then I was trying to struggle with them and then they pushed me down to the ground and then one of the officers held my leg. "I was kicking back (saying) 'Just leave me alone'. "Then they pushed the leg and it broke to the ankle." Mr Mode said he told the guard he had broken his leg but he continued to twist it.

August 2, 2005 The Age
The Immigration Department has admitted it had provided misleading answers about a group of detainees who were found to have been inhumanely treated during a transfer to Baxter detention centre. The department yesterday blamed private contractor Global Solutions Limited for its mistake, saying it was relying on information from the detention centre operator. A spokeswoman from the department's media unit admitted it had provided misleading answers to questions from The Age about the incident because "this is what we were told at the time". The admission has sparked renewed calls for GSL's contract to be terminated. Five detainees claimed they were forcibly removed from Maribyrnong detention centre on September 17 last year, put in the back of a van and driven for what seemed to be 10 hours with no toilet breaks and no food or water. In a detailed response to the allegations on September 21 last year, the department said the detainees travelled in "a special-purpose air-conditioned vehicle". "There was a break in a major regional centre a number of hours out of Melbourne where the detainees had a meal and stretched their legs for an hour," the spokeswoman said. "During the drive they had access to food and drink and secure places for toilet stops all along the routes, so the detainees only needed to ask if they required a stop." An independent report on the incident, released late on Friday night by the department, found that the detainees were treated in "an inhumane and undignified manner" and denied food, water and toilet breaks for 6½ hours on the Melbourne-Mildura leg of the journey. The report, by the former head of Queensland Corrective Services, Keith Hamburger, found that appeals for assistance from the detainees were disregarded. One of the detainees said he was forced to urinate "like a dog" in the compartment of the van where he was held. The report also found that force was used on one detainee and that the van used to transport them was "totally unsuitable" for the long trip from Melbourne to South Australia. The Immigration Department and GSL have apologised to the detainees, two managers have resigned and the company has been fined more than $500,000. The Immigration Department spokeswoman said yesterday that the "information (given to The Age) was what should have happened" and that the Hamburger report confirmed that GSL officers had given the department misleading information. "Someone from GSL has already been sanctioned for supplying wrong information to the department," she said. Labor's immigration spokesman, Tony Burke, said the episode showed a lack of clear lines of responsibility and communication. "The department should be out there on the front line so that it knows what's happening to detainees and so it can communicate the message rather than become an extension of the culture of cover-up," he said.

August 1, 2005 The Age
A traumatised asylum seeker has told how he was forced to urinate "same as dog" in the back of a van during a hellish trip between Maribyrnong and Baxter detention centres last year. A damning report, released late on Friday night by the Immigration Department, found that five detainees were denied food, water, medical treatment and toilet stops for six-and-a-half hours on the Melbourne-Mildura leg of the journey. The independent report found the detainees were humiliated and treated in an "inhumane and undignified manner". The asylum seeker, who does not want to be named in case it affects his visa application, told The Age a guard gave him 10 minutes' notice of his transfer last September from the Maribyrnong centre in Melbourne to Baxter north of Port Augusta in South Australia last year. "I wanted to call a lawyer. He said, 'No, take your stuff now'," the asylum seeker said. He said the five detainees were pushed into the van by guards working for detention centre operator Global Solutions Limited. One detainee, who struggled, broke a bone while being forced into the van, the asylum seeker said. He said the van, which was divided into compartments, was dark. The space he was put in was so small he couldn't move. "The guards said, 'If you die inside no one will know'," the man said. "I can't see anything. For eight hours there was no toilet, I had to go in the van, same as dog." He said the detainees were not fed until they arrived at Mildura police station, where they had an hour's break. "I can't believe it," he said. "GSL and the Immigration Department are the law, they can do anything. I didn't know much English, I didn't know what to say to who." He said that although he still felt angry, he did not want compensation. "I'm angry for treating me like a dog," he said. " I don't want money. All I want is for the minister to give me the visa." The Immigration Department apologised for the "very regrettable incident". New department secretary Andrew Metcalfe said GSL would be penalised more than $500,000 and he would refer the matter to police to investigate if criminal offences were committed. Two GSL managers have resigned.

July 25, 2005 Herald Sun
DETAINEES at the Baxter detention centre rioted on Friday night, causing up to $70,000 worth of damage to the complex.
The riot was sparked by complaints of bad food, according to police.  Police are expected to charge some of the 25 detainees who damaged a kitchen, mess hall and store room during the disturbance.  The Department of Immigration said the five minute riot caused between $50,000 and $70,000 damage to the centre in South Australia's North.
A Department spokesman said complaints about the evening meal of lamb aubergine sparked the riot in a compound called Blue Two.   Detainees damaged security cameras, lighting, tables, chairs and food warmers during the disturbance, the spokesman said.

July 14, 2005 Daily Telegraph
THE federal government has apologised to Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez for their treatment at the hands of the immigration department.  Prime Minister John Howard said both women were owed an apology.  "Both Cornelia Rau and Mrs Alvarez are owed apologies for their treatment, and on behalf of the government I give those apologies to both of those women who were the victims of mistakes by the department," Mr Howard told reporters.  Mr Howard and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today released the Palmer report into the immigration department, which catalogues a litany of failures that led to Ms Rau being wrongly detained for 10 months, and Ms Alvarez, also known as Vivian Solon, being wrongly deported. In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Senator Vanstone said the pair would receive assistance.  Mick Palmer, a former federal police commissioner, was appointed to look into the case of Ms Rau.  His inquiry was later widened to include the case of Ms Alvarez.  After criticising the government's contract with Global Solutions Limited (GSL), which runs the immigration detention centres, Mr Palmer recommended an expert group review the company's contract.  Senator Vanstone said Mr Palmer was critical of the department's policy of 'exception reporting', where instead of outlining what should be done, the contract outlined what must not be done to make it as flexible as possible.  "But Mr Palmer's not of the view that the other regulations surrounding detention allow that flexibility to be there," Senator Vanstone said.

June 29, 2005
IN his explosive report on the detention scandals, former police commissioner Mick Palmer refers to Cornelia Rau's four months in Baxter detention centre as "Anna's journey".  Using the name she took at the time of her admission to the South Australian holding centre, Mr Palmer tells how her mental health deteriorated inside Baxter, yet systemic failures allowed her to remain on the periphery of psychiatric care even after the intervention of the state's director of mental health. Anna arrived at Baxter, on the desert outskirts of Port Augusta, on October 6 without any documentation on her medical history. She was assessed and screened by a contract nurse but things soon got out of hand. "She was unco-operative during the medical induction, by crying, being confused and upset," Mr Palmer says. An assessment by Adam Micallef, a psychologist employed by Global Solutions Ltd, the company with the detention centre contract, was ordered for the next day as a "precaution". Medical papers were sent from Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre, including discharge papers from the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Micallef decided her problems appeared "behavioral", rather than stemming from mental illness. "Anna's behaviour continued to be bizarre," Mr Palmer says. Critically, Micallef wrote that Baxter was not equipped to handle cases such as Anna's, and he recommended that she be moved to an all-female compound such as the one in Villawood detention centre in Sydney. The option was never pursued. Anna had been a month in Baxter when she was seen by the centre's consulting psychiatrist, Andrew Frukacz. Despite two attempts, he was unable to make a definitive diagnosis. He recommended she be assessed in a mental health facility. Acting on Frukacz's advice, attempts were made to bring in South Australia's Rural Remote Mental Health Service to assess Anna. "The RRMHS triage team seemed unsure of their relationship with Baxter and said they would need to clarify matters and then get back," Mr Palmer says. "They did not do so." On November 12, Micallef called a psychiatrist working at Glenside -- South Australia's only dedicated mental health facility -- to discuss Anna's "issues" with Baxter staff. The psychiatrist advised that Anna's problems sounded behavioural but later told Mr Palmer no sense of urgency was conveyed to him at the time. The next day the RRMHS took Anna off their books as to be placed at its allocated beds in Glenside. But no-one at Baxter was told. Micallef sent Anna's psychiatric assessments to Glenside but there was not enough detail in the file to admit her to its waiting list. On New Years's Eve last year, NSW psychiatrist Louise Newman, Adelaide refugee lawyer Claire O'Conner and a local doctor visited 12 detainees at Baxter. After examining several of the detainees, they decided to commit two under the state's mental health act. By January 4, Baxter staff urged Glenside to accept and assess Anna. Three days later a rural doctor contracted to Baxter diagnosed possible "schizoid or schizotypal personality features and possibly schizophrenia", but further discussion with a Glenside psychiatrist resulted in no action.  On January 24, South Australia's then director of mental health services, Jonathon Phillips, offered to have Anna assessed at Glenside. Department of Immigration officials in Canberra sought RRMHS assistance to arrange this, but its director suggested she be examined at Baxter. "It was clear the efforts made by Glenside, RRMHS and Baxter were unco-ordinated and no one took overall responsibility for the arrangements to admit Anna to in-patient care," Mr Palmer says. Eight days later, after media reports of a mentally ill German woman in Baxter, it was finally decided that Anna be assessed under the Mental Health Act. That same day, it was revealed she was in fact Cornelia Rau.

June 5, 2005 The Advertiser
SECURITY guards have been moved on to the grounds of Glenside Mental Health Service to watch over nine Baxter detainees receiving treatment. The guards, employed by the Baxter Detention Centre operators, are costing an estimated $150,000 a month. Effectively, two guards have been assigned to each detainee. They operate out of a hired demountable hut which was recently delivered to the grounds of the hospital. State health officials have made it clear the guards are not welcome. Director of Mental Health, Learne Durrington, said she has approached the Immigration Department about the impact of the guards on other patients. "We're running a hospital here and it needs to be managed as a hospital," Ms Durrington said. "I've proposed that we get rid of the guards and replace them with our own staff who are better trained in mental health care." The Baxter guards are employees of Global Solutions Limited (GSL) subsidiary Group 4, the security company that has the contract to operate the Baxter Detention Centre. "We've taken additional troops from another part of our company," the spokesman, who did not wish to be named, said. "As a result we've got staff shortages and we're recruiting more people – mainly for our Baxter contract." One of the guards told a visitor to Glenside hospital the demountable was hired at a cost of $300 per day. Figures from the Miscellaneous Workers Union show the salary costs of the 54 daily eight-hour shifts to be more than $150,000 per month. A spokesman for the Glenside hospital confirmed two guards were allocated for each detainee. "That's 18 guards on three eight-hour shifts, making a total of 54 guards on a daily basis," he said. The increase in numbers of detainees needing mental health treatment has occurred subsequent to the Cornelia Rau case where an Australian resident suffering psychosis was wrongly detained in Baxter until her real identity was discovered in February this year. Health officials have confirmed that in the year prior to the Rau case only one person had been referred to Glenside, but now nine people were in treatment. Glenside hospital officials are still waiting for a response from the Commonwealth on the presence of the Group 4 guards. Meanwhile, the legal team assisting the Rau family's submission into the Palmer inquiry has questioned the timing of an internal Baxter memo about the identity of a detainee. A story in the Sunday Mail of November 21, 2004, described a missing woman as 168cm tall, 58kg, with dark blonde hair, brown eyes and a brown mole on her left cheek. It subsequently turned out to be Cornelia Rau. It's since been revealed that an internal memo dated November 24 raised the possibility a detainee was an Australian citizen. Legal representatives for the Rau family will ask the Palmer Inquiry to check if the memo was sparked by the article in the Sunday Mail.

February 9, 2005 The Age
The detention centre where mentally ill Australian Cornelia Rau was wrongly held was not visited by a psychiatrist for at least three months last year, documents filed in Adelaide's Federal Court suggest. South Australian Legal Services Commission lawyer Claire O'Connor claimed in documents that Group 4 Falck, the company that runs Australia's detention centres, and the Department of Immigration had breached their duty of care by failing to provide adequate psychiatric care for three mentally ill Iranian men at the Baxter detention centre. Outside the court, she said there were parallels with the Rau case. "Cornelia was sick and wasn't treated, my clients are sick and they are not being treated," Ms O'Connor said. "She is no different to people in there." In documents supporting her attempt to get urgent psychiatric treatment for the men, Ms O'Connor said the centre's suicide and self-harm unit did not employ a psychiatrist. "It is believed there has been no psychiatric visit . . . since about August 2004 and certainly none since November 2004," she said in an affidavit. Ms O'Connor said the problem of the lack of psychiatric care at Baxter was compounded by the fact that the centre itself was contributing to the poor mental health of detainees. She said psychiatrists visited Baxter infrequently and were forced to deal with a series of seriously ill people in a short time. "All they can do is medicate them, they just keep renewing the prescriptions," she said.

February 7, 2005 The Age
Only a full judicial and public inquiry would be sufficient to establish the facts about the detention of a mentally ill Australian woman, her sister said today. Cornelia Rau, a 39-year-old former flight attendant who was released from Baxter immigration detention centre last week after spending 10 months locked up, has caused a national debate over services for the mentally ill. Her sister, Christine Rau, said an inquiry independent of the government and open to public scrutiny was necessary to get to the bottom of the case. Adelaide public defender John Harley, who represents mentally ill people, said he had grave concerns for the fate of other people suffering mental health problems imprisoned by the immigration system. "This is not isolated at all," Mr Harley told ABC radio. "I was informed that (Ms Rau) was in solitary confinement and that involves her being under lights 24 hours a day (with) closed circuit television. "She was allowed out of her room six hours a day, but in some occasions it required four men in riot gear to remove her back into her cell," he said.

February 7, 2005 Herald Sun
THE Federal Government will hold an inquiry into the detention of a mentally ill Australian women at the Baxter centre for illegal immigrants. Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said it was regrettable Cornelia Rau was held in custody for three months in Baxter and before that six months in a Brisbane jail. "Obviously it's . . . a very regrettable incident," Mr Howard said. Ms Rau, a 39-year-old former Qantas flight attendant, was released from Baxter in South Australia on Friday. Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the Government should not be trusted to investigate its own actions. "It is bad enough that Ms Rau was being held in an immigration detention centre," Senator Allison said. "But why did she spend six months in a women's prison before that? Senator Allison said state and federal governments had allowed prisons and detention centres to become "the new psychiatric asylums".

February 5, 2005 The Age
A family snapshot of Cornelia Rau, detained as a suspected illegal immigrant. A mentally ill Australian woman found by Aborigines in a remote Cape York township has been mistakenly held in immigration detention for nearly a year while her distressed family thought she was dead. Cornelia Rau, 39, who suffers from schizophrenia, was last seen in March after she escaped from the psychiatric unit of Sydney's Manly Hospital. The Immigration Department confirmed last night that Ms Rau, who was speaking German and some English, had been held in a Queensland women's prison until September when she was transferred to Baxter detention centre. Ms Rau's sister, Chris Rau, a Sydney journalist, read an article from The Age last Monday about a mystery German-speaking woman held at Baxter, known only as "Anna". Baxter authorities faxed her a photograph, which showed her missing sister. "We're just relieved that she is alive," Chris Rau said. They were also bewildered why the department could not establish her identity when police had her details. Ms Rau was first taken into detention in April. She had been staying near an Aboriginal camp at Coen, in far north Queensland. The Aborigines became concerned that she was sick and brought her into Cairns police. A spokesman for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the woman was handed over to the Department of Immigration by police in April 2004. She was held in a Queensland women's prison until September when she was transferred to Baxter. Greens senator Kerry Nettle last night called for an inquiry into "this staggering case of mismanagement and abuse". During her three months in Baxter, Ms Rau was kept in isolation for a week, then in a high- security unit locked in a room on her own for 18 hours a day, refugee advocate Pamela Curr said. She said her sister had "been through hell". "We don't know what the implications are going to be for her future condition or her treatment."

December 13, 2004 The Age
The immigration department today accused refugee advocates of inciting incidents within the Baxter detention centre by exaggerating reports of a detainee hunger strike. Refugee support group Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) today said 27 Iranians within the South Australian centre were participating in the hunger strike, now into its second week. Among those were five men who had sewn their lips together and three who were staging a protest on the centre's gymnasium roof, RAR spokeswoman Kathy Verran said. She said those on the roof had been denied water since last night, after guards stopped other detainees bringing water to the men. Ms Verran said detainees had also reported the guards were bouncing balls against the ceiling of the gym, underneath the detainees, to prevent them from sleeping.

December 3, 2004 The Age
Four Sri Lankan men have been hospitalised after refusing food for up to 10 days in a hunger strike at South Australia's Baxter detention centre. Two of the men had also been admitted overnight earlier this week, she said.

December 1, 2004 The Age
Eleven Sri Lankan men at the Baxter detention centre have stepped up their hunger strike and are now refusing medication, a refugee advocate said today. The detainees were determined to continue their hunger strike until death, in a last bid to be granted refugee status in Australia, according to Rural Australians for Refugees spokeswoman Mira Wroblewski. Ms Wroblewski said other hunger strikers were angry that the pair, after their release, had been forced to walk from the detention centre medical facility to their compounds in pouring rain. "It (forcing them to walk in the rain) has just strengthened their resolve.

September 20, 2004 The Age
A hunger strike, a High Court action and a direct appeal to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone are among last-ditch efforts to stop the forced return of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka. The man on hunger strike, who is 34 and was detained after his visa expired, was put into Baxter's management unit on Thursday and forcibly fed. He resumed his hunger strike on Saturday, Ms Wroblewski said. Eleven other Sri Lankans held at Baxter yesterday entered the fifth day of a peaceful sit-in at the compound.

August 20, 2004 The Age
A food sample from South Australia's Baxter detention centre will be presented to health authorities for inspection after detainees complained they had been served a meal crawling with maggots. The Immigration Department last week said one maggot had been found in food and an investigation was under way. South Australian Greens MP Kris Hanna said he would today present a sample of meat and rice to the state Environmental Health Department for examination. Mr Hanna said the food sample was smuggled out of Baxter following frustration among detainees about the situation. "According to reports in the centre, the food was crawling with live maggots," Mr Hanna said. Detainees at the Baxter centre last week upturned rubbish bins in protest after complaining about maggots in their food.

Inmates of Baxter immigration detention centre took control of a compound yesterday morning and barricaded themselves in. About 50 guards in riot gear surrounded the compound and forced open the door. A spokesman for the Immigration Department confirmed that there had been a disturbance at Baxter. (The Age, March 18, 2004)

July 22, 2006 The Independent
A Kurdish teenager killed himself after spending more than four months in an immigration detention centre, an inquest has heard. Ramazan Kumluca, 18, is the youngest asylum-seeker to have committed suicide while facing deportation from Britain. Campaign groups yesterday called for the closure of all detention centres, comparing them to Victorian workhouses. Mr Kumluca is one of more than 30 asylum-seekers who have killed themselves in the past five years after being told their applications had failed. He had travelled from his home in Turkey to Italy and then on to Britain where he claimed asylum last year, saying that his life was in danger over a £20,000 debt owed by his father. He also claimed that if he was sent back to Italy (under rules that asylum must be claimed in the first safe country reached) he was at risk of exploitation. Mr Kumluca was refused asylum and denied bail because there were fears he would not report back for deportation. He was sent to Campsfield House in Oxfordshire, an immigration removal centre that holds around 100 men at any time. The average stay for detainees at the centre is 14 days, but because the teenager was fighting his deportation order he was held for four and a half months. An inquest at Oxford Old Assizes heard he had been plunged into despair during his incarceration and had complained of insomnia, headaches and anxiety. A fellow inmate, Abdulwase Kamali, told the court Mr Kumluca had appeared "sad" the day before he killed himself. He said: "Ramazan said he had been told by immigration he would be sent back to Italy, and he said if he was sent back to Italy he would be used in sex films. He said he would slash himself or hang himself." On 27 June last year, Mr Kamali and other Muslim detainees alerted warders after calling Mr Kumluca for morning prayers and finding his door would not open. He was found hanging from the door closing mechanism. After investigating his death, a Prison and Probation ombudsman cleared staff of any wrongdoing. The jury returned a verdict of suicide. Outside the court, Bob Hughes, of the pressure group Campaign to Close Campsfield, said: "Here we have an institution full of people being driven deliberately to despair by government policy." "He added: "We believe these people should be allowed to get on with their own lives. Centres like Campsfield are a huge national scandal and shame. Campsfield House has been a removal centre since 1993 and is privately run by the company Global Solutions Limited. In 2002, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett pledged that the centre would be closed, but a year later it was decided to keep it open and expand the number of places. Since 2000, at least 25 asylum-seekers have killed themselves while living in the community after being told they would be deported. Mr Kumluca was the seventh to have committed suicide in a detention centre. More than 2,600 adults and children are being held in detention centres prior to deportation. In January this year another asylum-seeker Bereket Yohannes, from Eritrea, was found hanging at Harmondsworth Removal Centre. An inquest will be held into his death.

June 17, 2006 Indy Media
On Monday 12th of this week a Somalian man went onto a roof at Campsfield; he had been detained for four months (probably illegally, since the government cannot deport people to Somalia) and took a rope and a plastic bag with him. GEO, the new management at Campsfield, asked the police to leave and said they would deal with the matter themselves; we do not know whether they used violence against the Somalian detainee; he has been removed from Campsfield, no doubt to somewhere even worse as is usual in these cases. There have been 12 suicides in immigration detention, and several hundred attempted suicides and cases of self harm requiring medical treatment. GSL lost the contract to run Campsfield to GEO (Global Expertise on Outsourcing), presumably on cost grounds. GEO took over at the beginning of the month. They have changed their name from Wackenhut, and have a discreditable history of running penal institutions in the USA and Australia. GSL's manager, Andy Clark, who had been more willing than his predecessors to allow volunteers and education classes in Campsfield, decided he could not work with GEO; at least two of the people who ran education classes and workshops have been sacked or left, and GEO apparently intends to provide much reduced hours of education (as required under the contract), run by its own officers. But of course the most serious problem is not the conditions inside the centre, but the fact that people are detained there who have committed no crime, been charged or suspected of no crime, with no judicial process and no time limit, often with no access to lawyers, and always with great uncertainty about what is happening to them or about to happen to them.

May 23, 2001
The global private security firm Group 4, is an "Investor in People."  This may come as a surprise.  For since Campsfield opened, almost unnoticed, in the bleary period just before Christmas in 1993, this improvised brick compound has become to many the unacceptable face of the British government's asylum system.  Within weeks, the country's first specialized facility for confining them while their cases were decided was provoking hunger strikes.  Within months, detainees were climbing on to its roofs to protest at the conditions.  Still in its first year of operation, there was a mass escape over its 20ft perimeter fence, and a "disturbance" - involving fires and smashed furniture - which resulted in the deployment of riot police and injuries to detainees, who needed several ambulances and hospital treatment.  Official reports on Campsfield in 1995 and 1998 by two different chief inspectors of prisons found fear, boredom and stress among inmates.  Among the Group 4 staff, the inspections found inexperience, poor pay and exhausting shift work.  This cycle of protest and disorder and repressive countermeasures continued unabated during the late 1990s.  (Guardian Newspapers)

May 14, 2002
As many as 15 asylum seeker accomadation centres could be built across the UK despite an angry response from residents in the locations chosen for the three pilot "villages".  The government plans to build the centres at Throckmorton, near Pershore on Worcestershire, RAF Newton, in Nottinghamshire, and at Bicester, Oxfordshire.  More than 3,000 villagers have signed a petition objecting to a development in their area.  Some local people are anxious about plans to house large numbers of asylum seekers near them, particularly following the riot and fire which destroyed the $100m Yari's Wood centre.  Steve Mitchell, chairman of Pinvin Parish Council, promised to fight the plans "every step of the way".  (BBC News)

Dover Asylum Screening Centre, London City Airport
September 12, 2005 BBC
Immigration detainees have been forced to sleep on tables or plastic chairs because of sub-standard provisions, the prisons watchdog has revealed. Facilities at Gatwick Airport, London City Airport and Dover Asylum Centre were inappropriate for overnight stays, the chief inspector of prisons said. City Airport was "unsuitable" for holding children, the report said. The government said it takes detainees' welfare seriously but that facilities may need independent monitoring. Holding centres at ports and airports hold foreign travellers whose permission to be in the country needs to be examined by immigration officers. But none of the centres inspected, all run by private company GSL UK Limited, had adequate child protection arrangements, according to the report. Inspectors found detainees were sleeping in inadequate conditions, there were no regular healthcare visits and suicide-prevention measures were not good enough.

Global Solutions, UK
December 18, 2007 Yahoo Business Wire
Cognetas, an independent mid-market pan-European private equity firm specialising in complex deals, today announces the sale of Global Solutions (GSL) for £355 million to G4S. The sale, subject to EU merger clearance and South African competition commission clearance, is expected to complete in 2008. GSL is a leading provider of outsourced support services to public authorities and corporate organisations worldwide. Services are typically provided under long-term contracts (5 to 30 years) either directly to the end customer or through joint ventures and Public Private Partnerships with government and corporates. GSL has operations in the UK, South Africa and Australia. Its service offering covers three areas: Custodial services, including prison management, escorting, immigration, custody and training; Public Services, for example healthcare, education and Local Authority services; and Business services, comprising utilities, office accommodation and other managed services. Cognetas backed the original MBO of GSL in 2004 in a £207 million (€309 million) transaction. At the time, Cognetas underwrote equity and debt to facilitate certainty for the vendor with an initial commitment of £105 million (€158 million) on behalf of Cognetas Fund I. This was reduced within two months to £54 million (€81 million) by introducing senior debt. The balance of the funding was provided by Englefield Capital on behalf of the Englefield Funds. Since then Cognetas has supported management in the implementation of a growth plan that has seen revenues increase from £291 million in 2004 to over £400 million in 2007 through organic growth, in fill acquisition and expansion of services in its sectors over three continents with the number of staff employed increasing by over 25% to more than 9,500. Nigel McConnell, Managing Partner of Cognetas commented: “We are delighted to be associated with the success of GSL over the past three years and we are pleased to see that the dynamic management team has built the business into a worldwide quality provider of outsourced services. We leave the business on extremely sound and robust grounds which will help sustain its continued growth. I am confident that being part of a larger global business like G4S will take this business forward to a new level and I wish them well”.

November 29, 2007 The Telegraph
Group4Securicor is in talks to buy Global Solutions, a company it used to own, for around £350m. Earlier this year, private equity firm Cognetas appointed investment bank UBS to carry out a strategic review of Global Solutions, which runs a number of Britain's prisons and detention centres. However, the credit crunch forced Cognetas to put the review of Global Solutions on hold. Since then, the company has received a number of approaches, including one from Group4Securicor. Cognetas bought Global Solutions, which also manages hospitals, schools and tourist offices, from Danish security firm Group 4 Falk for about £200m three years ago. Group4Securicor is now understood to be carrying out due diligence on the business. However, it is not the only company bidding. Sources said US group GEO and several private equity firms have also made approaches for the company. Global Solutions has previously come under the spotlight for the way it runs its prisons and detention centres, following the Government's privatisation of the sector. Earlier this year, there was a Panorama investigation by an undercover BBC reporter, who worked as a custody officer, in one of Global Solutions' prisons at Rye Hill. None of the parties involved would comment.

August 26, 2007 The Observer
A possible sale or flotation of Global Solutions, which runs a number of Britain's prisons and detention centres, has been shelved by private equity owner Cognetas, according to City sources. UBS, the investment bank that was appointed last month to undertake a strategic review of the prisons group, is understood to have advised Cognetas against a move while global credit and stock markets are still on tenterhooks. Cognetas bought Global Solutions, which also manages hospitals, schools and tourist offices, from Danish security firm Group 4 Falk for about £200m three years ago. The company has stoked occasional controversy, most recently after the BBC's Panorama programme looked into the way Global Solutions ran Rye Hill prison, near Rugby, Warwickshire. The jail was the subject of a report by the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, who found the staff were inexperienced. There has also been criticism of the way it runs asylum centres - last year, a prisons inspectorate inquiry was ordered into Yarl's Wood, an immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire that was formerly run by Global.

June 14, 2007 The Telegraph
Global Solutions, a company that runs some of Britain's prisons and detention centres, may be about to change hands for around £400m. Private equity firm Cognetas, which owns Global Solutions, has appointed investment bank UBS to carry out a strategic review of the business, according to sources familiar with the matter. It is understood that the review is likely to examine a float, sale, refinancing and possible future acquisition for the business. Sources stressed that the strategic review might not necessarily lead to an imminent sale of Global Solutions, which Cognetas bought in 2004 from Danish security firm Group 4 Falck for around £207m. The move comes as Global Solutions - which also builds and manages hospitals, schools and tourist offices for several public organisations around the world - has come under the public spotlight for the way it runs its prisons and detention centres, following the Government's privatisation of the sector. Earlier this year, there was a Panorama investigation by an undercover BBC reporter, who worked as a custody officer, in one of Global Solutions' prisons at Rye Hill. Global Solutions' detention centres for asylum seekers have also been criticised. Last year, a prison inspectorate inquiry was ordered after two refugees had to go to hospital following prolonged detention in Yarl's Wood, an immigration removal centre formerly run by Global Solutions. Cognetas declined to comment.

March 19, 2006 The Age
FOUR prison officers have been sacked and two more counselled in the wake of the so-called "Sausagegate" scandal, which hurt and humiliated a vulnerable inmate of the privately owned and run Port Phillip Prison. The Bracks Government has put GSL Australia, operator of the Laverton maximum-security complex, on notice over a spate of alarming incidents. The prisoner was tricked into believing he was leaving the jail, coerced into inserting a sausage in his body, then strip-searched by officers "in" on the "joke". The dismissed officers were corrections supervisor Trevor Spearman, who allegedly tried to cover up the incident, and corrections officer Steven Harmat, who allegedly played the leading role, and corrections officers Russell Davies and Appudurai Natkunarajah, who joined the prank. Until last week, they had been suspended for six to nine months on full pay following the report of the investigation by GSL's security manager, Jim Keegan, revealed exclusively in The Sunday Age last week. Anti-private prison activist Charandev Singh said the report shows that more needs to be done to address serious systemic problems in the prison. His concern is backed by Vanessa Westcott, daughter of a man who died of an asthma attack at the prison in November after a help button he pressed apparently did not work. Ms Westcott said the prison was leaving people like her father, remanded alleged offender Ian Westcott, 55, in cells not monitored between 8pm and 8am. His death, after he reportedly left a note saying he had called for help, is the subject of three inquiries. Ms Westcott, a University of Melbourne doctoral student researching in outback Western Australia, wants to prevent such tragedies occurring. Her solicitor, Fitzroy Legal Service's Stan Winford, said not enough had been done to implement the findings of inquests conducted into deaths at the prison in the late 1990s. GSL was recently given a penalty of almost $200,000 over "Sausagegate", which happened last May. The penalty appears to have included other incidents. In another embarrassment this week, the company's transport manager, Rod St George, was dressed down by Judge John Nixon in Geelong County Court over a bungle that left a prisoner late for court and without food or water for almost seven hours. The problems come at an awkward time for GSL and the Bracks Government, which is in the midst of a scheduled review of GSL's contract. Minister for Corrections, Tim Holding told The Sunday Age: "The Government will not accept failure in the management of any of our prisons." Under the terms of its 20-year contract, begun in 1997, GSL was to face a review after five years, then every three years. If renewed, the second of its three-year terms would begin on July 1. Mr Singh, a human rights advocate with Brimbank Melton Community Legal Centre, said the penalty faced by GSL was "tokenistic" compared to its annual revenue of $147 million. Police have investigated "Sausagegate" and have forwarded their investigation to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

March 12 2006 The Age
THE private company running Port Phillip Prison, GSL Australia, has been fined almost $200,000 and four officers have been suspended over a practical joke that humiliated and hurt a vulnerable prisoner last year. Known in prison circles as "Sausagegate", the incident involved the prisoner being coerced into hiding a package of supposed contraband inside his body and then being strip-searched by officers who were in on the "joke". A scathing internal GSL report on the case, obtained by The Sunday Age, reveals that the prisoner rejected efforts to make him cover up the incident, which left him angry, humiliated and physically hurt. The scandal is likely to revive debate over the use of private companies to run prisons and immigration detention centres. Last year GSL was fined almost $500,000 by federal authorities over mistreatment of immigration detainees, and an independent review has decided against an automatic extension of its contract to run immigration detention centres. Police who investigated the latest case have now referred files to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Victorian Corrections Commissioner Kelvin Anderson said the matter had "been taken extremely seriously", resulting in what he termed a "significant financial penalty" under its contract. The Sunday Age believes that the sum is close to $200,000.

August 16, 2005 BBC
Facilities at four short-term immigrant holding centres have been condemned as "inadequate" by the prisons watchdog. Dover Asylum Screening Centre, a centre at London City Airport and two at Gatwick Airport are not suitable for overnight stays, its report says. Detainees were found to have slept on tables or plastic chairs, it adds. Immigrants are only supposed to be detained for a few hours, but Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers said people were sometimes held overnight, and occasionally for up to 36 hours. Ms Owers said none of the centres had adequate child protection arrangements. A spokesman for GSL UK Limited, which was in charge of the centres at the time of the inspections, said it was inappropriate to comment as the company no longer ran them. The centres have since been taken over by Group 4 Securicor.

July 9, 2005
Here is a story about your taxes at work. It concerns a company called GSL (Australia) Pty Ltd, previously known as Group 4 Correction Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British security company Group 4 Securitas, whose core business includes running prisons. GSL's parent has merged twice in the past five years. The second time was a year ago, with a British-based multinational called Securicor to create "one of the largest security companies in the world, with 340,000 employees in 108 countries", according to GSL's website.  On July 13, 2004, GSL was sold, for $500 million, as a stand-alone company to "two of Europe's leading private equity companies, Englefield Capital and Electra Partners Europe". The GSL website says GSL has 8000 employees globally, including 1064 in Australia.  A year earlier, on August 27, 2003, GSL signed a contract with the Australian Government's Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs to take over the operation of all its mainland "immigration detention facilities". The contract runs for four years, with a government option for another three years.  The cost to taxpayers: $90 million a year.  That is, $90 million "not including overheads and contract administration", according to the Auditor-General, whose office has just investigated the Immigration Department's management of the GSL contract. What do taxpayers get for their $90 million?  Well, the first thing they get is a bill for another $30 million, which is what the Audit Office found it now costs the department in annual overheads to administer the contract. These costs have gone up at the same time as the number of detainees has gone down. In 2003-04 administration costs totalled $20 million, while in the year just ended June 30 they were "projected to reach $30 million".  The number of detainees, as at June 29, was 844. Do your sums on a total cost of $120 million and you'll find the detention of each and every detainee cost taxpayers an average $142,000 throughout 2004-05. Perhaps this is why GSL Australia's managing director, Peter Olszak, is quoted on the company website as "expressing confidence 'we will continue to go from strength to strength'."   The Audit Office, in its report released this week, says the Immigration Department stated it funded $120.5 million in 2004-05 to provide "lawful, appropriate, humane and efficient detention of unlawful non-citizens". It also found the department's "internal monitoring and reporting arrangements" neither defined nor measured "lawful, appropriate, humane or efficient detention".  The report's overall conclusion, in part: "The contract does not establish clear expectations for the level and quality of services delivered, mechanisms to protect the Commonwealth's interests are not clear, and there is insufficient information about the quality of services and their costs to allow a value-for-money calculation."  All of which means what?  Labor's Sharon Grierson, deputy chairwoman of Parliament's public accounts and audit committee, was the only MP to respond to the Audit Office report. Grierson said in a statement on Thursday: "The department has no idea what is going on inside detention centres. The last thing we should do is assume anything about these centres, given the culture of complacency and the lack of proper review. The ANAO report makes it clear there is simply no way of knowing whether the Commonwealth is receiving value for money or, more importantly, whether the needs of detainees are being met. The department simply shuts its eyes and hopes for the best. DIMIA has absolutely no idea if (or to what extent) it is insured for incidents at detention centres, why the cost of detention is rising even while the number of detainees is falling, or even what assets and equipment it owns in these centres."  A lot of "don't knows" for $120 million.

April 9, 2005 The Guardian
Security firms involved in the deportation of failed asylum seekers are facing more and more claims of intimidation and assault. Group 4/Global Solutions Ltd (GSL) topped the league table of complaints by asylum seekers and their lawyers. Campaigners who studied 35 complaints now being pursued by lawyers revealed GSL was involved in 30% of cases. GSL, which deals with by far the majority of deportees in Britain, recently won a 10-year Home Office contract to run Bicester Accommodation Centre for asylum seekers. The firm was criticised last month after the broadcast of the BBC documentary Asylum Undercover, which contained claims of abuse by GSL guards. Most of the alleged assaults analysed involve incidents on the way to or at airports. Most concern incidents resulting in cuts, bruises and swelling, although deportees have complained of head injuries, damaged nerves, and sexual assault.

March 31, 2005 IRR News
Recent unannounced inspections of centres used to hold asylum seekers in transit to detention centres and to ports for deportation have found that no centre meets the minimum requirements in relation to child protection. Officials carried out their first (unannounced) inspections into 'holding' centres for asylum seekers between June and October 2004. The holding centres, all run by private company GSL Ltd, (formerly Group 4) were: Communications House (Old Street, London), Lunar House (Croydon), Electric House (Croydon) and Dallas Court (Manchester). The report states that 'all four holding centres had inadequate provision for childcare and child protection. None had a child protection policy in place, and staff likely to be in contact with children had not undergone enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks.' At Lunar House the inspection team reported that they 'spoke to one woman detainee with a two-year-old child during the mid-afternoon. She and the child had been in other areas of the building since 8am that morning. Neither she nor her child had been offered anything to eat during that time and had to wait for relocation to a residential centre that evening.' They found that this was 'unacceptable'. At Dallas Court, the team found that 'a weekend shift recently complained when they discovered a young woman in the holding room who had miscarried a few days previously. She had been collected from a hospital following psychiatric referral, had not eaten for three days and had to be helped to and from the van. She was subject to a live F2052SH self-harm monitoring form because she kept asking for her baby and said she wanted to die. Having been delivered to the holding room in the morning, she was not due to be collected by another vehicle until more than six hours later.' For the first time it emerged that other private contractors (unnamed in this report) are being used to move asylum seekers - though GSL Ltd remains responsible for the four holding centres inspected here. The inspection teams also found a worrying 'absence of operational or independent oversight, compared to other immigration detention facilities. There was no Independent Monitoring Board, and no on-site monitor to provide daily oversight of service provision, as there is in immigration removal centres (IRCs). Senior Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) staff visited only occasionally, and, with the exception of Dallas Court, had little involvement with the centres.'

MANCHESTER'S new £30m court is at the centre of a new storm after dozens of prisoners were hours late arriving from their cells.  Furious lawyers sat around for up to three hours yesterday waiting for their clients to arrive from police stations, including Bootle Street less than a mile away.  GSL, the private security firm that ferries prisoners to the court, blamed "logistical problems" and has apologised to court authorities.  It is the latest in a string of problems at the court since it opened in May.   Around 40 people were due to be moved from holding cells in Manchester to the court before 10am yesterday, in time for morning hearings.  Less than half were delivered on time and more were dropped off at 11am and 11.45am. Lawyers were still waiting for at least eight clients at 12.30pm. GSL, part of Group 4, said the final transfer was made at 12.45pm.  Court bosses have already threatened to fine GSL for previous failures to get prisoners into court on time.  (Manchester Online, August 31, 2004)

HM Prison Altcourse, UK
July 13, 2005
An inquiry has been launched after two men were found hanged in their cells at a prison in Liverpool. Lee Jason Crabtree, 32, from Llandudno, Conwy, was found dead on Monday at HM Prison Altcourse. David Oakes, 25, from Warrington, Cheshire, was found on Tuesday. The two deaths are not thought to be linked. The privately-run jail has recently been praised by prison inspectors for its good environment and work with mentally ill inmates. But the report, by the Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers, also highlighted bullying among prisoners and criticised procedures for inmates' first night in jail.

Oakington Asylum Reception Center, Cambridgeshire
November 14, 2006 Cambridge Evening News
A report by Anne Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons, found bosses had failed to implement improvements recommended following an earlier inspection in several key areas designed to improve the welfare of detainees. Highlighting her concerns, she warned the centre would have to take note of its shortcomings if, as is planned, it stays open for another three years. She said: "Oakington remains a reasonably safe environment. It was, however, disappointing several of our recommendations on suicide and self-harm had not been implemented, and that anti-bullying procedures were weak. "This will be of increased importance if the centre remains in operation, and holds men who are detained for longer periods, with no on-site access to independent legal advice or to the immigration service." The centre was also rapped for failing to improve its race relations procedures, although staff were not accused of being racist towards detainees. Ms Owers said: "We were extremely disappointed to find there to be insufficient attention to basic protective race relations structures, such as effective ethnic monitoring procedures. "There can be no excuse for failing to put in place effective mechanisms to detect and prevent racial discrimination."The lack of suitable activities and welfare support for detainees was also criticised, and Ms Owers said the centre was in a period of transition. A CULTURE of bullying and abuse was exposed by an undercover investigation at Oakington Reception Centre. Global Solutions Ltd (GSL), which runs the centre, launched an investigation after an undercover reporter spent three months working there, filming abuse that went on. One member of staff, Jason Martin, known to colleagues at Oakington as Wolfie, was filmed telling a detainee whose mental well-being was reportedly causing concern: “Get out of ******* bed before I do you some damage.” Martin, right, then tipped him out of bed after saying: “You just don’t want to do it because I’m white. And you think you’re not going to do anything because a white person tells you what to do. Well I’m afraid you’re wrong. My great- grandfather shot your great-grandfather and nicked his ******* country off you for 200 years. “I’m not to be ****** about with. Personally I don’t go with this Gandhi ****. Passive resistance means **** all to me.” GSL said Mr Martin subsequently moved on to a job as a prison custody officer for a private company.

December 15, 2005 Virgin.net
New safeguards are to be introduced after evidence of racism was uncovered at an asylum seeker detention centre. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will act as an independent monitor of complaints from October next year, ministers said. The ombudsman, currently Stephen Shaw, investigated Oakington fast-track detention centre in Cambridgeshire earlier this year after a BBC documentary exposed allegations of racism and mistreatment. "The behaviour of some of those working for the contractor company, as seen in the BBC documentary and confirmed by Stephen Shaw's report, was unacceptable." Oakington, which is already marked for closure by the end of next year, is run by the private company Global Solutions Ltd. Oakington officers boasted of hitting detainees and made racist comments while a BBC researcher was working undercover at the Cambridgeshire centre.

March 4, 2005 Interactive Investor
The government asked the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman to investigate allegations of abuse at the Oakington immigrant detention centre, said Home Office Minister Des Browne. The independent probe was established after a BBC television documentary showed staff at the centre racially and physically abusing asylum seekers. Ombudsman Stephen Shaw's remit will be to investigate the allegations made in the documentary and review the centre's own probe into the affair, Browne said.  Oakington is run by Global Solutions Ltd. GSL was formed after Group 4 Falck merged with with Securicor in 2004. Electra Partners Europe and Englefield Capital each took 50 pct stakes in GSL last July, according to GSL's website.

March 3, 2005 Financial Times
A BBC film showing asylum seekers being assaulted, racially abused and sexually humiliated by guards has prompted demands for a public debate into how government policy is fuelling human rights abuses and miscarriages of justice. The film, shown last night, has generated adverse publicity for Global Solutions, one of the government's largest contractors, which runs Oakington detention centre near Cambridge and the in-country escorting contract featured in the undercover documentary. The Home Office said it was taking the matter "extremely seriously" and would decide on what further action to take once it had all the facts. GSL was formed in 2004, when Group 4 Falck of Denmark merged with Securicor, its UK rival. It inherited a number of public-private partnership contracts, from healthcare and schools to the construction and servicing of the new GCHQ, one of the largest buildings developed under the private finance initiative. What has shocked human rights and refugee groups is that Oakington had been considered one of the better-run and more humane detention centres. The documentary has fuelled concerns that the abuses at Oakington are but the symptoms of a wider malaise across the system that has long generated protests to the Home Office from human rights lawyers.

November 9, 2004 The Guardian
Children detained in the Oakington asylum reception centre in Cambridgeshire are not being cared for properly, with some found to be suffering distress, according to the chief inspector of prisons. Anne Owers says in a report published today that when she visited the privately run centre she found that 41 children were being detained, some for weeks. The chief inspector's report also discloses that the agreed procedures for detaining the children of asylum seekers had not been followed. "The centre made conscientious attempts to identify and support children at risk of harm, but residential staff lacked the necessary qualifications or support from social services," she says.

Port Phillip Prison, Australia
August 5, 2007 The Ages
A PRISONER who was allegedly hurt and humiliated by an obscene practical joke, known in prison circles as "Sausagegate", is suing the private operator of Port Phillip Prison at Laverton. Kirk Steven Ardern, 27, has lodged a writ in the County Court seeking damages for physical and psychological injuries suffered during the incident on May 22, 2005. The Sunday Age reported exclusively in March last year that private operator GSL Australia had been fined almost $200,000 by Corrections Victoria over the matter and other breaches. Following the Sunday Age report, based on a leaked copy of an internal investigation, four prison officers who were suspended on full pay for six to nine months over the incident were sacked, and two others were counselled. The investigator's report said Ardern was made to believe he was going out of the prison to buy doughnuts, then coerced into secreting what he was told was a package of contraband drugs and cash wrapped in cling-wrap inside his rectum. But he had been tricked, and was angered and humiliated after the package, a meat sausage, was revealed during a strip-search and a subsequent mock interrogation. In the writ, filed by solicitors Arnold Thomas and Becker, the statement of claim says a plan was hatched and carried out against Ardern by several prison officers, along with several prisoners and a catering employee. It names the prison officers as Stephen Harmat, Russell Davies and Appurdural Natkunarajah. A fourth officer was unnamed. The catering employee is cited as someone named Scott, and the prisoners as Dave Eddington, "Chris" and "Curly". The writ says the plan involved persuading Ardern he would be allowed out of the prison if he hid a package in his rectum and went to Werribee Plaza to give the package to an unidentified person, then returned to the prison. The plan then involved strip-searching Ardern before he left prison, "discovering" the package and treating him as though he had been caught committing a serious offence. The writ describes the package as being "15 to 20 centimetres long and tubular in shape and compact and solid". It says Ardern inserted the package "not of his own free will but acting under intimidation from Chris, who in the presence of Eddington and Curly" had told Ardern not to anger the warders and the caterer. "This occurred after Eddington had told the plaintiff to 'bank' the package which had been left for him in the prison toilets. In prison parlance, 'bank' meant to insert the package up his rectum. "The strip-search was carried out by Davies and the unnamed prison officer. During the strip search the package was discovered and removed. "Natkunarajah then proceeded to interrogate the plaintiff and treat him as though he had committed a serious offence." The writ argues that Ardern was a victim of what amounted to assault and battery, and suffered damage to the anus and rectum, with bleeding and pain. His psychological injuries, it said, involved post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. The writ said Ardern was especially vulnerable as a prisoner and, because of his psychological state, personality and circumstances, had been humiliated and embarrassed through a severe abuse of powers. Ardern has spent most of the time since the incident in Fulham prison, near Sale, where he is serving a sentence for assault. GSL was warned at the time that the case could affect the renewal of its contract with Australian Correctional Facility Pty Ltd, which sub-contracts to GSL. The contract for Port Phillip Prison is a 20-year agreement with reviews every three to five years. In the most recent review, completed in June, the Government required GSL to improve its performance and standards. The result has been a clean-out at the top of GSL, which now has a new director, new management team and a new compliance regime that includes daily checks and regular auditing.

November 28, 2006 The Age
THE daughter of a prisoner who died of an asthma attack in his Port Phillip Prison cell after an emergency buzzer allegedly failed has demanded answers over her father's death. "I want someone to be held accountable," a tearful Vanessa Westcott said outside Melbourne Coroners Court yesterday. An inquest on Ian Thomas Westcott heard yesterday that the 55-year-old man left a note in his cell saying his cries for help went unheeded. "He wrote that he had asthma on the note and that he had attempted to call for assistance," Port Phillip Prison doctor Eugenie Tuck told the court. Barrister Ian Freckelton, for Mr Westcott's family, said the intercom unit that allegedly failed Mr Westcott was insufficiently tested and checked. Dr Freckelton said that while a poor connection was the likely cause of the intercom problem in Mr Westcott's cell, he had been advised of intercom deficiencies in other Victorian prisons. "This is an issue that has wider significance in this state," he said. Mr Westcott, who was charged with dishonesty offences and remanded in July 2005, was found dead in his cell on November 28 last year. The court heard that a medical history taken from Mr Westcott when he was remanded at Melbourne Assessment Prison had no mention of his asthma and arrived at Port Phillip Prison the week after his death — four months after it was taken. The inquest continues today.

November 28, 2006 The Australian
AN inquest into the asthma-related death of a prisoner at Port Phillip private prison in Melbourne will begin today at the Victorian Coroner's Court. Remand prisoner Ian Westcott, 55, was found dead in his cell on November 26 last year, after he had apparently suffered an asthma attack. A handwritten note was found in Mr Westcott's cell which said: "Asthma attack buzzed for help no response." The inquest will investigate alleged failures of the prison's emergency intercom system and the medical care provided to Mr Westcott. His daughter, Vanessa, has said she hoped the inquest would provide some answers "for why my father died in such horrific and humiliating circumstances". "I have so many unanswered questions as to why my father was denied help when he was dying in his cell, and why we as his family had to hear of his death from the media and not from those responsible for his care." "My dad's last plea for help will not go unheard again." The 300-bed Port Phillip prison is in Laverton in Melbourne's south-west and is managed by Global Solutions Limited.

March 25, 2006 The Age
THE private company that operates Port Phillip Prison has defended its security measures after an inmate was murdered on Thursday. Tim Hall, national spokesman for GSL (Australia) said while the stabbing of Darren Parkes was a tragedy, Port Phillip had a good safety record and little could have been done to prevent the murder. "Security can always be improved but there are some violent people in prison," Mr Hall told The Age. "Regrettably, sometimes in the best-managed prisons, violent incidents occur." He said Parkes was the first inmate to be killed at the maximum security prison since 1997 when GSL (then Group 4 Falck) began operating the prison after being awarded a tender by the Kennett government. Parkes, 29, was on remand at Port Phillip and awaiting trial over the robbery and attempted murder of South Melbourne Market fruiterer Bendetto Riccardi. Mr Riccardi was shot in a car park in May last year and is now a paraplegic. A prison source told The Age yesterday that Parkes, who was not a protected prisoner, was in his cell at the Laverton prison's Scarborough North unit when he was stabbed in the chest about 4.30pm on Thursday. The Age believes the attacker used an implement taken from a meal tray and which had been fashioned into a weapon. Victoria Police will apply to the Magistrates Court next week to interview a suspect over the stabbing. The comments by GSL's Mr Hall attracted an angry response from Charandev Singh, an advocate for prisoners from Brimbank Community Legal Centre. "If they are unconcerned on a commercial level about a prisoner being stabbed to death, then that's an indication of their lack of priority (for) this man's life," Mr Singh said yesterday. He said Parkes was the third Victorian prisoner to be murdered since 1998 and that private prison operators and the State Government were jointly responsible.

March 19, 2006 The Age
FOUR prison officers have been sacked and two more counselled in the wake of the so-called "Sausagegate" scandal, which hurt and humiliated a vulnerable inmate of the privately owned and run Port Phillip Prison. The Bracks Government has put GSL Australia, operator of the Laverton maximum-security complex, on notice over a spate of alarming incidents. The prisoner was tricked into believing he was leaving the jail, coerced into inserting a sausage in his body, then strip-searched by officers "in" on the "joke". The dismissed officers were corrections supervisor Trevor Spearman, who allegedly tried to cover up the incident, and corrections officer Steven Harmat, who allegedly played the leading role, and corrections officers Russell Davies and Appudurai Natkunarajah, who joined the prank. Until last week, they had been suspended for six to nine months on full pay following the report of the investigation by GSL's security manager, Jim Keegan, revealed exclusively in The Sunday Age last week. Anti-private prison activist Charandev Singh said the report shows that more needs to be done to address serious systemic problems in the prison. His concern is backed by Vanessa Westcott, daughter of a man who died of an asthma attack at the prison in November after a help button he pressed apparently did not work. Ms Westcott said the prison was leaving people like her father, remanded alleged offender Ian Westcott, 55, in cells not monitored between 8pm and 8am. His death, after he reportedly left a note saying he had called for help, is the subject of three inquiries. Ms Westcott, a University of Melbourne doctoral student researching in outback Western Australia, wants to prevent such tragedies occurring. Her solicitor, Fitzroy Legal Service's Stan Winford, said not enough had been done to implement the findings of inquests conducted into deaths at the prison in the late 1990s. GSL was recently given a penalty of almost $200,000 over "Sausagegate", which happened last May. The penalty appears to have included other incidents. In another embarrassment this week, the company's transport manager, Rod St George, was dressed down by Judge John Nixon in Geelong County Court over a bungle that left a prisoner late for court and without food or water for almost seven hours. The problems come at an awkward time for GSL and the Bracks Government, which is in the midst of a scheduled review of GSL's contract. Minister for Corrections, Tim Holding told The Sunday Age: "The Government will not accept failure in the management of any of our prisons." Under the terms of its 20-year contract, begun in 1997, GSL was to face a review after five years, then every three years. If renewed, the second of its three-year terms would begin on July 1. Mr Singh, a human rights advocate with Brimbank Melton Community Legal Centre, said the penalty faced by GSL was "tokenistic" compared to its annual revenue of $147 million. Police have investigated "Sausagegate" and have forwarded their investigation to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

March 16, 2006 Geelong Informant
PORT Phillip Prison operator Global Solutions Limited (GSL) was yesterday called to account over its bungling of a prisoner's delivery to Geelong County Court on Tuesday. The mishap resulted in a prisoner being forced to go without food or drink for seven-and-a-half hours. Judge John Nixon requested the attendance of GSL's Transport Operations Manager at court after the prisoner, due to stand trial in Geelong County Court at 10.30am, was not delivered at court until 2.30pm. When he arrived, concerned court staff discovered the man had been locked in a holding cell at Port Phillip Prison since 7am and had not been given anything to eat or drink since breakfast. It was also discovered that after collecting the prisoner from Port Phillip at noon, the prison vehicle travelled to Geelong via Melbourne Assessment Prison and other places. Judge John Nixon described the situation as absolutely outrageous. At 10am yesterday GSL Transport Operations manager Roderick St George appeared in Geelong County Court where he was questioned under oath by Crown Prosecutor Andrew Moore about the incident. Mr St George said a jail order had been faxed to the prison at 3.31pm on March 13 but because Monday was a public holiday, the jail order sat in the tray until it was read at 7.15am Tuesday morning. He said no one knew the prisoner was to come to Geelong until the fax was read, despite the prisoner already having been taken to the holding cell at 7am to await transport. Mr St George said any jail order received after 4pm would be regarded as ad hoc, yet he had already told the court the jail order had been faxed to the prison half an hour earlier. He said there was no indication the job was of high priority and said he was unaware the prisoner was required for trial, even though a letter was attached to the jail order, to the contrary. Mr St George said he had collected the letter before attending court yesterday and had not been made privy to its contents earlier. When asked why the man had not been given food or drink for seven and a half hours, Mr St George said it was the prison's responsibility to feed and water prisoners. Judge Nixon told Mr St George that what had taken place was an inxecusable blunder on GSL's part and Mr St George agreed.

March 12 2006 The Age
THE private company running Port Phillip Prison, GSL Australia, has been fined almost $200,000 and four officers have been suspended over a practical joke that humiliated and hurt a vulnerable prisoner last year. Known in prison circles as "Sausagegate", the incident involved the prisoner being coerced into hiding a package of supposed contraband inside his body and then being strip-searched by officers who were in on the "joke". A scathing internal GSL report on the case, obtained by The Sunday Age, reveals that the prisoner rejected efforts to make him cover up the incident, which left him angry, humiliated and physically hurt. The scandal is likely to revive debate over the use of private companies to run prisons and immigration detention centres. Last year GSL was fined almost $500,000 by federal authorities over mistreatment of immigration detainees, and an independent review has decided against an automatic extension of its contract to run immigration detention centres. Police who investigated the latest case have now referred files to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Victorian Corrections Commissioner Kelvin Anderson said the matter had "been taken extremely seriously", resulting in what he termed a "significant financial penalty" under its contract. The Sunday Age believes that the sum is close to $200,000.

December 1, 2005 The Age
A JAIL inmate who died from an asthma attack at the weekend left a note telling authorities he had tried to get help but his calls went unanswered due to a faulty intercom system. Corrections Commissioner Kelvin Anderson said yesterday the body of the 55-year-old remand prisoner, a known asthmatic, was found by Port Phillip Prison staff after lockdown between 8pm Friday and 8am Saturday along with a note that stated he had unsuccessfully tried to raise the alarm using the intercom button but there had been "no response". The unit where the deceased man was staying, Scarborough South, was not staffed around the clock, he said, but patrolling checks by the 11 prison officers on duty to monitor the 750 prisoners had been conducted. Opposition corrections spokesman Richard Dalla-Riva said the death was unacceptable. "To have a prisoner to die in such circumstances, where he has had to write a note saying that the alarm doesn't work as he is dying, I think is a just a tragic set of circumstances. "It paints a very poor picture on the hapless Corrections Minister," Mr Dalla-Riva said. There have been two other serious incidents in the jail system over the past week. A man stabbed at Barwon Prison on Tuesday is in a stable condition and, in a separate incident, Noel Faure (one of three men accused of murdering underworld crime patriarch Lewis Moran) is also in a stable condition following a self-mutilation attempt.

June 7, 2005 Herald Sun
THE Corrections Commissioner is awaiting the outcome of an investigation into the alleged abuse of a prisoner at Port Phillip Prison before deciding whether to