Prisoners should be kept 72 hours, not 21 days: coroner

The length of time prisoners can be held in watch houses should be drastically reduced, while funding for organisations supporting people in custody should be boosted, a coroner says.

Deputy State Coroner Stephanie Gallagher made the recommendations in the findings of an inquest into the deaths of two women who died of natural causes in Queensland watch houses, with concerns raised about the care and supervision they received.

Indigenous woman Shiralee Deanne Tilberoo, known as Aunty Sherry, died at the Brisbane City Watch House on September 10, 2020, and Vlasta Wylucki was 50 years old when she died in the Southport Watch House on March 1, 2018.

She died from ischaemic heart disease due to coronary atherosclerosis. Tilberoo, 49, died from a subarachnoid haemorrhage, due to a ruptured berry aneurysm.

Watch house officers who checked on both women recorded that no problems were detected when they appeared clearly unwell or their state of wellbeing could not be determined, Gallagher said in findings published on Thursday.

One of the women died in a watch house while waiting transfer to the Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre.Credit: Toby Crockford

The women were also experiencing substance withdrawal – Tilberoo from heroin and Wylucki from alcohol.

Tilberoo was held for an “unusually long period” after being arrested on outstanding warrants relating to 56 offences.

Family of the Rockhampton-born woman said she wasn’t able to overcome the trauma of the Aboriginal Protection Act era that filtered down the generations.

“They’d sit around table and talk about it, how their language was taken off them, how their cultural practices were taken off them, living at Woorabinda, these Aboriginal communities were concentration camps, you woke by the bell and you slept by the bell, you toileted by the bell,” the inquest findings quote them as saying.

Tilberoo refused food and medical services while waiting transfer to the Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre, which was taking a maximum of five prisoners a day due to COVID-19 restrictions.

She was clearly deceased when an officer took breakfast to her cell about 6am four days after her arrest.

One officer who made seven false entries relating to inspections of Tilberoo was suspended from duty for six months before being redeployed, while the police Ethical Standards Command recommended three officers be referred over failure of duty.

Gallagher said she accepted failures to conduct checks were not done out of malice or racial prejudice.

Wylucki, a former nurse who was born in Croatia, was put in a cell about 6pm on February 28, 2018 after her arrest for contravening a domestic violence order.

Officers were unable to resuscitate her when she could not be roused about 12 hours later.

The inquest was told she was asked to put her mattresses on the floor when put into a single occupancy cell with another woman who was in the only bed.

Laura Wylucki had told the inquest finding out what happened to her mother was a huge shock.

“They all thought she went to sleep, and she did, and she never woke up,” she said.

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