Non-violent, suicidal or psychotic prisoners are being kept in solitary for months on end
Special investigation: For the first time we reveal the practice of placing mentally unwell prisoners into solitary - where they deteriorate, attempting to take their life and eating their own excretement.
Cairns
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A 20-year-old sits on the edge of his steel bed, the air is stale, there is no window, he can hear a tap slowly dripping, now a woman’s voice, then a man’s voice, then a lot of voices at once — but he is alone and there is nobody around.
The convicted car thief was flown out of Lotus Glen Correctional Centre unconscious and in a critical condition on Anzac Day afternoon.
It was the second time he had tried to take his life in six weeks.
He remained in a coma for five days.
When he woke handcuffed to a public hospital bed he was sent to solitary confinement at Lotus Glen, 25km south of Mareeba, in Far North Queensland - and now the voices are starting again.
The practice is what the Queensland Corrective Service calls moving “Some high-risk prisoners to a special purpose cell for their own safety and for monitoring and support” rather to mental health units or forensix hospitals is state-wide.
There have been six suicide attempts in six months at Lotus Glen in Far North Queensland.
Over the same period — October 2023 and March 2024 — there were 43 across the state’s other ten high-security prisons amid concerns of overcrowding, a lack of psychologists, a lack of external mental health beds.
Whistleblowing former maximum security psychologist Dr Kaine Grigg said prisoners who report mental health issues are being placed in solitary and not given access to adequate treatment.
“Locked away 24 hours a day without anything in their cell, without any interaction, supposedly in order to keep them safe. It’s actually very similar to the way they punish prisoners by locking them up in solitary confinement even if the intent is apparently quite different,” Dr Grigg said.
“In most prisons they normally have five counsellors for a thousand prisoners — with about 40 or 60 of those considered to be extremely high needs and acutely mentally unwell … the system finds very little ways of managing people who are high risk, solitary confinement is often the only tool it has.
In February this year Lotus Glen had 944 prisoners, more than two hundred over its cell capacity of 732, according to state government data.
There is one limited capacity psychiatric prison in the state — the Park in Wacol — which has a capacity for 192 prisoners but there are 10,800 prisoners in the state.
“I had also been warning them for weeks on end that he was going to try to kill himself before the last attempt but they (Queensland Corrective Services) failed to act,” the mother of the 20-year-old in Lotus Glen said.
Lotus Glen is currently short-staffed with 27 FTE positions vacant, or 7.9 per cent of its current team of 349 FTE positions.
Almost half of the last 30 days the prison has been in lockdown where all prisoners are required spend almost all day locked in their cells.
“He was also recently denied parole because the parole board were concerned that his mental health was in such a bad state he was not fit to be released — but he was seldom getting any treatment in the prison” she explained.
Prisoner Legal Service lawyer and director Helen Blaber said solitary confinement for mentally unwell inmates was a standard practice.
“It usually involves 28-day ‘safety order’ order and they are only required to see a medical professional once during that time,” she said.
In one case she said an Indigenous woman who was placed in 10 consecutive months in solitary at Townsville Women’s Correctional Centre because she said she was suicidal.
“And of course spending time in solitary made it worse, so it was a vicious cycle,” Ms Blaber said.
“There are small numbers of psychologists in prisons whose work is mainly limited to risk assessments.”
The 20-year-old still was originally placed in solitary because of violent threats made against him at Woodford Correctional Centre.
He has since been released on parole but in total spent four months in solitary confinement — including eight days he spent in solitary - despite Cairns hospital warnings not to place him in there - aftter attempted suicide.
The Far North Queensland Deaths in Custody group had written to senior people within QCS and the Queensland Health Department warning the man “is a definite risk of becoming a death in custody” because he was “put into a detention unit only six days after coming off life support”.
His detention comes as it has been announced coronial inquest will be held later in the year for Scott Allen’s 2021 suicide where Wolston jail authorities responded to his self-reported suicidal thoughts by placing him solitary confinement where he completed suicide after repeated attempts in the same cell.
While the mother of a 34-year-old Indigenous man at Brisbane Corrections Centre has also written to the Corrections Minister and the prison warning if her son was not given adequate care “he is going to kill somebody”.
“He was calling me telling me that the Queen gave the world COVID, that facial recognition technology implants facial expressions on us, and the army decides when we die.”
She said wrote to the Departments of Corrections and the Police Minister about it, and even shared recordings of what he had been saying hoping he would get taken to a psychiatric ward or the state’s only forensic prison.
“I also wrote to the Park about him, but didn’t get a response”
The prison responded by placing him in solitary confinement for a period of time where he received mental health care limited to high dosages of medication.
“When he got out on parole, he took a photo of my niece, who is just a little girl, and he gouged out her eyes with a stick in that photo, my younger son asked him why did you do that to Mum’s photo and he answered with ‘Have a look at her, she’s Osama bin Laden’”.
The woman said she reported this to Department of Parole and her local mental health service, but she said she never heard back.
After breaching his parole, he was returned to prison where he assaulted a male prisoner causing the man to lose his left eye.
“I’ve asked them why can’t you take him to the Park (Queensland’s mental health prison)? Do you want him to kill somebody?”
Montell Malcolm Suey, a part-indigenous suicidal and violent offender with autistic tendencies, spent close to 700 days in solitary confinement at Lotus Glen after he brutally attacked several corrections officers.
He threw urine as he yelled he had HIV and asked them if they “liked the taste of my piss”.
He also punched, kicked and bit one officer so hard in the head that his teeth broke through and penetrated the officer’s skull.
Mr Suey was sentenced in Cairns District Court on May 1.
The court heard his confinement was “not just because of his offending”, according to his Barrister Kelly Goodwin.
Mr Goodwin said in 2019 while being kept in solitary confinement at Woodford Correctional Centre Mr Suey had been observed “talking out loud to himself and eating his own faeces” and said “the significant impact of being kept in isolation gave rise to his offending”.
The court eventually intervened to get him out of solitary, but he remains in Lotus Glen as someone without regular mental health treatment — and an apparent ongoing risk to staff and other inmates.
Responding to questions about why it places suicidal and schizophrenic inmates in solitary rather than sending them to a mental health ward, the Department of Corrections said: “The healthcare of all prisoners in Queensland correctional centres, including decisions on their need to be transferred to a mental health facility, is managed by Queensland Health.
“Queensland Corrective Services is committed to providing the safest possible environments in facilities throughout the state, and our officers work tirelessly to minimise any risks to officers, visitors and prisoners in our centres.”
“Some high-risk prisoners may be moved to a special purpose cell for their own safety and for monitoring and support by mental health professionals.”
WHERE TO GET HELP
Lifeline: 13 11 14 or www.lifeline.org.au
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 or www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au
Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800 or www.kidshelpline.com.au
MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78 or www.mensline.org.au
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