The article “Australian Prisoners with Disabilities Subjected to Harrowing Abuse, Report Finds,” published on February 6, 2018, in the newspaper “The Guardian,” is retrieved from www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/07/australian-prisoners-with-disabilities-subjected-to-harrowing-abuse-report-finds. It focuses on the violation of human rights in Western Australia and Queensland.
According to the article, the assessment of treatment conditions for prisoners conducted by Human Rights Watch in fourteen prisons in Western Australia and Queensland has shown that prisoners with disabilities are forced to serve their terms of imprisonment in unsatisfactory living conditions having no proper access to such facilities as a toilet, bathroom, and kitchen. Moreover, the investigation reports that most prisoners with physical and psychological disabilities regularly suffer physical and sexual violence carried out by their fellow prisoners and carers.
The problem raised in the article demonstrates that, even in the developed countries, there are still many vulnerable groups of people whose human rights are violated. Usually, the problem lies in the fact that such groups often have restricted access to other people and, in particular, to social media, and have no possibility to maintain their rights. In the case described in the article, the prisoners cannot even protect their lives because of their disabilities and cannot expect any protection from the prison staff.
The solution to this problem presupposes action on both the governmental level and the level of prison authorities. The government should promote investments to prisons that should be used to provide prisoners with disabilities with all the necessary facilities and regularly control the quality of treatment conditions. Prison authorities, in their turn, should focus on the educational aspect that presupposes strict discipline, regular psychological trainings for the prison staff, where they will learn more about people with disabilities and special needs of such prisoners, and with prisoners so that they can ask assistance in case their rights are violated.
