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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Imagine being arrested, and put into custody – and in desperate need of medical care. Who is responsible for helping you? Who are you meant to turn to for healthcare? For Veronica Nelson, who died in custody in 2020, a private company was responsible – Correct Care.

Today, Contributor to The Saturday Paper Denham Sadler, takes us inside how a contract to look after the health of prisoners was taken away… then put into some very similar hands.

It’s Tuesday May 2.

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RUBY:

Denham, you've recently been looking into a private company called GEO Group and this new $33 million deal to provide health services to people who are in jail. What was it about this deal that interested you?

DENHAM:

Yes, in general, I write a lot about criminal justice issues and prisons, and that obviously involves talking a lot to people that have either just got out of prison or in prison and their families. And then a lot to do with the kind of law groups and other organisations that have contact with these people. And basically everyone you talk to, the number one issue they face in custody is access to health care. That's kind of the biggest concern going in and then is often the biggest problem during their time incarcerated. It was already a big issue and I was really interested in looking to see how a private company's involvement was going to make that situation better or worse. And then the big issue that put all the spotlight onto Victoria's health care in prisons was the death of Veronica Nelson and the coronial inquest that took place last year, which led to the findings that were delivered earlier this year.

RUBY:

Well, let's talk about what happened to Veronica Nelson. So she's an Indigenous woman who died in custody early in 2020. There was an inquest into her death. What did it uncover?

DENHAM:

Yeah, it was extremely horrific findings and details and it's there is really harrowing vision and audio of Veronica Nelson. She was an Indigenous woman. She was arrested in late 2019 on shoplifting charges. She was remanded in custody overnight and then she was denied bail the next day.

Archival Tape – News Reporter:

“The coroner's court has found that Veronica was unlikely to have served any prison time if convicted for the offences, but she was remanded in custody and taken to the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.”

DENHAM:

And then as the inquest heard a lot about even failures from that point in terms of legal representation and that sort of thing, but then basically she ended up in Victoria's only maximum security prison for women and she disclosed to health staff, to the guards that she had an opioid dependence and she was coming off that and have obviously very severe health effects of that.

Archival Tape – News Reporter:

“Veronica vomited on the way, and shortly after arriving was assessed by a doctor and prescribed with a drug called Serboxone to help her as she was withdrawing from heroin.”

DENHAM:

And that's just harrowing vision and audio, kind of pressing the intercom. I think it was about 40 times asking for help and not receiving it. And the inquest basically just heard that time and time again. She was failed by all the health care staff she came into contact with.

Archival Tape – News Reporter:

“The coroner today described Veronica Nelson’s treatment as cruel and degrading.”

DENHAM:

The coroner found that from her very first entrance into the prison, she should have been sent straight to hospital and she likely would still be alive if she had been.

Archival Tape – News Reporter:

“He also found that if all of the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody more than 30 years ago had been fully implemented, her death could have been prevented.”

DENHAM:

But she didn't get that care at all. And she ended up dying in a cell at the start of 2020. The coroner made very specific findings against a lot of individuals of the health care providers in the prison. But he also looked at the company who delivers that health care, who is called Correct Care Australasia…

Archival Tape – News Reporter:

“The coroner has referred prison contractor Correct Care Australasia to the Department of Public Prosecutions.”

DENHAM:

…and they are owned by a US company. And he looked into their relationship with the state government too, and found some pretty troubling stuff as well.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, tell me what was uncovered then about the way that Correct Care operated at the time of Veronica Nelson's death and in the lead up to the inquest?

DENHAM:

Yes. Outside of the very damning findings on the individuals involved, the coroner looked at the behaviour of the company after the death as well, and they were obviously responsible for looking into it. And then the department ran their own investigation and he found a huge amount of really important information was not provided to the government for their investigation by this company. And this was labelled by someone who worked for Correct Care during the coronial inquest as a “don't ask, don't tell” relationship that Correct Care had with the State Government. And this was something the coroner repeated in his findings as well. But it was just this real disconnect, a lack of information sharing that's obviously so important in terms of delivering health care and especially in prisons as well. So he was highly critical of that. He said it was disturbing and he kind of called on these contracts to be at least re-evaluated as well.

Archival Tape – Victorian Coroner:

“I recommend the Victorian Government urgently develop a review and implementation strategy for the state’s implementation of the 339 recommendations of the Royal Commission.”

DENHAM:

So aside from all of this the Victorian Government had commissioned an expert review and they were calling it a cultural review of the prison system. So it's very broad. It was much wider than just health care, but they did… by the esteemed experts, very well-respected, and it was commissioned by the Victorian Government itself, and they handed their final report to the Government in mid-December. And one of the recommendations from that was in terms of health care and it was calling on them to bring health care for all prisons back into public hands. They looked at the fact that it was against global best practice and wasn’t getting the results that you’d want from health care in prisons by privatising it. So this expert review that the government had commissioned itself told the government in December that they should bring it back into public hands.

RUBY:

Right. And so what happened?

DENHAM:

So what happened was we knew this inquest was going to be… all the findings are going to be delivered in February and then a couple of weeks before that, the Victorian Government did get on the front foot. They were very aware that these were going to be highly scathing comments.

Archival Tape – Dan Andrews:

“Well, firstly, let me say what occurred in the death of Veronica Nelson is a terrible tragedy and one that will see significant reform and change.”

DENHAM:

So in January of this year, they announced that health care in the women's prisons in Victoria would be taken back into public hands. That's going to be delivered by a range of regional hospitals and the like by public organisations.

Archival Tape – Dan Andrews:

“But they'll also involve other matters that go well beyond the law. They go to issues of prisoner welfare and making sure that vulnerable Victorians, whether that be because they are First Nations Victorians or for many other reasons, are given the support and care that they are entitled to as a basic human right”

DENHAM:

They also announced that Correct Care, the company in question, won't have their contract renewed for the male public prisons as well, which is coming to an end in July. So there was a very active effort to get on the front foot and kind of disconnect this private company that was about to come into a lot of criticism. But about the same time, early this year, it was announced that a different U.S. company was going to be responsible for delivering health care in all male public prisons in Victoria, which does account for 95% of the prison population. And this is a company called the GEO Group, and they're a pretty notorious company, they're based in the US, and they run a number of prisons in the US and a number of immigration detention centres. They basically did the exact opposite.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

So Denham, the Victorian government get a report, which spells out why healthcare in prisons shouldn’t be in the hands of private corporations – but they go ahead and award the contract for health in men’s prisons to the company GEO Group. So let's talk about GEO Group and what do we know about them, and their parent company in the US?

DENHAM:

The GEO group is very controversial in the US, and that's down to the fact they run a lot of private prisons over there and immigration detention centres they are currently facing and have faced a number of civil lawsuits that come down to the standard of health care offered in these facilities. And it often just comes down to severe human rights abuses or that's what's been alleged.

Archival Tape – Reporter:

“GEO Group like Core Civic and other private prison companies have been plagued with litigation and claims of human rights abuses.”

DENHAM:

One of the lawsuits involves a 21 year old who committed suicide at a facility run by this company, and the lawsuits alleging that the company have completely failed in their responsibilities to identify him as a high risk person. And the accusation was they acted with deliberate and conscious indifference to his health and safety, a significant issue in Australian prisons as well in terms of the mental health of prisoners too. And then there's a number of lawsuits relating to the conditions in immigration detention centres.

Archival Tape – Reporter:

“The US Government claims these are not detention centres but photos taken from inside US border control facilities have stirred an outcry: thousands of teenagers and younger children crowded into pens and sleeping on floors…. Held in these conditions for more than five days.”

DENHAM:

A case launched by the ACLU a few years ago to do with extreme mistreatment against asylum seekers and refugees in these facilities.

Archival Tape – Protestors

“Hey hey! Ho Ho! GEO group has got to go!“

Archival Tape – Reporter

“People detained at a US customs and enforcement facility in Southern California say they were sprayed with a disinfectant and are left to suffer the health consequences.”

DENHAM:

So when I went to GEO Group for their response to a lot of these issues, they emphasised that they're a separate company to the US parent company. They've got a different management and a separate board; they were trying to distance themselves from some of those issues we saw in the US as well. And similar to the Victorian Government, they talked a lot about a different model of health care for prisons and to kind of separate it from the issues we've seen over the last few years as well.

RUBY:

Right, so tell me more about how the Victorian government are really justifying going right back to having a private company – GEO group – take charge of health in men's prisons, straight after their own review has told them about the dangers of having a private contractor in that role?

DENHAM:

The Victorian Government told me that the contracts base, they're going to introduce a new model of health care and that's very much based on the recommendations from the coronial inquest. They haven't, they didn't elaborate to me and haven't elaborate yet what that new model is exactly, but they talked a lot about multi-disciplinary teams and a wider standard of services across a range of health issues rather than just very basic general practitioner sort of issues. And that was a big focus obviously with the death of Veronica Nelson, who was an Indigenous woman on more culturally specific and appropriate services as well that they talk about. So their response to me centred a lot on that and they focus… again tried to shift the focus away from that credit card company and talked about a new model that's going to be introduced with when this contract comes into play in July.

RUBY:

Ok so the contract comes into play in a few months… The contract is with GEO. And apart from these issues with the parent company in the US – there’s something else isn’t there? You’ve discovered a link between GEO and the company that actually had the contact when Veronica Nelson died - Correct Care. Tell me about it?

DENHAM:

Yes. GEO have actually won this exact same contract before, for all public prisons in Victoria. They had it for most of the 2000s. They perform these services already and then the parent company in the US had a big restructuring and part of that and it was all to do with tax purposes. But part of that they weren't allowed to deliver health care services anymore. So about ten years ago, the Victorian health that was providing these services in prisons, they divested that and that's how it got sold to correct care. And the company that is still performing today in the company that was in question in the coroner's inquest. But the US parent company pretty much reversed those changes with a new tax structuring at the end of 2022, which allowed them to deliver health care again. And then basically within a few weeks the Victorian Government had gone to the market for this contract. They applied for it and then they won it about a year later. So it's very much the ministry taking this contract back over. They've already come out and said they've offered to rehire every single staff member that's working already and it's just obviously led to a lot of concerns that it's a change in name only and not not in delivery.

RUBY:

Given everything we know then about the parent company, its ties to the particular company that was in charge during Veronica Nelson's death in custody, I mean, the big concern here then is that things won't change. They'll stay the same. Prisons will be run in the same way. Health care services will continue to operate the way they've always been. And is there a risk here for anyone who might find themselves? In a men's prison in Victoria. Going forward?

DENHAM:

Absolutely. I think there's a risk in any prison in Australia and I think we've seen that in terms of when health care is run publicly as well. But I think it just adds another level of risk when these private companies are involved that have got track records for not necessarily putting the health of prisoners at the fore. And obviously these are companies that have the legal responsibility to make a profit. That is the main issue. And that's kind of what's happened when you privatise these services is that the health care might not be the first and foremost most important concern of these companies.

RUBY:

Yeah, I mean that's interesting because as you say, these private companies, they're interested in making a profit, but they also have medical practitioners working for them and you'd hope that those people would be taking their job seriously, you know, to look after the health of people in custody. But I mean, to those sort of competing interests, do you mean that these companies can't be relied upon to give the kind of medical advice that is really life or death for people sometimes?

DENHAM:

I think so, yeah. And I've talked to people that work for these companies and they do care so much about that treatment. They're doing this because they want to help very vulnerable people. And it's often either that the higher ups of the company or just the systems that are in place that are stopping them doing that. And it doesn't it doesn't always come down to individual error and mistreatment, such as we saw in the coronial inquest. There's often another layer of kind of bureaucracy and issues with management that are leading to these issues. it's very hard to think they've got a better chance at delivering good health care than the public services that we're going to see in the women's prisons and that we see in most Australian jurisdictions as well.

RUBY:

Denham, thank you so much for your time.

DENHAM:

Thanks for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The leader of the ‘No’ campaign against the Voice to parliament, says that if the yes case wins – he’ll work to make the Voice a success.

Warren Mundine, told a parliamentary committee hearing into the referendum, quote: “If people vote yes, if the yes campaign gets up, I will fight for it to be successful.”

And…

Shareholders of global sportswear company Adidas are launching a class action lawsuit against the company over how it handled its relationship with Kanye West and his apparel brand Yeezy.

Shareholders allege that management at Adidas were well-aware of West’s problematic behaviour for years and should have acted to insulate the company, before Semitic statements by the artist led to the termination of his Adidas deal last year.

I’m Ruby Jones - This is 7am - see you tomorrow.

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