Victoria prisons on lockdown as virus cases identified

Six prisons in Victoria are on lockdown after a worker was diagnosed with coronavirus.

Corrections Victoria says the prison officer worked at the medium security Ravenhall Correctional Centre in Melbourne’s west.

Five other prisons and two youth justice centres have been placed on lockdown and four Department of Education employee’s working at the Malmsbury Youth Justice Centre have also tested positive to the virus.

The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) has called on the state government to reduce the number of people in prisons as part of the response to COVID-19.

We know the news that there are increases in suspected prison COVID-19 cases will distress Aboriginal Communities across Victoria. We encourage our community members who have welfare concerns for a loved one in custody to notify VALS so we can undertake welfare checks pic.twitter.com/H0JbpjKS0P

— VALS (@thevalsmob) July 21, 2020

The legal service says Indigenous people, who are jailed at a rate more than ten times that of the general population, will be disproportionately impacted by the virus if it spreads through the prison system.

VALS has called for a range of measures to be introduced including the release of low-risk, vulnerable prisoners, early release for those close to the end of their sentence and an end to the imprisonment of children.

In a statement CEO Nerita Waight said it was “time for the government to demonstrate a genuine commitment to ending the ill-treatment and deaths of Aboriginal people in custody [by] immediately and responsibly releasing people from detention.”