Slow violence in the Kimberley’s forgotten prison

Over the years, Broome Prison has become overcrowded, degrading and overwhelmingly Indigenous; not because of control, but because of continued political indifference. Gerry Georgatos writes.

BROOM PRISON A place of non-stop, slow violence in the Kimberley.

There are places in Australia where the passage of time does not bring progress, only repetition. Broome County Jail is one of those places. Over the years, inspection after inspection, news after news in the media, the same story is told with minor changes; It is as if suffering had become routine, administratively internalized, politically tolerated.

Broome Regional Prison sits on the edge of the Kimberley, far from the corridors of power, the daily public gaze and the urgency that comes with deprivation of liberty in a democratic society. It is a prison that has long been said to be unfit for purpose, but it continues to operate as if its failures were accidental rather than structural. Not fit for what purpose – incarceration? Even at its most quintessential prison is an abomination as a human habitat.

Overcrowding is not an aberration here; is the organizing principle. Men sleep on mattresses laid directly on the floor; their bodies are arranged around the boundaries of space rather than any notion of dignity. The cells are worn out, unhygienic and in a visible state of decay. Cockroach infestations are permanent, not occasional; It is more a sign of negligence than surprise. This is not the image of a system being briefly challenged. This is a portrait of a system that has become entrenched in dysfunction and has learned to live with it.

Independent oversight is definitive. The Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services has warned for decades that Broome Prison’s infrastructure is outdated, overcrowded and fails to meet even minimum detention standards. These warnings were not whispered; They were published officially one after the other, with increasing concern. But still, at its core, little has changed.

It is not just the condition of the prison but also the identities of those incarcerated there that gives this situation its special moral weight. The overwhelming majority of people incarcerated in Broome are First Peoples men; First Peoples women are also detained in conditions that violate basic custody norms. In fact, it’s almost entirely a prison for the First Men. Comparison with Derby PrisonOften described as “all black” by former detainees and advocates, this discourse is not flashy rhetoric; This is a demographic reality.

This incarceration of First Peoples is inseparable from history or the present. When substandard conditions persist in a facility where nearly everyone detained is First Peoples, it raises an inevitable question: Would these conditions be tolerated if the population were different? The answer is disturbing but increasingly difficult to avoid.

Former prisoners speak of the experience with bitter resignation. They say it’s terrible, but then quietly add that they expect nothing but prison. This sentence alone should stop us. It reveals how low the bar is set not only by the system, but also by those who have to put up with it. When people are detained without any expectation of humane treatment, the failure is no longer just institutional; is civilization.

There is no rehabilitation in any sense. There is no consistent educational program, no vocational pathway, no ongoing treatment recommendations. Access to existing programs is patchy and full of numbers. People are left to wander through days that offer no structure, no purpose, and no preparation for life beyond the barbed wire. This is not a fix. It is storage.

On the contrary, the government’s language is full of intentions. Announcements were made. Funding was promised. Reference was made to the plans. Years later, no new facility has been built, no transformative upgrade has been made, no comprehensive program package has been implemented. The distance between promise and reality is widening, and cynicism is also deepening.

This inertia is not neutral. It produces results. A prison without rehabilitation predictably leads to recidivism like a factory churning out production. A prison that offers no means to stabilize one’s mental state, no opportunity to learn, no sense of dignity, returns people to society more damaged than when they entered. In this sense, it is an expensive machine for social failure.

What is required is not another report or another announcement with a future time frame. What is needed is urgent and sustained investment in infrastructure that supports human, communal life; facilities designed for education, health and cultural safety, and programs that truly transfer needed skills to the outside world. Rehabilitation cannot be an abstract ideal. It must be sourced, structured and delivered.

There also needs to be a reckoning with the deeper context. Any response that does not center First Peoples’ leadership, cultural authority, and community engagement will fail again, just as previous efforts have failed. This is not an optional add-on. This is basic.

Broome Prison, in its current form, functions less as a place of correction and more as a silent repository for people society has decided not to see. This is an asylum of neglect, a repository of discarded lives lived not by accident but by indifference. Until this indifference is confronted openly and honestly, nothing will change.

And little by little, the violence will continue before our eyes, but largely in our name.