The family of an Aboriginal man who died in custody has said prolonged solitary confinement without adequate mental health support despite repeated suicide attempts and multiple transfers within the New South Wales prison system contributed to his death.
Tian-Jarrah “TJ” Denniss, a Wiradjuri man, took his own life on 5 August at Silverwater prison.
At the time Denniss had been suing the ACT government after allegedly being depicted in a racist “hangman” game drawn on a whiteboard by prison guards.
The hangman sketch was drawn on a whiteboard in the Alexander Maconochie Centre south of Canberra in May 2018, and allegedly included his initials. A photograph of the image was passed around by correctional staff and detainees at the prison.
Denniss was also involved in another case over allegations he had suffered prolonged detainment without legally mandated access to exercise and fresh air.
Indigenous advocates, including Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services, which provides inmates with healthcare, have called for a joint NSW and ACT inquiry into his death.
Denniss’s cousin Ebony Freeman said the family had serious concerns about the treatment he received during his custodial sentence in the ACT and after his transfer to NSW corrections: “There’s a failure of duty of care by the Corrective Services, NSW and the ACT,” Freeman told Guardian Australia.
“Nobody rang the alarm bell and said, ‘OK, we need mental health [support] because all these things that we’re doing is just not working’,” she said.
“This didn’t happen overnight. It would have been building over a number of years. I believe with the right mental health [support] that he would still be here today.
“There’s not much that they could say or do for us now. But it would be nice to be acknowledged. The treatment that he got, he had no voice,” she said. “He was just overlooked.”
Freeman said Denniss did stay in at least one prison mental health support unit, but it was not for “very long”. She said he kept being transferred from prison to prison.
“It was like he was in a government-funded tour of the NSW correctional centres,” she said. Because of these transfers, the family struggled to maintain contact with him during his incarceration.
“I hope that we are able to get answers for TJ [from an inquiry] so that the next young Aboriginal man won’t fall through the cracks either,” she said.
“The people that work within the prison system, they’re not a bunch of stupid people, they’ve had to get some sort of degree and training to deal with prisoners but they still could not pick up that TJ needed help.”
Denniss’s lawyer, Mark Barrow, also raised concerns, saying his client was moved about “five or six times” during his incarceration in NSW.
“Every time I went to go see him or make a time, it seemed like they’d move him,” Barrow said.
He said his client was denied his human rights, alleging that the ACT government breached Denniss’s legal access to fresh air and exercise while held inside high-risk units inside the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
“He spent 313 days in a management unit without open air and exercise,” Barrow said. “This would have had to have contributed to his overall decline.”
Barrow said the alleged breaches of his client’s access to at least one hour of exercise and fresh air was potentially “dangerous to his health and welfare” and that it constituted cruel and inhuman treatment.
The ACT government said it would cooperate to the fullest extent possible with any inquiry.
Ray Johnston, the acting deputy director general of the ACT’s justice and community safety directorate, said: “A clinical handover was included in the transfer of Mr Denniss to NSW, that incorporated the need to closely support Mr Denniss.”
A spokesperson for Corrective Services NSW extended the department’s sympathies and condolences to Denniss’s family and friends as well as the wider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
Corrective Services NSW and NSW police said they were investigating the death. The state government said all deaths in custody were subject to a coronial inquest and it would be inappropriate to comment further.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. 13YARN provides 24/7 crisis support for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples. International helplines can be found at befrienders.org
