Homes Not Prisons
On 19 March 2021 the Victorian Government announced construction of 106 new cells at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum-security prison for women in Ravenhall in Melbourne’s west at a cost of $188.9 million. The expansion includes two new 20-bed “Management Units” for solitary confinement.
Dame Phyllis Frost currently has capacity to imprison 604 women. In June 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, there were around 330 women in the prison. Numbers are now increasing again and are
currently over 400.
Expansion of Victoria’s women prison is part of a $1.8 billion expansion of prisons for women, men, transgender and gender diverse people across Victoria announced in the 2019/20 Victorian Budget. Despite reductions in prisoner numbers in Victoria during the COVID pandemic the Andrews Government remains committed to building thousands of new prison cells.
Homes not Prisons is a campaign calling on the Victorian Government to stop the expansion of Dame Phyllis Frost and re-allocate the budget for prison building to public housing to provide “housing first” and support for criminalised women and their children.
Victoria spends the least on public housing per capita of any Australian state or Territory. The Big Housing Build announced in the 2020/21 budget is focused on privately operated “community” and “affordable” housing and will not increase public housing accessible to criminalised and highly disadvantaged women
and families.
