Defending Human Rights
In The Hardest Places
Current campaigns and reporting
Visiting RightsDefend Physical Visits Silverwater
Restoring in-person family visits at Silverwater Correctional Complex — a fundamental right under attack since the pandemic.
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Youth JusticeYouth Justice Horror
Australia continues to detain children as young as ten. Our position, the evidence, and what reform looks like.
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Deaths in CustodyDavid Dungay Death
The death of David Dungay Jr. in Long Bay Hospital and the systemic failures it exposed.
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InternationalTurkish Conference on Technology in Corrections
Sharing the Computers in Cells model at the international conference on technology and human rights in detention.
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VoicesPrisoners' Original Letters
First-person testimony from people inside Australian prisons — published verbatim in Just Us magazine.
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Mental HealthInquiry Into Mental Health
Our submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the Mental Health Review Tribunal and consumer-controlled funding.
Read moreSix areas of advocacy
Prisons
Failures of imprisonment, deaths in custody, prison conditions, alternatives, and reform initiatives across Australia.
Explore →Mental Health
Forced medication, telecommunication rights, consumer-controlled funding, and alternatives to detention in psychiatric care.
Explore →State Intervention
Policing, crime perception, OPCAT, strip searching of women prisoners, freedom of expression and association.
Explore →Computers in Cells
Education, legal access, and family contact through in-cell technology — campaigned for since the 1990s.
Explore →Youth Justice
Raise the age of criminal responsibility. End child detention. Invest in community alternatives.
Explore →Restorative Justice
Real alternatives to imprisonment that hold harm-doers accountable to victims and communities.
Explore →An independent voice for the people inside.
Since 1981 Justice Action has worked alongside prisoners, mental health patients, and the wrongly accused — defending their human rights, amplifying their voices, and holding the institutions that hold them accountable.
We are volunteer-run, independent of government and corporate funding, and led by people with lived experience of the systems we seek to reform.
Get involved
Subscribe to Just Us, join the newsletter, or volunteer with one of our campaign teams. Every action — large or small — moves the work forward.
Just Us magazine.
Quarterly. Long-form. Written with — not just about — the people who live the system. Circulated free to prisoners and patients across Australia, sold to the public to fund the work.
Issue 62 covers the closed wards, the Silverwater visits campaign, the David Dungay inquest, and letters from inside.
Support our work.
Justice Action is funded entirely by individuals. Donations over $2 are tax-deductible. Every dollar funds a printed copy of Just Us inside a cell, a submission to a royal commission, or an hour of legal support for someone who cannot pay.