By AIDAN KNIGHT
Warning: this story details an Aboriginal person who has died. Reader discretion is advised.
THE death of a former Moe woman who died recently while in custody at a Hobart women’s prison, has prompted calls for reform in Tasmanian’s prison system.
Chelsea Bracken, formerly of Kingsford Street, Moe, was incarcerated in the Mary Hutchinson Women’s Prison located at Risdon Vale, 10 kilometres north of Hobart.
The facility houses around 45 women at a time, close to Risdon Cove – the site of British colonisation in the era of Van Diemen’s Land.
Chelsea was detained there on remand for three charges: aggravated armed robbery, aggravated robbery, and wounding. She was also facing 12 unrelated minor crimes ranging from theft and trespass to drug-related charges, according to documents from the Launceston Magistrates Court. She had also previously breached bail conditions.
She collapsed suddenly in the early hours of Saturday, October 25, and while it was initially circulated that she was found deceased in her cell, it was confirmed later her death occurred at the Royal Hobart Hospital on Monday, October 27, according to Director of Prisons Tasmania, Narelle Pamplin.
Chelsea, a young woman of Aboriginal descent, is thought to be the first Aboriginal death in custody in Tasmania since the 1990s, according to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service (TALS).
She had also previously lived in Traralgon, where she maintained a job at McDonald’s from 2019 to 2021 before moving to Launceston. She was 21-years-old. Chelsea had a troubled youth, which saw police issue a missing person’s profile on her in July 2017, stating that she went missing in the Latrobe Valley, aged 14.
Organisations such as Egender Equality are now calling for reform following the young woman’s death.
Egender Equality Chief Executive Alina Thomas issued a statement on the tragedy, saying: “While the circumstances of Chelsea’s incarceration and death are unclear, the factors leading to women entering and returning to prison are deeply complex and often rooted in repeated and intergenerational experiences such as family and sexual violence, homelessness, poverty and child removal.”
Ms Thomas sees the correctional system in its current state to be a model that punishes victim-survivors instead of placing an adequate focus on their actual rehabilitation.
Chelsea’s death has fuelled scrutiny of the state’s incarceration system, especially given the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 23 per cent of Tasmania’s prison population is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, despite Aboriginal people making up just five per cent of the state’s population.
Nationally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are among the fastest-growing prisoner cohorts – and the most disproportionately imprisoned. They accounted for 41 per cent of all women in prison in 2023, and are imprisoned at a rate nearly 20 times higher than non-Indigenous women.
Recent research from the University of Queensland found that many Aboriginal women who died in custody were unsentenced and on remand, as Chelsea was. Of the 34 women who died in custody nationwide between 1991-2020, 16 were Indigenous.
“Correctional staff need to be more trauma-informed, and protocols should be in place to prevent re-traumatising women in prison. Our justice system must do better at supporting victim-survivors in prison,” Ms Thomas said.
An investigation into the death of Chelsea Bracken is currently being undertaken by the Tasmanian coroner’s office.
