People on remand in NT prisons are enduring record wait times

“I actually just wanted to give up, because I just thought I've got no hope in hell. And then it was thinking about my kids. That's, when I thought, Okay, I need to fight.” “I didn't know if I was going to be looking at 10 years, if I was going to be doing five years” Heavily pregnant and facing drugs charges on remand. Crystal Roberts withdrew into herself as she prepared to give birth as a prisoner. With no guarantee she could keep her baby the fear was palpable. “I wasn't sure if I even wanted to hold him, once I gave birth, because I thought it might be too hard on me. And then feeling so powerless that trauma would be passed to him if he was going to be taken from me” A last minute push by lawyers allowed Crystal to keep Chase after he was born... the pair eventually serving out her sentence at home. Now under a supervision order, Crystal considers herself one of the lucky ones to make it out. “I sign in fortnightly; I do drug testing weekly or fortnightly, I'm not allowed out after 10 o-clock at night. I'm wearing an ankle monitor as well” Crystal spent almost a year on remand waiting to be sentenced. In serious cases or when there is a flight risk, judges frequently detain people in jail while they await trial and are still legally innocent. And in the NT, courts have been unable to keep pace. “There's a number of things that are driving the increase in remand time. It's taking longer to resolve matters. And that is, that is because the system is clogged.” Statistics show record numbers of people - who haven't been sentenced - languishing in NT prisons. The average number of days people are spending on remand has also skyrocketed to one hundred. Late last month prisoner numbers reached an all-time high - peaking to over two thousand three hundred with almost half on remand or in watch houses. Costing the government more than $275 million last year – roughly 400 dollars per prisoner, per day. Youth lawyer Gabi McMullens deals with the clogged system day after day. Each of these files represents a young person in trouble with the law... many are in limbo on remand. “The system is at breaking point. There are people sitting in custody who have barely spoken to a lawyer, who have barely received legal advice” Beth Wild says judicial officers are working as fast as they can to manage the backlog... but they can only do so much. This year Northern Territory courts lost almost 1.5 million in funding and it's getting harder for lawyers to access their clients in crowded jails. “If we're unable to get those visits, it causes a further adjournment, which causes longer remand times” “We're not seeing that there's a huge increase in crime, and certainly not to the same extent that we're seeing the remand population increase, that's where the real increase is happening, and the pressure on the courts. There's something else that's at play and it's a structural systems issue that we need to address.” The Country Liberal Party won Government on a platform of law and order... promising to drop the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years old ... and toughen bail laws. Lawyers at the coalface are worried how the Territory's already strained legal system will cope. “If they haven't been found guilty, then they've spent a really long time on remand in extremely onerous conditions. That is really psychologically damaging” Prisoners on remand aren't given the same access to support as inmates who've been convicted. Crystal couldn't access rehabilitation inside jail because she hadn't been sentenced and says it made no sense. “If there's say 80 women, you could expect that about 60 of those will be on remand, and 20 will be sentenced” “They're in really overcrowded spaces. We're talking four or five people sharing a room in really hot and crowded conditions within the prison” (Pause/ transition to Vision of Crystal with her baby) Crystal now spends her days juggling full time work around motherhood. She calls Chase her "little miracle" for giving her a new lease on life. “I just see a lot of hope that wasn't there, you know, one year ago. A lot of opportunity” Giving it her all to rebuild crystal wants the system to change as well for the sake of so many others.