Tech outage hits prison visits

The worldwide tech outage on Friday led to video and in-person prison visits being cancelled across the country.

Prison visits across the country were cancelled over the weekend due to the global tech outage impacting many millions of Microsoft devices.

A faulty update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday afternoon took down about 8.5 million Microsoft devices around the world, bringing airlines to a standstill and forcing stores to close.

The tech issues also had a major impact on those in prison and their friends and families, with all visits - both in-person and on video - cancelled across multiple states.

In New South Wales, in-person visits to public prisons were cancelled across the board, despite the tech issues being resolved by Friday night. These included visits scheduled for Sunday afternoon, long after the fix had been pushed out by CrowdStrike.

Some visits to privately-run prisons in the same state were able to go ahead.

A spokesperson for Corrective Services NSW spokesperson confirmed that visits to all public prisons in the state were cancelled for the entire weekend.

“While most correctional centre routines were able to be maintained, the outage resulted in the suspension of visits to inmates from family and friends over the weekend,” the spokesperson said.

“These issues will be fully resolved in time for the next scheduled visits.

“CSNSW was able to notify those who had visits booked that they would be unable to take place during the outage. Inmates were also updated regularly via their in-cell tablets to minimise disruption to families who had been planning to visit.”

Those with visits booked for public prisons in the state were sent a short message saying that it had been cancelled, with the reason listed being “public holiday”, despite there not being a public holiday in the state.

Joanna Scriven had a planned visit to a friend in a NSW prison cancelled at the last minute, and has questioned why there weren’t any backup plans in place for such a tech issue.

“Once again, CSNSW had no option other than to cancel visits across the state,” Scriven says.

“Private prisons were able to fix the issue quickly whilst state-run ones were inept at handling the situation.”

Prison visits were also canned in a number of other states, with many Departments of Justices reliant on Microsoft technology and devices.

Numerous studies in Australia and around the world have identified the importance of prison visits in supporting those in prison and improving chances of rehabilitation. According to one study, prison visits reduce the risk of recidivism by more than 25 percent.