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Baisu Correctional Facility (No.2), In re [2026] PGNC 49; N11723 (3 March 2026)

N11723

PAPUA NEW GUINEA
[NATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE]

HROI No. 08 of 2025

IN THE MATTER OF ENFORCEMENT OF BASIC RIGHTS
UNDER SECTION 57 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

RE: BAISU CORRECTIONAL FACILITY (No. 2)

WABAG: ELLIS J
3 MARCH 2026

HUMAN RIGHTS – Conditions at the Baisu Correctional Facility – position after 2026 Budget passed – need for repairs and maintenance – overcrowding – lack of funding – need to also consider other correctional facilities - continuing breaches of s 36(1), s 37(1) and s 37(17) of the Constitution

Cases cited

No cases are cited in these reasons

Counsel

There was no legal representation

REASONS

1. ELLIS J: These are the reasons for the orders made today in this matter, which was commenced on 3 November 2025, following observation of conditions at the Baisu Correctional Facility (Baisu). Orders were made on 20 November 2025, shortly prior to the tabling of the 2026 Budget in the National Parliament. At that time, it was estimated that K5.6 million was needed for urgent repairs and maintenance at Baisu. While the 2026 Budget appropriated K10 million for “Infrastructure Improvement”, the Court has been advised that amount was for all 21 prisons and 7 lock-ups in Papua New Guinea, Baisu.
   

Background

2. In reasons published on 20 November 2025, breaches of s 36(1). s 37(1) and s 37(17) of the Constitution were identified. The position at Baisu was summarised as follows:

(1) Baisu is now housing prisoners from as many as seven provinces: Eastern Highlands, Jiwaka, Simbu, Southern Highlands, Hela, Enga and Western Highlands.

(2) The main administration building and three maximum security cell blocks have been condemned by the Provincial Health Authority, with the result that they are considered unfit for human habitation.

(3) The building where prisoner’s rations are stored is about to collapse and has also been condemned by the Provincial Health Authority.

(4) As a result, there is overcrowding, including 109 accused persons held in remand facilities that should only accommodate 80, an occupancy rate of 136%.

(5) Officers cannot be stationed in the guard towers as they are at risk of falling over. That may well explain why all but one of the accused men, held on remand, due to stand trial in Porgera in November, escaped from Baisu.

(6) There is an inadequate transport fleet, which is why a police vehicle had to be borrowed to bring six accused men to Wabag for the first day of a trial and why that trial, commenced in Wabag, had to be completed at the courthouse in Baisu.

(7) The sewerage system is blocked and overflowing, with untreated human waste evident above ground.

(8) There is an inadequate water supply which has created the need to store water in buckets, which creates an increased risk of disease.

(9) Power failures are common.

(10) The perimeter security fence is rotting away.

3. A report dated 28 November 2023, prepared by the Western Highlands Provincial Health Authority more than two years ago, which assessed 95 aspects of the facilities at Baisu, classified 68 of them as very serious and 27 as serious. A further report, prepared at the same time, itemised the cost of the required repairs and maintenance at K49 million.
   
4. In relation to Project Development, an affidavit of the Minister for Correctional Service (the Minister) set out, for 2023, 2024 and 2025: (1) what was appropriated in the National Budget, (2) what warrants were received, and (3) what money was received. The table contained in that affidavit is set out below:

5. Those figures reveal a massive difference between what budgets suggested would be made available (K91m) and what was, in fact, made available (K10.5m). Those figures, having been provided by the Minister, are considered reliable.
   
6. In relation to Baisu, the Minister’s affidavit included the following table:

7. Those figures reveal the difficulty of obtaining K5.6m for the most urgent repairs in 2026 when only K4m was available during the previous three years. That amount of K5.6m was itemised in the Minister’s affidavit as follows:

8. It must be observed that the amount of K5.6m set out above is for the most urgent work, including running water and sewerage facilities.
   
9. Furthermore, in a letter dated 9 February 2026, the Acting Commissioner of the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service suggested that there was an “Urgent Funding Requirement” of K15 million for repairs at Baisu.
   
10. It is noted that any urgent work required at Baisu is part of repairs and maintenance at Baisu that was estimated, more than two years ago, would cost K49m.
    
11. Those figures suggest that most or even all the K10m allocated in the 2026 budget could be spent on repairs at Baisu. However, that would overlook the needs of the other 20 correctional facilities and 7 lockups. It is a reasonable inference that, if repairs are needed at Baisu, they are also needed elsewhere. Spending money on repairs at Baisu may prevent repairs from being carried out at other locations with a similar or even greater need.
    
12. However, even if every one of the 21 prisons and 7 lockups were to be repaired, so that there were no longer any breaches of the human rights provisions of the Constitution, that would only bring those facilities to the point where they can accommodate the number of prisoners for which they were designed. That would not address the issue of overcrowding. Plainly, with overcrowding comes the increased risk of a breakout when facilities and staff numbers do not increase as the number of prisoners increases.
    
13. On Monday 16 February 2026, The National newspaper carried a report that a former commander at Buimo, the correctional facility in Morobe Province, was suggesting there should be a relocation of that facility due to overcrowding. The same newspaper article also reported that a former inmate at Buimo had said: “We take turns to sleep”.
    
14. To verify those assertions, the Court obtained a statement from the Commander at Buimo which indicated that there are currently 678 male inmates being held in an area that was designed to hold 500 male inmates (an occupancy rate of 136%) and 294 remandees being held on an area designed to hold 200 remandees (an occupancy rate of 147%).
    
15. The Commander at Baisu has indicated that there are currently 48 inmates in one block designed to house 40 and 47 in another block also designed to hold 40 (an occupancy rate of 119%). In the two blocks for remandees, also designed to hold 40, there are 74 and 70 occupants (an occupancy rate of 180%).
    
16. That suggests that (1) overcrowding is worse for remandees, and (2) it is a reasonable inference that there is overcrowding at other correctional facilities.
    
17. Accordingly, while this matter was commenced due to the prevailing conditions at Baisu, the need for repairs is likely to extend beyond Baisu.
    
18. Hence, the coverage of this matter needs to be extended in two ways. First, since the need for improved correctional facilities is not confined to Baisu but is likely to be a nation-wide need, the issue of what repairs are required at all correctional facilities needs to be considered. Secondly, it will not be sufficient to address the need for repairs as there is an additional need to consider overcrowding.
    

Relevant law

19. Set out below are the human rights provisions in the Constitution which are relevant to this matter:
    

(1) Section 36(1) provides that: “No person shall be submitted to ... treatment or punishment that is cruel or otherwise inhuman, or is inconsistent with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

(2) Section 37(1) is expressed as follows (emphasis added): “Every person has the right to the full protection of the law, and the succeeding provisions of this section are intended to ensure that that right is fully available, especially to persons in custody or charged with offences.”

(3) Section 37(17) reads: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

Findings

20. Based on the available evidence, the Court makes the following findings:
    

(1) The current conditions at the Baisu Correctional Facility are such as to amount to breaches of s 36(1), s 37(1) and s 37(17) of the Constitution.

(2) Those breaches will continue until sufficient money is made available for the repair and maintenance of the facilities at Baisu.

(3) The money that is available for repairs and maintenance of 21 prisons and 7 lock-ups in Papua New Guinea is less than what is required for repairs and maintenance at Baisu alone.

(4) As a result, any order for such funds to be spent on repairs and maintenance at Baisu would prevent any equally urgent repairs and maintenance at other correctional facilities.

(5) Based on the amounts that have been made available for the repair and maintenance of correctional facilities, it is a reasonable inference that there are similar breaches of those provisions of the Constitution at other correctional facilities.

(6) Addressing the need to repairs and maintenance will not address the needs created by overcrowding which is a separate and additional need.

Consideration

21. It is not correct to think that law and order begins when a court case begins and ends when that court case ends or that law and order begins when a person is arrested and ends when that person is sentenced by a court.
    
22. Such thinking overlooks the role of correctional services which, as the name suggests, is intended to not only to administer punishment to convicted persons but also to correct the conduct and attitude of such persons so that, when released, they will be rehabilitated and not engage in criminal conduct but will instead become law-abiding members of society.
    
23. It is not uncommon to hear announcements about how much money is being spent on the police or on the courts but rarely is there an announcement about how much money is being spent on correctional services.
    
24. What this matter has revealed provides support for what the Chief Justice recently said, when attending the launch of the Correctional Services reset@50 Corporate Plan 2026-2031. As the Chief Justice indicated that he did not prepare a speech, set out below is the report of what he said, as it appeared on page 7 of the 30 January 2026 edition of the Post Courier:

Chief Justice Sir Gibbs Salika has called on the National Government to build several jails in the country including the Mukuramanda jail at Wapenamanda in Enga.

The Chief Justice has also called on the Prime Minister and the Government to increase budgetary funding for Correctional Services to improve and [maintain] infrastructure throughout the country and further increase the terms and conditions of employment of Correctional Service officers nationwide.

The Chief Justice made the call among several recommendation[s] he made to the Government for increase[d] funding to the Correctional Service to carry out its constitutional mandate of containment and rehabilitation efforts. [The Chief Justice spoke] yesterday during the launching of the PNG Correctional Services reset@50 corporate plan 2026-2031 at the APEC Haus at Ela Beach in the National Capital District.

He said Correctional Services is always on the last listing of the government funding over the past 50 years, while Police and the PNGDF are at the upper end and [get] good budgetary support form successive governments.

He said he has been in the legal fraternity for the past 46 years, starting as [a] State Prosecutor, Magistrate, judge and eventually becoming the country’s chief justice, and he confirm[ed] that the Correctional Services is at the lowest end of every government’s funding priority.

Sir Gibbs said although he did not prepare a speech, he came to tell the Prime Minister that there are many good plans like the new Correctional Service Plan with good people to move the plan, but it needs money to make it work.

He said good plans are useless without funding.

Sir Gibbs called on the Government to fund the Correctional Services well, like the police, and that includes the judiciary that gets all the funding they ask for.

25. Set out below are some of the reasons why funding the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service is important.
    
26. In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton suggested that three laws applied to physical objects, the third of which was that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As with physical objects, so it is with human beings: for every action there is a reaction. If prisoners are treated like animals, they will behave like animals. Those words are appropriate because there are pigs in Enga Province that live in better conditions than prisoners in Baisu. When a court sentences a person to imprisonment because of their criminal behaviour, it should not be that they go into prison because they are a menace and come out of prison as a monster.
    
27. Any programs designed to rehabilitate a person sentenced to prison, such as vocational training, will be less effective if that person is forced to live in sub-standard conditions. Such conditions will only foster resentment towards authority, to police and correctional service officers, that will not disappear upon release.
    
28. Further, spending sufficient money on the police and insufficient money on Correctional Services may result in breakouts from correctional institutions which creates more work for the police.
    
29. The Court has resisted the temptation of including in these reasons two side-by-side photographs: one of the new Waigani Court Complex and the other of the current state of the facilities in Baisu. Such photos would suggest it is more attractive to be seen to be spending money on new facilities than on repairing and maintaining existing facilities.
    
30. When the members of the Constitutional Planning Committee (CPC) met to consider what should be the wording of this nation’s Constitution, they decided to include not only human rights provisions but also a way for those rights to be enforced. The Constitution is not just this nation’s birth certificate: it is a national rule book. Provisions such as those quoted above, namely s 36(1), s 37(1) and s 37(17), set minimum standards that should be obeyed and not ignored.
    
31. It needs to be recorded that those provisions have been breached and will continue to be breached until sufficient money is made available for the repair of correctional facilities. There are people in this nation who run off to the Court, urgently claiming that some provision in the Constitution has been breached. However, the breaches of the Constitution identified in this matter are rarely raised, other than by the recent comments of the Chief Justice and in these reasons.
    
32. This matter has identified four things: (1) the need for repairs and maintenance at Baisu, (2) that there is insufficient funding currently available for repairing and maintaining all 21 prisons and 7 lockups in Papua New Guinea, (3) the need to address the issue of overcrowding, and (4) the need for greater priority to be given to providing the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service with better funding.
    
33. Often attributed to Mahatma Ghandi are the following words:
    

The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.

34. When a home lacks proper sewerage or running water, the occupants can take steps to fix those problems. However, when those problems arise in Baisu, neither convicted persons nor those held on remand can do anything about those problems. Hence, they are vulnerable. Likewise, correctional service officers are unable to remedy those problems if there is no money available.
    
35. Papua New Guinea is not just measured by indicators such as Gross Domestic Product or other economic indicators: it is also measured by matters such as how it treats people currently held in prisons and lockups.
    
36. At a swearing-in ceremony each judge makes the following declaration, and to overlook the prevailing conditions at Baisu would be to disobey that declaration:
    

I, (name), do promise and declare that I will well and truly serve the Independent State of Papua New Guinea and its People in the Office of (a judge of the National Court and Supreme Court), that I will in all things uphold the Constitution and the laws of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, and I will do right to all manner of people in accordance therewith, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. (emphasis added)

37. It is desirable to use this matter to address the need for repairs and maintenance at all prisons and lockups, not just Baisu. It is also desirable to address the issue of overcrowding which will not be remedied in existing facilities are repaired.
    
38. However, the Court is limited in what it can do in this situation as it cannot order the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service to spend money it does not have, and it cannot rewrite the 2026 Budget which has been passed by the National Parliament. Despite those limitations, there are three things the Court can do to address the situation revealed by this matter.
    
39. First, is the practical course of requiring the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service to prepare a report that will reveal (1) what work is required, and (2) what money is required, to repair all 21 prisons and 7 lockups in Papua New Guinea so that the nature and extent of the problem revealed by the prevailing conditions at Baisu is known.
    
40. Secondly, a report should be prepared that reveals (1) the extent of overcrowding in each of the 21 prisons and 7 lockups in Papua New Guinea, (2) what work would be required to address that issue, and (3) the estimated cost of that work.
    
41. Thirdly, the Court can hope that these reasons will help to promote greater awareness of the condition of all prisons and lockups in Papua New Guinea, and the need for improved funding for the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service.
    
42. It is commonly said that the hallmarks of good governance are transparency and accountability. By way of illustration, the operation of the National Court achieves transparency by conducting proceedings in public and by publishing reasons that are given to the parties and are available to anyone else, upon request. Accountability is achieved by recording proceedings, providing reasons for decisions, and by enabling any decision to be the subject of an appeal.
    
43. In relation to the current conditions in Baisu, and the other 20 prisons and 7 lockups, transparency can be achieved by these reasons and the preparation of a report that reveals the extent of the work required to remedy breaches of the Constitution for all correctional facilities. Accountability will then be achieved by a consideration of what is done in response to that report.
    
44. The reasons published in this matter on 20 November 2025 referred to the three branches of government: the legislative, executive and judicial branches. These reasons, and the orders made today, represent all that the judicial branch of government can do at this time in relation to the condition prisons and lockups. The reports which the executive will be ordered to prepare will represent all that the executive branch can do. After those reports are prepared, it will be a matter for the legislative branch to respond by allocating and providing sufficient funding to the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service to enable breaches of the Constitution to be remedied.
    
45. Until the issues of repairs and overcrowding are addressed, breaches of s 36(1), s 37(1) and s 37(17) of the Constitution will continue.
    
46. These reasons are not in any way political. As the Chief Justice recently observed, successive governments have not allocated sufficient funding for Correctional Services. How that deficiency will be addressed is a matter for the current government, and the next government (after the 2027 national elections).
    
47. Those who are held in correctional facilities, either before their cases are heard (remandees) or after they have been convicted (inmates), are entitled to know what is being done. So are their relatives, friends and members of the public.
    
48. It is often said that a major problem in this nation is law and order. The short point is that the condition of correctional service facilities is part of that problem. The orders made in this matter may remove or reduce the need for other judges to investigate the issues of repairs and overcrowding in other correctional facilities.
    
49. A period of three months is considered sufficient to prepare the two reports suggested above, one on repairs and the other on overcrowding. That will enable those reports to be taken into consideration when the 2027 budget is prepared.
    
50. In view of what is set out above, the Court considers it appropriate for to make an order for the Minister for the Correctional Service to provide a copy of these reasons to the Treasurer so he is put on notice of the likelihood there will be a request from the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service for a substantial increase in funding in the 2027 national budget.
    

Orders

51. In the circumstances set out above, the following orders are made:
    
    1. By 30 June 2026 the Commissioner for the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service (or Acting Commissioner) is to arrange for a report to be prepared that identifies
       

(1) what work is required to repair all 21 prisons and 7 lock-ups in Papua New Guinea to a standard that does not breach the human rights provisions of the Constitution, and

(2) the estimated cost of that work

so that the Minister for Correctional Service may present such a report to the National Executive Council.

2. By 30 June 2026 the Commissioner for the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service (or Acting Commissioner) is to arrange for a report to be prepared that identifies
   

(1) what work is required to address overcrowding in all 21 prisons and 7 lock-ups in Papua New Guinea so that there is no breach the human rights provisions of the Constitution, and

(2) the estimated cost of that work

so that the Minister for Correctional Service may present such a report to the National Executive Council.

3. A copy of those reports is to be provided to
   

(1) the Chief Justice, and

(2) the National Court in Wabag.

4. The Minister for the Correctional Service is to provide a copy of these reasons to the Treasurer within seven (7) days, being on or before Tuesday 10 March 2026.
   
5. While this matter will now be treated as having been finalised, leave is granted for this matter to be re-opened, on seven (7) days’ notice, by either
   

(1) the Minister, or

(2) the Commissioner or Acting Commissioner

for the Papua New Guinea Correctional Service.

6. Time is abridged so that these orders may be entered straightaway.
   

Orders Accordingly.

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