Erin Patterson, convicted of murdering three people with a poisonous mushroom lunch, spends about 22 hours a day isolated in her cell at Melbourne’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum security women’s prison. Details of her prison life were revealed during a pre-sentencing hearing in the Victorian supreme court on Monday.
Patterson has become a “keen crocheter” and her personal items include wool, crocheted blankets, a hair straightener and a computer. She is only permitted contact with one other prisoner, who is serving a sentence for terrorism and has attacked other inmates, but her defence barrister, Colin Mandy SC, said she had never spoken to that person.
Since her arrest in November 2023, Patterson has been held in the Gordon unit, a protected area, due to high public attention. She is only allowed to use the unit’s small courtyards when they are vacant, and has been in the restricted unit for about 400 days, far exceeding the UN guideline of 15 days for segregation.
Mandy argued that Patterson’s isolation makes the “burden of imprisonment” much greater for her than other prisoners. Justice Christopher Beale noted that her conditions did not sound “very humane” and that her notoriety would likely persist for a long time.
