Debbie Kilroy

Debbie Kilroy (born 1961), née Deborah Harding, is an Australian human rights activist and prison reformer. She is known for having founded Sisters Inside, an independent community organisation based in Queensland, Australia, that advocates for the human rights of women and girls in the criminal legal system. She is a qualified lawyer, who in 2007 was the first person with serious convictions to be allowed to practise law by the Supreme Court of Queensland.

Early life and education Deborah Harding was born in 1961 in Brisbane, and raised in the suburb of Kedron, Queensland. During her teens, she became rebellious, and, after being locked up at the age of 14 for a four-week psychiatric assessment, began a period of increasing criminalisation and imprisonment, with only brief periods out of the criminal justice system during her teens. Witnessing and being a victim of injustices within the system, her early experiences with it made her angry.

She had a child at the age of 18, and endured a violent relationship for some years. After leaving that relationship she met and in 1986 married her present husband, rugby league footballer Joe Kilroy, and they had a child together. Debbie was sentenced to six years in prison and has said that "[her] commitment to fight against the criminalisation and imprisonment of women is in honour of her memory and the memories of all the women and girls who have died at the hands of the prison industrial complex". As a result of this murder, the prison authorities started involving prisoners in committees that helped to run the prison.

The motto of Sisters Inside is "nothing about us without us".

Kilroy has served as an Executive Member of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties since 2001 and ex-officio chairperson of the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland since 1997 . She has also served a member of a number of other bodies and organisations, including: She believes that the council has an important role to play in educating the public, to counteract the "law-and-order hysteria" seen in the media and spruiked by politicians. Amendments to the WA legislation were passed in 2020, partly as result of the recommendation from the coronial inquiry into the death of Ms Dhu, who died in police custody.

In April 2020 Kilroy contracted COVID-19 after travelling to the United States with her friend and colleague Boneeta-Marie Mabo, with both becoming so unwell that they were admitted to hospital. Around 18 months of contracting the virus, in September 2021, she was still suffering from Long COVID, with a debilitating range of symptoms.

she is principal of the law firm Kilroy & Callaghan, where she leads a team of five, and CEO of Sisters Inside. She is passionate about encouraging former offenders, and in particular Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and culturally diverse women to become criminal lawyers.

She has said that there is a need to break down "racism, misogyny and sexism within the legal frameworks", and that harsher sentences are not the answer.

She engages in public debate and advocates for women on a range of issues, including violence, homelessness, racism, mental health, substance abuse, poverty, child protection, sexual assault, and failures in government systems. She aims to reduce the rate of criminalisation and imprisonment of women and children, in particular the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander within the criminal justice system, and to women reduce the impact of mothers' imprisonment on their children. 2019: Voltaire Human Rights Award

In media and the arts

Australian Story on ABC Television (2004 Kilroy was Here, a biography by Kristina Olsson (2005) Archibald Prize entry (2005) and portrait by Ai Wei Wei (2015)