Page 2769 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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In response to a question on notice the department has advised that there were a little over 100 prisoners sentenced in the ACT as at 1 June 2006. Of those, only 62 per cent were Australian citizens resident in the ACT prior to sentencing, yet the Alexander Maconochie Centre will hold 374 people. There may well be now, it seems, a substantial number of surplus beds. Indeed, if it were a school Mr Barr would be seriously looking at closing it. The average number of prisoners in the last year or so has been around the 120 to 125 mark and the average number of remandees around the 60 mark. You are looking at 180 to about 200 people and building a prison for 374. If you are going to go ahead and build it, I can accept that as a number. But there is probably serious doubt as to whether it will in fact have enough people in it.
I note the government has absolutely no arrangements with New South Wales to take prisoners from New South Wales. When the prison was mooted by the previous government and a lot of work was done in committee on it, one of the ideas was that we would be paid some money by New South Wales to take some of their prisoners. That clearly is not going to happen. The government has also made it clear that $128 million is the final budget. During estimates, the Attorney-General said:
The government’s intention is that we will provide the full range of remand and correctional settings. That is obviously for both higher security and lower security prisoners—men and women—and remandees. The issue will be about the scale of that provision. As the Chief Minister indicated, there is scope for having lesser provision in each of those areas, but there will still be provision in each of those areas.
As part of this process the government is looking at mixing remandees with convicted prisoners.
Mr Corbell: No, we are not mixing them.
MR STEFANIAK: You have some real problems there.
Mr Corbell: They will be in the same complex. They will not be in the same areas.
MR STEFANIAK: I think you have indicated that there are significant problems, perhaps with your own Human Rights Act, where an accused person has to be segregated from convicted people, except in exceptional circumstances. Also we heard that Dr Mark Harrison of Consultecon prepared a report on the ACT prison called An ACT prison—cons and pros in March 2003. That report found that 45 per cent of prisoners serving ACT sentences in New South Wales jails were in fact from New South Wales. Dr Harrison sent a letter to the committee claiming to have been misrepresented by Mr Corbell. A Canberra Times article had cited a figure in his report that 45 per cent of prisoners serving ACT sentences in New South Wales prisons from 1997-98 to 2000-01 were from New South Wales. It continues:
My figure can be confirmed by downloading the May 2002 ACT Government submission to the Grants Commission, at the web address … The final page of chapter 23 shows that the number of New South Wales residents serving ACT sentences in New South Wales Prisons from 1997-98 to 2000-01 was 229 out of 513 prisoners, or 45 percent. The 45 per cent figure, which Mr Corbell disputes, was
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