Page 3395 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 September 2015
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Separation of remandees and sentenced prisoners is also a must to achieve an effectively managed jail. This was evident on my recent trip to New South Wales. The separation of remandees and sentenced prisoners that I saw in New South Wales showed that some of the practices employed here in the ACT are counterproductive, add additional complexity to the operation of the prison system on a daily basis, and contribute in some part to the effects of violence, drug abuse and the substantial amount of idle time that prisoners in the ACT’s correctional system have. As I mentioned earlier, some of those segregation issues will have the ability to be sorted out with the new facilities, but without proper planning, proper foresight and proper options on the table, inevitably they will not be. It is simply impossible to manage a prison cohort as divided as the one that is in the AMC.
The most damning evidence to date, and it goes to the heart of why we need a review, is what is happening in our ACT court systems. I refer to a recent case. According to ACT Magistrates Court transcripts from 30 April this year, on considering sentencing for a defendant it was revealed that the defendant had returned a positive drug test whilst held on remand at the AMC. This was documented in the pre-sentencing report. On reflection on this evidence, Magistrate Dingwall said:
That very event makes one wonder what real prospects there are for rehabilitation at the AMC …
Magistrate Dingwall continues:
It doesn’t matter what system’s put in place the drugs seem to get in …
He continues: “I had a defendant a few years ago who went in with a heroin addiction got cured of that and came out with a methamphetamine addiction.”
When the sentencing hearing resumed on 5 May, Magistrate Dingwall said: “I’m not convinced that if this defendant remains at the AMC she will receive the intensive interventions described in the pre sentence report, certainly not the sort of intensive interventions that may be offered to some person who attends a dedicated residential rehab program for some period of time.” It must be noted that in this court transcript the DPP referred to this person as a “one person crime spree” and remarked that this person was before the courts for committing in excess of 40 offences.
The good grace of the courts on this occasion meant that the defendant in this case was ordered to an interstate residential rehabilitation facility. Subsequently they are now known to have absconded only days after checking themselves in and, to the best of my knowledge, they remain at large and in the community to this day.
This transcript provides evidence that the lack of effective rehabilitation at the AMC and the perceived softness of the ACT’s jail is making a huge impact on the ACT judiciary and the decisions and sentences that they hand down. This is an indictment of the direction of the current ACT government, the direction that they have chosen to take, and of the corrections system as it stands today. In my view, this is a detriment to the territory’s safety more broadly.
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