Page 1535 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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some data back to me and the Attorney-General, because between us we need to take this issue on.
I am happy to provide a report back to the Assembly on the progress of this work at a later date when it is available to me. I certainly intend to share it with a range of community stakeholders. We know—and it is important to reflect on this in this place—that the work of ACT Corrective Services is at the back end of the justice process. The AMC was built to house people detained in custody by order of the courts—people who have been charged with an offence by the police, people who have been brought into custody by the police for committing a criminal act in the community. So Corrective Services is only one of the players in the process of why Indigenous people end up in jail.
That is why I have asked Corrective Services to do the work on the offence profile of people who come to us and to share that work with the rest of the community. It is not something that Corrective Services alone can fix. We will certainly work hard to play our part in it, but it is an issue right across the community.
The AMC has a strong rehabilitation-focused culture that is embedded in the management of ACT Corrective Services. That is certainly a part of addressing incarceration rates. But these responsibilities are limited to what we can do with detainees once they have been sentenced, be that during their period of imprisonment in the AMC or while they are assisted through the highly valued extended through-care program or during the supervision of a community corrections order.
Once somebody is in custody with Corrective Services, there are a whole range of measures in place to try to assist people with their offending behaviour. Certainly, there are dedicated programs directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees are eligible for both the regular programs that are available to all detainees and there are targeted pieces of work that are culturally specific. This is work that has arisen from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody as a starting point and in many reports over the years. The current advice from members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in the ACT is that there are specific things we should be seeking to do for our Indigenous detainees.
Having said that, corrections ministers and departments are required to be responsive to the orders of the courts and the directions of the police, who are also tasked with the expectation of keeping the community safe. At the end of the day, corrections plays only one part in the system.
I believe we are generally doing a reasonable job of responding to these issues of crime and justice from the perspective of Corrective Services and the AMC, but it is clear that we as a government and the ACT as a community need to take stock of and quantify, if possible, what we may be able to do better. Having regard to all the things I have said, we must not rest, because we have seen this spike in the detainee population. I believe this is particularly true in relation to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, and their persistent and growing over-representation in the
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