Page 2834 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017

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(ii) the dedicated women’s accommodation by 4;

(d) the AMC after the 2015-16 expansion has dedicated accommodation for 29 women;

(e) data provided by the Australia Bureau of Statistics shows that, in the March 2017 quarter, the imprisonment rate of women in the ACT is 19.9 per 100 000 adults, up from 12.0 in 2014, an increase of 65.8 percent;

(f) Justice and Community Safety Annual Reports show that from 2009-10 to 2015-16, the average daily prisoner population has increased among:

(i) sentenced non-indigenous women from 6.48 to 9.1, an increase of 40.4 percent;

(ii) sentenced indigenous women from 0.91 to 3.6, an increase of 295.6 percent;

(iii) unsentenced non-indigenous women from 6.64 to 7, an increase of 5.4 percent; and

(iv) unsentenced indigenous women from 1.06 to 3.2, an increase of 201.8 percent;

(g) the Minister for Corrections updated the Assembly on 3 August 2017, advising that:

(i) the AMC has in 2017 held, on at least one occasion, 45 women at once;

(ii) the increase in women detainee population was a development for which the Minister for Corrections did not plan;

(iii) ACT Corrective Services is considering short and medium term options for women’s accommodation in the AMC; and

(iv) ACT Corrective Services is undertaking a feasibility study into the future needs of the ACT’s prison population of which the needs of women detainees is the top priority; and

(h) the Minister for Corrections told the Chamber on 3 August 2017 that the use of the management unit to accommodate women detainees was “not for an indefinite period”; and

(2) calls on the Government to report back to the Assembly by the first sitting of November 2017 with:

(a) an explanation of how the Minister for Corrections did not plan for the current level of population growth in women detainees;

(b) the details of the statistical modelling methodology used to forecast the likely increase in prisoners in the AMC prior to the expansion of 2015-16;


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