Page 2835 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
(c) details of the feasibility study into the needs of the ACT’s prison population, including the terms of reference, estimated completion date of the feasibility study and all options being considered for the women detainee accommodation and the estimated costs of such options;
(d) an exact date of when the AMC will no longer accommodate women detainees in the management unit; and
(e) a detailed plan of the specific steps, if any, that the ACT Government and ACT Corrective Services would take in the event that 50, 55 and 60 women were to be incarcerated at any given time during the next quarter.
As many members would know, Mrs Jones has a family matter to attend to this afternoon, so it is with great pleasure and a little bit of nostalgia that I get to move this motion relating to the AMC.
After the official opening in 2008 the Alexander Maconochie Centre received its first prisoners on 30 March 2009, after much controversy around the staging of the opening of a jail that did not open for almost another year. At its commencement the AMC had a design and operational capacity of 270 beds. However, the AMC’s total capacity could be increased in its planning to 300 by making use of temporary beds and double bunking.
Today, in 2017, after much expenditure and a lot of debate in this place, we have a much bigger Alexander Maconochie Centre. In 2015-16 it underwent an expansion which saw an additional 169 beds added to its total capacity. Now the AMC has a capacity of 539 beds and an operational capacity of 511 beds. Despite the expansion project which saw an additional 169 beds added to the AMC’s total capacity, the female accommodation has increased by only four beds since its opening in 2008, bringing the total dedicated women’s accommodation to 29. That is only four beds out of a 169-bed expansion. That is less than 2½ per cent of the expansion project being dedicated to female accommodation within the AMC.
In February of this year Mrs Jones moved a motion calling on the ACT government, the Minister for Corrections, to look into and update the Assembly on the situation of women in the AMC. During the last sitting, on 3 August, the corrections minister, Mr Rattenbury, gave a ministerial statement on women in the AMC which was essentially an admission of failure. The minister confirmed that this year the AMC has held up to 45 women in custody—that 45 women were being detained at a prison which has dedicated accommodation for only 29. This meant that the government had to repurpose the management of the health unit to accommodate female detainees. This is far from best practice. It deprives other prisoners within the facility of those cells and those services, should they be needed, and potentially impacts on the staff and the general management and functioning of the prison overall.
This sees a continuation of many of the poor management practices that required the expansion of the AMC just on two years ago: the use of crisis support unit beds and the use of the health unit beds when the prison hit overcapacity. A hundred million
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video