Page 2752 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 6 October 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
These standards were revised in 2012 and again in 2018. When the Australian guidelines were revised in 2018, the Nelson Mandela rules were again considered. Additional consideration was given to the impacts of other UN conventions, such as the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, or OPCAT. The objective of OPCAT is to improve how people’s human rights are protected when they are detained. It does this by providing for a rigorous process of independent inspections of all places of detention in a country’s jurisdiction. Australia ratified OPCAT in December 2017 and is required to be fully compliant with OPCAT by January 2022 at the latest. Locally, our adult corrections system is governed by the Corrections Management Act, the ACT Human Rights Act 2004 and the ACT Standards for Adult Correctional Services.
To summarise, the UN first created rules around the minimum treatment for prisoners. These were updated in 2015 and named the Nelson Mandela rules. Australia has created its own standard guidelines for Australian prisons. The Nelson Mandela rules were the basis for these guidelines. Subsequent revisions also took into consideration OPCAT, which Australia ratified in 2017 and must fully implement by January 2022.
I wish to highlight the following. The objective of OPCAT is to improve how people’s human rights are protected when they are detained. To ensure that this is happening, inspectors review places of detention such as the AMC to make sure they are compliant with human rights. Australia is to be fully compliant with OPCAT by January 2022. That is three months away. We ratified OPCAT in 2017 and, just this year, our Minister for Corrections has been found to be responsible for a serious human rights abuse.
A study of the Nelson Mandela rules reveals that the AMC is also not meeting several other international minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners. Consider the following. Rule 11(b) says:
Untried prisoners shall be kept separate from convicted prisoners.
This has been an ongoing problem at the AMC for years and there has been a number of instances where remanded detainees with the presumption of innocence have been accommodated with the sentenced detainees and subsequently beaten by them.
Rule 52 says that intrusive searches, including strip and body cavity searches, should be undertaken only if absolutely necessary. I will quote from the inspector’s report of a strip search in January this year:
A draft searching strategy from January 2021, that the Office of the Inspector of Correctional Services has examined, states that all detainees will be strip searched on arrival to the Crisis Support Unit. Routine strip searching on admission to the Crisis Support Unit does not have a lawful basis under the Corrections Management Act 2007. In addition, the practice of mandatory strip searching is also inconsistent with the Human Rights Act.
Rule 70 says:
The prison administration shall inform a prisoner at once of the serious illness or death of a near relative or any significant other. Whenever circumstances allow,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video