Page 1002 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
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I find the response encouraging in some respects and disappointing in others. The original Paying the Price report raised several crucial issues in the area of corrections. The report considered, for example, the adequacy of our present remand facilities, the Belconnen Remand Centre; the establishment of bail hostels in the ACT; and alternatives to imprisonment in this Territory, including such things as attendance centres, outdoor wilderness programs, home detention programs, periodic detention and community supervision. It included and discussed services to prisoners. It referred to volunteers in correction programs and how those volunteers would be integrated into the work of government, to the very vexed and important question of mentally ill offenders and to the administration generally of juvenile justice and correction services.
Those are all areas of importance. I think that the report is fairly described as a milestone report. It is a very important development. The committee was chaired originally by Mr David Chandler and later by Professor David Hambly of the Australian National University. The report represents a year's very hard work, and it covers comprehensively the full range of issues in this area. I do not think anyone could fairly describe the Paying the Price report as a weak report or as a report that was soft on the big issues. It is therefore a little disappointing that in many respects the most important questions raised in the report have not been fully addressed or squarely faced.
On some issues, Madam Speaker, the Government has been, I must say, brave. It has fully tackled the questions that have been raised in this report. For example, the very first recommendation was to establish a program to address crime prevention issues and to ensure that whatever program is in place is adequately funded and effectively targeted. In response to that recommendation the ACT Government, for this financial year, has allocated $50,000 to develop an integrated crime prevention strategy for the Territory. I think we would all applaud that, although we might argue about the alternative options for the expenditure of that sum. But we certainly agree that a crime prevention strategy is an important development in preventing people from reaching the correction system which we have to administer.
The other question of great importance at the present time is services to prisoners. We send up to 100 prisoners each year to New South Wales to serve terms of imprisonment. It is no exaggeration to describe the New South Wales prison system as being a disgrace. It is inhumane; it has an appallingly low record of rehabilitation; it is racked with violence; and it is a system which ought to be overhauled as comprehensively as possible as quickly as possible. It is distressing to anybody involved in the ACT criminal justice system to see prisoners constantly being pushed into that system, because the system does not meet the demands of a decent rehabilitation and correction system. It is also distressing from another point of view, in that the existence of that very poor, very inhumane system, I believe, acts as a very powerful deterrent to judges and magistrates in the ACT sentencing offenders deserving some term of imprisonment to a term of imprisonment, because they believe, quite rightly, that the system is a bad system and that in the vast majority of circumstances anybody, except perhaps very hardened criminals or those guilty of very serious offences, would be better off outside that gaol system.
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