Page 1004 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
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own problem, not sending it somewhere else. I refer to the need for the ACT to establish or at least to consider the establishment of its own correctional institution, its own prison. On that central question, on which there was a very clear message from the Paying the Price report that we need that kind of control over our own prisoners - it was perhaps the strongest message that came out of that report - there has been, to date, simply no action on the part of the Government. I would have to say, in inelegant language, that this Government has shoved this matter as far towards the back of the stove as it possibly can get it.
I think this question will never be a politically fancy or attractive one. No-one is going to win many votes by promising a prison in the ACT. People might even lose votes by promising it. But it remains the case that if we do not deal with this question we are failing to deal with the full consequences of having a criminal justice system. We are failing to deal with the full ramifications of that system. We are simply not dealing with crime at all levels in all manifestations. We cannot talk about taking steps to discourage criminal activity if we do not have the means of providing solutions and rehabilitation at the end of the chain. People do commit crimes and they go through our justice system. There must be a full range of answers to each of the problems that face us at each level of our criminal justice system. So, as I say, I am disappointed with the response in that respect.
I think that there is a very powerful argument for giving prisoners a wider range of options than currently enjoyed. Members may have received - I do not know whether I was the only one to receive it, but I think the Canberra Times also got a copy - a letter from seven inmates of X wing at Goulburn Gaol earlier this year who are ACT prisoners who have been classified as C2 or C3 prisoners. They want to get back to the ACT to serve periods of periodic detention, or go to a halfway house or another institution like that operating in the ACT, so that they can be near their own families, which, of course, is a vitally important part of the process of bringing people back into the mainstream of social life, and also so as to be able to get work in the ACT, to give themselves that springboard so that when they leave the gaol system altogether they are on the path towards a sustainable future outside of imprisonment.
We all know what a serious problem there is with recidivism. We all know that we cannot solve that problem unless we have a gaol system which is humane enough to focus on rehabilitation and to provide alternatives of the kind that we have talked about here and which are talked about in the Paying the Price report. Those prisoners asked very plaintive questions and I want to read them into the record. I quote from the letter of 22 January:
The big problem is, why can't we come home to work? All of us are qualified tradesmen. Why can't there be a house run under the Correctional Services, run by the inmates on a trust arrangement like we have here in Goulburn?
They go on to say:
Then you might say, there's no work here (in Canberra), but a condition could be made to find work before we get here, so it would be up to us. The bottom line is, we are Canberra people wanting to finish off our rehabilitation at home, not in some foreign place like Sydney.
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