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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4047 ..

In establishing a prison, the ACT will be taking responsibility for managing its own prisoners. The transportation of ACT prisoners to New South Wales correctional facilities leaves our justice system fractured and incomplete and fails to promote positive and appropriate criminal justice system outcomes. In this regard Lord Justice Woolf noted in 1991:

If the experience of imprisonment results in a deterioration in the ability of a prisoner to operate effectively and lawfully within society or if prisoners are treated in a way which is likely to leave them in an embittered or disaffected state on release, then the overall purpose of the criminal justice system will have been prejudiced.

Correctional literature is replete with references to the prison environment and the damage a dysfunctional environment can have on staff, prisoners and the community. With the establishment of a new prison in the ACT, an opportunity exists to establish and sustain a healthy, positive organisational culture. We will achieve this by integrating the features of the site, the design, the operating philosophy and the staff who will bring these features together.

We aim to achieve reductions in offending behaviour by applying a broad range of therapeutic and behaviour management prison programs. These programs will offer choice and flexibility and will be research based, well managed, appropriately resourced and evaluated to determine their effectiveness. The local community and families will, where appropriate, be involved in prisoner rehabilitation programs.

We will encourage greater and more focused involvement in prisoner health and wellbeing and rehabilitation. This will involve applying integrated health management services and case management and through-care strategies as prisoners move from the community to the prison and back to the community. Improvements in prisoner educational attainments will be targeted, in recognition that offenders are frequently long-term unemployed and have poor records of educational attainment. Without a minimum level of education, offenders will forever find it difficult to escape from the margins of our society.

The Alexander Maconochie Centre will accommodate men and women remandees and sentenced prisoners. It will be a campus style design, incorporating separate accommodation units around a central facilities area, including rehabilitation program spaces, education areas and health and logistic areas. Inside the main facility, low, medium and high-security accommodation will be constructed in the form of single cells, dual occupancy cells, and cottage units. Typically, negative psychological impacts for both staff and prisoners occur with large prisons, to the extent that staff and prisoners may feel overwhelmed by both the scale and the size of the facility. We will design our prison to avoid this problem.

There will be open space reserved inside the main prison for an additional 120 places to cater for possible future expansion. The prison will incorporate sustainability in its design principles and its operating model. To this end, it will require minimal energy to meet demands, maximise the use of renewable energy sources, minimise demand for potable water, maximise the re-use of water, minimise demolition, construction and operational waste, minimise pollution and avoid or minimise impacts on local

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