Page 582 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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just so that the cost of prisoners per day comes down; that would be false accounting. It also goes directly against the aim of the AMC, which is to aid rehabilitation and prevent reoffending. As has been said many times, we do not want to become like the New South Wales prison system where reoffending rates have continued to increase and where we have a situation where something like 70 to 80 per cent of people in the New South Wales prison system have a mental illness.
On clause 3(b)(ii) and 3(b)(iii), the Greens do agree that projections of prisoner population numbers are an issue for further examination. The ACT would not want to be in a situation where the AMC has reached maximum capacity on an ongoing basis. We also do not want to see requirements for segregation overruled because more prisoners need to be accommodated. The issue of prisoner numbers at the AMC is one that should be monitored. In 2009 there were 163 prisoners in the AMC; the number is now between 220 and 245.
That is why I will be moving amendments to Mr Hanson’s motion asking the government to examine this issue and report back to the Assembly about the trends for the prison population and what this means for the future. Within this issue is a need to look at the capacity of community corrections programs to ensure that sentenced individuals are not being sent to the AMC due to a lack of places in these programs.
The Greens are not suggesting in any way by this that current sentencing practices should change. We believe in the separation of the courts and the Assembly, and sentencing is a matter for the courts to decide. However, judges should have the full range of community corrections options available to them when making a sentencing decision.
The sentencing act states under clauses 96(1)(c) and 133Q(c) that the courts cannot sentence a person to education and training or rehabilitation if the program is unavailable or full. This is why it is important for the government to look at this issue as part of further investigations into corrections’ capacity to facilitate sentencing options. There will always be cases where offenders should not be sentenced to a community program because they are a risk to the community. This is covered by section 7(c) under the principles of sentencing in the sentencing act.
Greg Barns, a barrister in Tasmania and a director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, discusses the importance of community corrections programs in the overall role of corrections. I would like to read from a piece that he put out on that:
As the Productivity Commission’s latest Annual Review of Government Services, released late last week, shows in jurisdictions where early intervention and community-based corrections programs are used rather than jail, recidivism is reduced.
Take Tasmania for example. For many years this state has had one of the highest recidivism rates in Australia at around 45 to 47 per cent. In other words, the number of people who reoffend within two years of release from prison WAS almost 1 in 2. But since an aggressive push by the courts and government to steer offenders away from prison and into drug, alcohol and mental health treatment options, that rate has dropped to just below 32 per cent—in other words now
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