Page 6004 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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Lastly I will mention the amendment that ensures that confidential board documents are kept confidential. The amendment confirms these board documents may not be orally disclosed. Again this is another sensible amendment to ensure that no anomaly occurs simply because of ambiguities in drafting. In conclusion, the Greens support these changes which will help ACT Corrective Services to perform its role and help ensure smooth administration.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (5.11): The Corrections and Sentencing Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 amends a number of provisions in key corrections legislation in order to improve the quality, timeliness and effectiveness of corrective services in the ACT. The bill is an example of the government’s efforts to review and improve the services it provides to the ACT community.
ACT Corrective Services, which includes the Sentence Administration Board, operates under three key pieces of legislation: the Corrections Management Act, the Crimes (Sentence Administration) Act and the Crimes (Sentencing) Act. The bill consists of a series of minor amendments to provisions in these acts. Taken together, these amendments will provide clarity for those administering corrective services, enhance the quality of corrective services and result in greater efficiency in the use of public resources.
The following amendments provided by the bill will result in more timely and quality corrective services. Segregation directions are made by the director-general for the health or safety of a detainee or for the health or safety of others. The director-general may also direct that a detainee be segregated from others for the purposes of investigation, for example of an incident that may have occurred in a correctional centre. A segregation direction may apply to a detainee to prevent them from contact with another person, or a number of other people, for their own or others’ safety.
Currently, the director-general must review a segregation directive applying to a detainee each time that detainee is transferred from one correctional centre to another. Review provisions are intended to ensure that any segregation arrangement only continues as long as is necessary or remains applicable when the detainee is transferred to another prison. As the cells at the Magistrates Court and Supreme Court are declared to be a correctional centre, this means that each time a detainee is transferred to attend the courts the director-general must review any segregation direction that applies to the detainee.
The bill provides that the director-general will no longer be required to review a segregation direction where the detainee is only being transferred for one day or less. Without limiting proper scrutiny, removing this requirement will result in greater efficiency as the director-general will no longer need to engage in this review process only because a detainee is attending court. The bill does not affect the right of the director-general to review a segregation direction at any time on their own initiative or for a detainee to apply for a review of a segregation direction that applies to them.
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