Page 4352 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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that is where we find ourselves. We can re-prosecute that all day—and Mr Hanson undoubtedly will continue to do so—but they are the cold, hard facts of the matter.
We now find ourselves in a situation where the population of the AMC has increased by approximately 40 per cent in the past 10 months, from around 240 detainees in January this year to around 330, 340 currently. The population was 334 last night. We take a daily count. Certainly, an increase of this proportion in this time frame is unprecedented. It certainly was not forecast. It has brought us to a set of numbers that match with some of the forecasts—there is no doubt about that—but the increase that we saw in a short time frame, I think, nobody anticipated. And it has certainly placed some pressure on the AMC. I acknowledge the comments of the Official Visitor. I think he is describing the situation that we have. But that is, again, the reality that we find ourselves with.
The question now is: what is being done about that? I can report to the Assembly that a number of steps have been taken. Firstly, a range of operational steps have been put in place within the AMC to deal with those pressures—increased prisoner escorts, greater attention to who can be housed with whom, significant work to minimise the sorts of risks that the Official Visitor was describing. The management of the AMC are well aware of those risks and they are working to ameliorate those pressures and those risks as much as possible.
Additional capacity has been added to the Alexander Maconochie Centre, as I have previously reported to the Assembly. The capacity of the AMC now stands at 366. That, of course, is not the necessary prisoner population. I have explained in detail before why that is the case, depending on issues such as whether the beds are available in the women’s section or in other parts of the jail. But the actual capacity—and the definition of that is clearly understood—is now 366, through the implementation of bunk beds and the like. So the capacity has been increased to deal with that extra pressure.
I also recently held a round table with a range of key stakeholders in the criminal justice system to actually talk about getting a clearer understanding amongst all those stakeholders of why we have seen the rapid increase and what steps might be put in place to counteract that. I know Mr Hanson was somewhat derogatory about that—of sitting down and actually talking to people—but these are the key stakeholders. Directors-general of key ACT government agencies, ACT Policing, the Director of Public Prosecutions, ACT Legal Aid—these are the people who came, and we had a very good discussion.
I think it is important the leaders in the justice community are having that conversation and continue to have that conversation. I never professed this would be some silver bullet, but certainly putting all the right people in the room and having the conversation is an important thing to do. And that is where some of the suggestions came from that Mr Hanson has spoken on, and I will come back to those in a moment.
The other thing is that since I became minister, I put a proposal to cabinet, and the government agreed in the 2013-14 budget, to allocate design funding for the expansion of the AMC. And that work is now underway. There is an
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