Page 522 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 15 February 2017
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I am calling on this Assembly to recognise the urgent need for the AMC to be inclusive of the women incarcerated in the facility: to expand the accommodation for women to appropriate levels; to allow women at the prison equal opportunity to be well prepared for re-entering the broader community; for women at the prison to be engaged in the new industries, and other industries, potentially; and for women in the prison to be job ready, as much as possible, upon release. Just because women are a minority of Canberra’s prison population does not mean that their needs and outcomes should be less important than the needs and outcomes of men in the prison. I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong—Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Minister for Justice and Consumer Affairs, Minister for Corrections and Minister for Mental Health) (5.16): I thank Ms Jones for bringing this motion to the Assembly this afternoon. The AMC is indeed experiencing increases in female detainee numbers, thankfully not at the rate we have experienced in the male population over the past few years, but certainly it is an area of growing concern. The rise in female detainees is a national issue. It has certainly been a point of discussion amongst my fellow correctional ministers, and criminologists.
As the Fairfax papers reported late last year, the incarceration rate for women is rising twice as fast as that for men, surging by nearly 40 per cent since 2005, compared to 18 per cent for men. This is according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures. In both Queensland and the Northern Territory the imprisonment rate has risen more than eight times faster for women than for men. So I do appreciate Mrs Jones’s interest in this area. Aside from minor amendments to her motion, I am happy to explore these issues further in the chamber. At this point I move the amendment circulated in my name:
Omit all text after paragraph (1)(f), substitute:
“(g) female detainees in the AMC are offered a range of education and employment programs, and future industry options are being developed for female detainees; and
(2) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) outline to the Assembly what services and programs are currently available to female detainees; and
(b) provide an update to the Assembly on progress in addressing the growing female detainee population by the last sitting day in August 2017.”.
I note that there was previously a slight typographical error in the amendment. I have clarified it with the Clerk and the table office and also drew it to Mrs Jones’s attention before the debate.
I was talking about the increase in the rate of female incarceration in Australia. There are a few academic hypotheses to explain this rise. One is that the increase in the rate of female incarceration is due to an increase in the seriousness of women’s crime, that
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