Page 2839 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017
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that the minister admitted something, and that is framed in a very negative light. The opposition might reflect on this. They want all of this information, but, as soon as you give it, suddenly you have admitted to something and they try to turn it into a blame frame. I guess that is the way politics is. I have previously and publicly acknowledged that the AMC has recently experienced difficulties in relation to the increasing female detainee population. I have not shied away from the fact that the numbers have increased faster and higher than anyone—anyone—projected. But, as I discussed with my corrections ministerial colleagues just last month, this increase is a national issue.
The motion today calls on me to explain how I did not plan for the current population growth. I can assure members that questions are being asked all over the country, by governments of all political persuasions, about what is driving this increase in the female prisoner population, because it is being experienced nationally. There is no clear answer as to exactly what is causing it and why it started. As I have said in this place before, as corrections minister, the corrections facility is at the end of the line and there are a series of factors above that in the way the courts are operating, the way the police are operating, and a range of social considerations, which are all complex factors feeding into the changing profile of women being sent into custody.
The reality is that projecting prison populations is highly complex and at times an arcane science, and it relies on a vast amount of data being extrapolated and collated. I am not a criminologist, so in August 2013 the ACT government contracted John Walker Crime Trends Analysis to develop a detainee forecasting model for the territory. This goes to the question that Mr Wall and Mrs Jones have been posing about why we did not see this coming.
Mr Walker is a prominent criminologist with over 25 years experience, and recognised locally and internationally. Prior to his consultancy with the ACT government, Mr Walker worked as a research criminologist with the Australian Institute of Criminology. During this time he was ranked as the 25th most cited criminologist in the world’s international journals since 1985, and in the top three in Australasia. Mr Walker is responsible for the development of the crime and justice forecasting techniques used by the Victorian department of justice. In addition, Mr Walker has conducted analyses of future correctional trends not only in Victoria but also in South Australia and, of course, for the territory.
I have given some highlights of his CV to underline the fact that the government has sought the best possible advice in seeking to determine future trends in corrections populations for the territory. Mrs Jones’s motion, which Mr Wall has presented today, accuses me of failing to plan. I do not consider myself to be an expert in prison population projections, but we got one of the best experts we could find to help us with these matters. I then work on the basis of that advice.
There are two components to a realistic methodology for projecting future detainee numbers: firstly, sound data on the current detainee population, the sentences served by them and the ACT population projections; secondly, knowledge available to the criminal justice system regarding the possible changes in rates of offending, law enforcement strategies and sentencing practices. Data collection needs to include information from the courts, ACT Policing, ACT Corrective Services and the Justice and Community Safety Directorate more generally.
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