Page 3040 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
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the Alexander Maconochie reintegration centre. This budget delivers $35 million to construct the centre, further resource the staff and deliver support programs for residents. The new centre will deliver up to 80 beds and increase the range of rehabilitation programs available to detainees.
This is a facility that will be built outside the wire at the AMC. It is a very different approach from simply building more accommodation units or cells within the higher security environment. This is about putting a strong emphasis on rehabilitation. It is about having an environment where low security and low risk detainees can be accommodated outside the fence. It provides an incentive for people to engage in their programs and engage in and focus on their upcoming potential release or parole period, and to have detainees forward focus on the possibilities that are available to them through good engagement and good behaviour whilst in custody.
We also, through this budget, expand the ACT bail program to support offenders to comply with bail to keep them and the community safe. Providing support for people to be safely placed on bail and supported to comply with bail, we believe is particularly crucial in reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the justice system.
We will deliver an additional $1.3 million in the budget for the bail support program, to strengthen accommodation and employment options for people on bail, because we believe that we can support people to be more successful on bail through addressing the underlying accommodation issues they often face and also helping them to understand their bail conditions. We find that some people who end up breaching their bail conditions do it through perhaps a lack of understanding of their bail conditions because of the complexity of some of those conditions at times. Proactive case management and support while people are on bail have been shown to result in greater levels of compliance, reduced offending, increased community safety and reduced numbers of people on remand in prison.
An important part of the work that the government has been doing for a number of years in the space of justice reinvestment is the policy work that has gone on behind the team. In 2014, the government made a commitment to develop a justice reinvestment strategy. Our approach, which the Australian Institute of Criminology has endorsed, involves adopting a multifaceted strategy, incorporating multiple interventions that achieve greater cumulative results in both the community and the justice system. The policy work is an important part of that.
In this budget we are investing $3.2 million to develop a world-class reducing recidivism research collaboration that will draw on the best minds in the fields of criminology and law to help the ACT government to achieve our justice reform program. This includes not only having a strong team within the Justice and Community Safety Directorate but also having partnerships with institutions like the Australian National University and, through that, working with partners overseas to make sure that we are embracing the best policy, the best research and therefore the best options for maximising safety for our community here in the ACT.
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