Just say yes, Minister. It’s prison reform made simple

Dec 16, 2024
Prison cell with rays of light from the window.

Many years ago, a number of lawyers lunching with an ACT judicial officer bemoaned their lot as a new Children’s Court Magistrate was rapidly filling the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre with their young clients.

“They’ll learn,” said the old hand, who had had the role some years before.

And, sure enough, the new beak, upon seeing more and more of the hopeless backgrounds many young offenders came from, fairly quickly started pulling back from the immediate custodial sentences.

While magistrates and judges assess the evidence and modify their behaviour, the same cannot always be said for legislators, even in supposedly homogenous Canberra with its supposedly quaint “forever” left-wing government.

In recent days, the recently elected Labor Government, now free of the shackles of the Greens, has taken the vital step of changing the name of the “ACT Inspector of Custodial Services” to the “ACT Custodial Inspector”.

Would that they would take similarly swift action on Inspector Rebecca Minty’s 2024 Healthy Centre Review into Bimberi, tabled in the ACT Legislative Assembly this week.

The report makes clear Bimberi is no Don Dale centre of the infamous spithoods, nor are there echoes here of the appalling Western Australian practice of kids being housed with adult prisoners.

Ms Minty finds Bimberi has solid foundations, with many staff committed to providing the most therapeutic environment possible for young people within a detention setting.

However, the inspector’s web site declares, “These positive developments are hampered by the present operating environment that emphasises physical and procedural security.

“The Centre’s approach to risk assessment is resulting in physical security outweighing and/or detracting from the emotional and social wellbeing of detained young people. This also undermines attempts at consistently implementing more therapeutic approaches across all aspects of treatment and care of young people.”

The review makes 15 recommendations, including Bimberi changing its decision-making processes to ensure human-rights considerations are central to all key decisions: “This recommendation is informed by findings on use of restraints, searching, Special Management Directions, loss of privileges arising from behaviour management, visits, and young people mixing.”

Generally, leave permits for young people to spend short periods out of the centre are only sought (and approved) for health appointments, “and physical restraints are used as a standard measure whenever a young person is out of the centre”.

“Various staff, young people and service providers noted the inherent tension in the role of Youth Detention Officer between building rapport with young people and using physical force on young people,” the report continued. “Staff told the Review Team that it is very difficult to build trust with young people when there is a possibility that you need to use force to restrain them.”

Like its big brother, the Alexander Maconochie Centre, Bimberi is to comply with the ACT’s 20-year-old Human Rights Act.

Other recommendations are simple and practical, including that the Community Service Directorate “update the Custodial Inspector publicly every six months from the date the government response is tabled, on actions taken on each recommendation that has been agreed to, until the Inspector is satisfied the recommendation is closed”. (emphasis added) and that Canberra Health Services work with ACT Policing to devise a funded model which ensures a clinician assesses whether the health care needs of all young people coming through the Watch House can be met at the Watch House or Bimberi, or they should be taken to another facility such as a hospital. (emphasis added). This is something that the highest echelons of the police want to see, too. Outgoing ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan declared earlier this year that “We are the only mobile 24/7 response agency in the Territory,” meaning that police were at nearly 4,500 mental-health incidents in 2023, many of which were aggravated because of the presence of a blue shirt, instead of a mental-health professional.

Ms Minty tells the Government it should:

Amend the law to prevent any form of body/cavity search involving a child or young person.

End the practice of locking down the centre after every emergency code.

Reinstate the practice that all young people are entitled to physical contact with visitors.

But the most striking recommendation is No 5.

It pleads with the Government to implement as a priority more than a dozen recommendations from previous reviews of Bimberi, in 2019, 2020 and 2023.

What an indictment.

The previous recommendations include such basic requirements as ongoing funding for allied health services; the establishment of an appropriate restricted internet platform to support the education of detained young people, which has still not been completed; ensure that young people are only ever isolated with legislated, legal safeguards; and, shockingly, that young people be provided a chair in their room.

“The Review Team is concerned that almost no young people are leaving the centre for training, education and work which is limiting opportunities to build positive community connections, rehabilitation and preparation for release,” the report said.

There have been two elections since some of these issues were first raised.

New Corrections Minister Marisa Paterson is said to be a good listener, which would be a breath of fresh air after at least some of her predecessors. Ms Minty’s report is easy to digest. Ms Paterson and her nine Labor Caucus colleagues should be able to adopt all 15 recommendations without any problem, in my view.

We might expect the four Greens, even though no longer in coalition with Labor, to do likewise.

That would mean it didn’t matter what the two new Independents did, let alone the nine Liberals, reportedly back in the hands of the law-and-order brigade via proxy with Leanne Castley having overthrown the moderate and almost electable Elizabeth Lee as leader.

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