Correctional Services (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 31 October 2017.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (15:41): Where we left off at 11.30 on Tuesday night was looking at the OARS submission. Leigh Garrett, who has been the Chief Executive of OARS for a long period—I think it could be coming up to 30 years—is seen by all as one of the most respected commentators in this area. I was very keen to get his input in relation to this bill. Where we left off was a discussion by him in relation to drugs. Interestingly, on Wednesday morning in the paper, there were some interesting statistics around the use of illicit drugs within prisons that I will get to in a minute. Mr Garrett says:

Stop the Hurt: SA's Ice Action Plan, specifically labels one of its new measures as 'amending the Correctional Services Act 1982 to increase controls on drug use in prison, and to prevent the automatic release on parole for certain prisoners sentenced for dealing or trafficking drugs.'

That is what we are doing. He continues:

Action towards 'stopping the hurt' must include reducing the supply of methamphetamines (and all drugs) in the community and prisons—as is suggested in the action plan. It is known that drug use occurs in, and is brought into prisons, and this must be addressed. This however must not just be addressed with punitive measures, but also educational and rehabilitative measures (as is outlined in the Bill for insertion of a new Section 3) relating to the objectives and guiding principles of correctional services.

On that matter, Mr Scarborough is the Director of Nursing at the SA Prison Health Service and he appeared before the Select Committee on Administration of South Australian Prisons about three or four weeks ago. This is a public servant who is, in my interpretation, a man of some skill and some repute in this area, who was putting on the table some pretty damning admissions I think in the hope that he is able to get notice for these issues. He says:

Unfortunately, present resources only permit specialised mental health services to be offered to those with severe mental health issues, especially those being managed by the high risk assessment team. There is no current way to provide psychological and counselling support to those with low acuity issues such as chronic pain, substance abuse issues and high prevalence of mental health disorders such as anxiety disorders and moderate severity depression. Separate to health, psychologists are employed by the Department for Correctional Services to provide targeted treatment for at-risk prisoners and criminogenic needs.

This is where things get a little interesting. He continued:

In relation to substance misuse, illicit drug use, needle-sharing and risky alcohol consumption, they remain significant issues for offender populations. On admission, 67 per cent of prisoners reported illicit drug use, with main drugs being methamphetamine and cannabis; 45 per cent of prisoners reported a history of injecting drugs in the past, with nearly half of those reporting that they have shared injecting equipment; 6 per cent of prisoners report continuing to inject drugs while in prison. We think that is probably a lower reporting number than what is actually happening.

At this point, the Chair of the committee, the Hon. Terry Stephens, said, 'Mr Scarborough, could you repeat that number for me please?' He replied that there will be 6 per cent of prisoners reporting continuing to inject. He continued:

That is a self-report, so we think it is actually higher than what is being reported. Approximately 50 per cent of prisoners report a high risk of alcohol-related harm in the past 12 months. The use of alcohol is higher amongst the Indigenous entrants. Health services within prisons are largely confined to support during the withdrawal phase. The addition of a psychological and program support should be made available to match services that are available within the community.

Six per cent of prisoners continue to inject drugs whilst in prison. For me, that raises a number of concerns. First, when people come into custody and they are remanded and incarcerated, one would expect that access to drugs stops or, at the very least, slows down to the most minor of trickles, but 6 per cent of prisoners continue to inject drugs whilst in prison. That requires them to have the drug, it requires them to have a needle and it requires them to have—and this is where it gets a bit sketchy for me—some way to heat up the drug to put into the needle to inject into themselves. That is a lot of paraphernalia and a lot of equipment that is getting into our prisons—6 per cent.

We heard yesterday from the minister that there are 3,080 prisoners within our system. That means that we have close to 200 prisoners across our network who are injecting drugs into themselves. That is scary, downright scary. Not only does that pose a problem for those who are injecting the drugs and the fact that they are not able to clean themselves up, and are not cleaning themselves up—and they need to, first and foremost, bear responsibility for that—but it raises questions around the aggression and the activity of those injecting drug users towards other prisoners, towards the prison officers, and also it means that they have paraphernalia.

A needle that is used to inject illicit drugs is a dangerous weapon within prisons. This puts everybody in our prison community at risk. Putting aside the potentially violent situations that arise as a result of this drug use, if we cannot clean up the drug users in prison what hope do we have when these people get back out into the community? I think the community would rightly expect that prison is a place where you go to clean yourself up, that because you are in custody and because your every movement is scheduled and essentially dictated to you this is an opportunity for you to get clean. That simply is not happening.

Questions need to be raised about how these drugs are getting in, in the first place, and I will have a bit more to say in relation to how I think we need to fix that absolutely diabolical issue. I certainly respect Mr Scarborough for putting that information on the record. That is something on which I think both sides of politics need to get our heads together to work out how to fix it. OARS goes on in the submission—and this is obviously one idea in the bill that has been put forward by the government—in relation to buffer zones. OARS, in its submission, says:

The inclusion of the 'buffer zone' seems reasonable, however we raise concern with regard to the 'possession of a prohibited item of a kind prescribed by the regulations', and whether or not this could impact on visitors to correctional facilities, who, for example, would carry a mobile phone which they may leave locked in their car or locked in the gatehouse–which would be assumed to be within the buffer zone.

So are we accidentally going to be creating criminals simply because somebody happens to wander past a correctional institution with a very common, everyday item? I do not think there would be a South Australian left—well, 99 per cent of South Australians would carry their mobile phone in their pocket or in their purse with them as they go around. OARS goes on to raise concerns around conditions of release on parole, saying:

With regard to the CEO accepting parole conditions on behalf of a prisoner if they are 'unreasonably refusing' it would be reasonable to assume that this would impact on the likelihood of the prisoners reoffending or breaching such parole conditions relatively soon after their release from prison. With regard to a prisoner who is unable to accept due to 'physical or cognitive impairment' the same may be suggested if cognitively the prisoner is unable to understand the implications of accepting/not accepting. This would be better placed with a guardian or trustee having the responsibility to accept.

I think in here Leigh Garrett raises a very common-sense issue and probably again an unintended consequence. I understand from the briefing what the government was trying to get at in relation to this amendment—that, where you have an uncooperative prisoner, you essentially want to impose these bail conditions. If these people are going to get out of gaol, those conditions need to be imposed. Certainly it is preferable if people accept these conditions but, regardless, they need to be served upon the person. When speaking with Frances Nelson QC, she said the same thing, that she accepted that in certain circumstances the CE can accept those parole conditions.

However, it rightly raises the question that if somebody is cognitively not able to accept the conditions of parole because they cannot understand them and they cannot read them—they have some sort of impairment that stops them from being able to accept them on their own—how are they going to comply with them? And is the CE the most appropriate person to accept them on their behalf?

I agree with Leigh Garrett here, and this is something I think potentially that we need to look at amending between the houses: whether or not to extend this to a guardian or trustee or essentially break it down so that, if we have unruly prisoners who can understand what is being imposed upon them but for whatever reason do not want to accept them, we give the CE that ability, but where somebody is unable, through cognitive impairment or some other disability, we should potentially look at another way.

If somebody with a severe mental illness is released from prison and then goes into the community, they should have some sort of care support mechanism, and perhaps it would be more appropriate that a guardian or some sort of caregiver or trustee accepts those parole conditions. We would potentially also need to look at what liability lies either with the chief executive or with the guardian or trustee. I think this is very worthy of consideration and something that we will be teasing out throughout the committee stage.

More feedback does continue to flow through, especially given that it has been only a couple of weeks between the time the bill was tabled and what we are doing here today, and this is quite a long and complex piece of legislation. Especially in relation to drug use in prisons, I think there are another couple of ideas that the government need to look at. The first of those is around using technology to stop mobile phone use in prison.

Contraband mobile phones in prisons allow inmates to facilitate the flow of drugs and other contraband items into prisons and enable inmates to continue a life of crime from behind bars. Using phones, inmates around the world have arranged murder and planned escapes, the import of firearms and drug imports. Mobile phones in prisons can enable inmates to provide orders and direction to gang members; communicate with and intimidate prosecution witnesses; communicate with family, friends and associates, which is a privilege that is rightfully restricted when people are incarcerated; and photograph staff and prison premises and potentially misuse this information.

Despite the current security precautions designed to prevent mobile phones from entering prisons, they are still making their way in, as phones become smaller and easier to conceal. Recent statistics released by the government show that the number of phones making their way into South Australian prisons tripled in one year, from 2014-15 to 2015-16. This poses a serious threat to the security of correctional centres and the community more broadly, who are trusting that, at the very least, prisoners are being prevented from engaging in further crime.

There are ways to help fix this. There are solutions that have been tried internationally that we need to look at as part of any reform process to stop illicit drugs and other criminal behaviour happening behind bars. We have announced a policy that will fund a pilot program at a regional prison to block the use of contraband mobile phones with a view to rolling this out across the prison network.

Mobile phone-jamming technology has been successfully trialled in New South Wales. A couple of months ago, I visited the Silverwater facility in New South Wales. I was able to spend time with some of their senior people to discuss the use of mobile phone jamming out at Lithgow prison. They basically said that it works. There are some set-up issues with the jamming technology and you have to try to calibrate the range, but the technology works. For them, they were going through a procurement process for a second stage into a second prison with that technology. They essentially said, 'It is going to be a case-by-case basis. Every prison is different and the technology set-up is going to be different, but this thing works.'

The technology has also been instituted in New Zealand. New Zealand had a more difficult experience because they instituted this technology 10 years ago, and I think we have come a long way in 10 years in mobile phone-jamming technology. They had to spend a lot of money after the fact to make improvements to the mobile phone-jamming system within their prisons, but they have been able to do it more successfully than in the United States and in Israel, with current technology proving it is possible to contain the jamming signals coming from within the correctional centre's boundaries and not interfere with other signals.

A variety of technologies to facilitate blocking mobile phone use is readily available, including jammers and also managed access systems. Managed access systems is quite an interesting technology. It has been trialled in the US in Mississippi state prisons, in this one group of seven prisons, and they instituted this managed access system. Essentially, it is a phone tower that attracts the signal from all the mobile phones that are used. What happens is that, if you use your mobile phone, it pings to the nearest tower.

From there, through this managed access system, the tower can identify whether it is a white-listed mobile phone; that is, a mobile phone that a corrections officer or someone working within the prison environment has listed inside the managed access system. If a phone is listed, they are allowed to make their phone call, but any unidentified mobile phone number is blocked. This is where this is superior to jamming, because jamming technology just essentially scrambles the frequency and the mobile phone cannot get reception.

The managed access system pings the signal to the tower, stops it from going any further and actually allows you to capture the mobile phone. You cannot capture what is actually in the information, but you can capture who the mobile phone was trying to contact, the number on the other side. This can be quite helpful in understanding who the prisoners were trying to contact and can be used as further evidence, potentially, of illegal activity. It would certainly give police and law enforcement bodies more opportunities to understand the links between different people.

The difficulty is that the managed access system allows you to identify the number of phones within the system. That is certainly a positive because with jammers, essentially, you do not know how many there are. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.