Correctional Services (Accountability and Other Measures) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 23 July 2020.)

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (17:02): I rise to indicate that I will be the lead speaker for the government on this bill. In August 2016, the former Jay Weatherill Labor government announced its reducing reoffending 10by20 Strategic Policy Panel to investigate the best practice and strategies of reduced rates of reoffending and promote rehabilitation and reintegration outcomes. A commitment of $79.13 million was made to implement the six strategies and 36 recommendations of the panel, a clear pillar of which was to amend the Correctional Services Act.

These amendments would support a reduction in reoffending through a greater emphasis on individual case management, access to rehabilitation and vocational training for people on remand and enhancements to prison security. In 2017, the then minister for correctional services, the member for Kaurna in the other place, introduced the Correctional Services (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2017. Due to the time constraints of parliament, all stages of that bill in both chambers were not completed and the bill was not passed.

In 2018, the current Liberal government introduced the Correctional Services (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2018 to honour election commitments relating to serious and organised crime and alcohol and drug testing of staff. Bizarrely, the 2018 bill did not replicate any of the measures aimed at reducing reoffending by 10 per cent by 2020.

Indeed, while the opposition is deeply committed to supporting these measures that we instigated, we fear these measures are being delayed for so long that it may make them unlikely to have the desired effect. Despite the lip service we have seen paid to bipartisanship around the principle of 10by20 (reducing recidivism rates by 10 per cent by 2020), we have seen no real action up until this point. It will not have escaped members' notice that it is in fact 2020 now.

According to the data available, we have seen a trend downwards in recidivism rates over the last five years. We will know, in January 2023, when the final review of government services figures comes out, whether we have been successful in reducing the rate by 10 per cent by this year. It seems self-evident that, if your aim is to reduce reoffending by a significant amount by the year 2020, you would have to put some measures in place before 2020 to make that happen. It begs the question of why it has taken so long to get these measures in place. It is not as though the work has not already been done.

There is every chance that these measures, designed to reduce reoffending by 10 per cent by 2020, may not even be enacted until 2021. The government has now introduced the Correctional Services (Accountability and Other Measures) Amendment Bill 2020. This bill is largely identical to the former government's bill, with only minor amendments and some additions, which the opposition believes are worthy of support. The bill therefore completes the work of the 2017 bill proposed by the former Labor government.

The bill inserts an objects and guiding principles section. The bill places a greater emphasis on end-to-end case management as part of prisoner and offender assessment, planning and review functions, including specific provisions around work undertaken as a condition of parole. The bill contains new provisions allowing the chief executive to compel staff to participate fully in post-incident reviews and investigation processes, as well as new provisions around staff integrity and the chief executive's power to remove suspect staff from sites.

The bill provides that remuneration of Parole Board members will now be determined by the Remuneration Tribunal, bringing the Parole Board into line with other government boards. The bill introduces buffer zones for the purposes of possession of drugs under the Controlled Substances Act 1984 and increases penalties for possession. It also increases penalties for unauthorised mobile telephones within a buffer zone surrounding prison sites. The bill introduces an enhanced independent prison inspection scheme.

The bill prevents automatic parole for offenders for offences of dealing or trafficking drugs. Currently, offenders who are sentenced to less than five years' imprisonment for offences of dealing or trafficking drugs are eligible for automatic parole. To maintain the integrity of prison operations, the bill contains new provisions to safeguard prisons from the potential risks associated with drones and other forms of aircraft.

The bill provides better support for the principles in the Public Sector Data Sharing Act 2016 and the information-sharing guidelines by improving access to information in appropriate circumstances and to relevant people, such as family and kin, and to agencies. Appropriate release of certain information will create greater transparency and accountability. The bill also allows for the recording and dissemination of recordings of calls, including to a court, by external justice agencies for intelligence and investigative or evidentiary purposes.

The bill includes new provisions for the protection of biometric data from misuse. The bill limits prisoners' use of mail in certain circumstances, including preventing prisoners from directly or indirectly contacting any victim, alleged victim or person associated with their offending.

The bill provides for the automatic suppression of a victim's name, where a victim makes a civil claim against a prisoner in regard to an amount awarded to a prisoner that is paid into the Prisoner Compensation Quarantine Fund. The bill provides that 50 per cent of funds held to a prisoner's credit at the conclusion of the quarantine period be credited to the Victims of Crime Fund, with the remaining 50 per cent credited to the prisoner's resettlement account, to be used for rehabilitation and reintegration at the conclusion of the prisoner's sentence.

The bill introduces new criminal offences around prisoners assembling and rioting to give correctional officers greater authority to control disorder in prisons. It is worth noting that when the 2018 bill was introduced the shadow minister in the other place introduced some of the above measures as amendments, which reflected measures in the previous government's bill. These were:

preventing automatic parole for drug traffickers;

protecting victims from mail contact from prisoners and preventing contact with co-offenders by mail; and

establishing buffer zones around prisons, where drug offences are essentially amplified.

These measures were not supported by the government in 2018 and the opposition has still not received any satisfactory answer as to why nor why they appear in almost identical form in this bill two years later.

While supporting this bill, the shadow minister in the other place put forward some further amendments which addressed some of the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. There were hundreds of recommendations, many of which have been implemented in various jurisdictions, just not in corrections but in police departments and across government generally. The amendments brought in by the shadow minister gave expression to one particular recommendation of the royal commission, recommendation 168, which states:

That Corrective Services effect the placement and transfer of Aboriginal prisoners according to the principle that, where possible, an Aboriginal prisoner should be placed in an institution as close as possible to the place of residence of his or her family. Where an Aboriginal prisoner is subject to a transfer to an institution further away from his or her family the prisoner should be given the right to appeal that decision.

The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in South Australia supported the amendment in this area and expressed a view that it would very much improve the rehabilitation prospects of Aboriginal offenders and, therefore, reduce recidivism. The intention was to insert in the objects and principles a new principle to recognise the particular importance of family and community involvement, and participation in the rehabilitation of prisoners and probationers who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons.

The former minister, to his credit, accepted the premise of this recommendation, yet he then bizarrely introduced his own amendment which meant that the prisoner or family were only entitled to seek a review of the transfer 'in relation to regional transfers where the person will be 200 kilometres or further from the correctional institution they are being transferred from'. We believe that this is an unnecessary alteration. It would in fact mean that, in most cases, a prisoner transfer would not be reviewable. This makes a mockery of the recommendation of the royal commission.

I will be introducing an amendment to remove this part of the provision so that every transfer of an Aboriginal prisoner is subject to this section and is able to be reviewed under this regime. I will be seeking the support of the council with that amendment. Having said that, we look forward to the successful passage of this bill with its Labor amendments and note it has been a long time coming.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.