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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-10-17 Daily Xml
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FALSE IMPRISONMENT

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (14:59): Can the Attorney-General please advise if there have been any cases where a person was held in prison custody in error in 2012-13 and, if so, how many?

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: They all say they're innocent.

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Transport is called to order.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (15:00): I thank the honourable member for that question. It is actually an important question, because any circumstance in which there have been situations where a person is wrongly detained against their wishes are matters that we need to be mindful of and seek to avoid at all costs.

I am not in a position to quote exact numbers and figures, but it is my understanding that there have been identified in recent times a couple of instances, I think essentially by reason of administrative errors, where perhaps Corrections officers, for example, have thought the date of release, for whatever reason, was supposed to be a particular day and it is in fact the day before, or things of that nature. Those things have occasionally occurred.

In any system, there will be errors. I am pretty confident we don't have anything remotely like The Count of Monte Cristo to worry about, but we do have the occasional error which is not malicious. It is not intentional but, yes, there are occasionally errors. In order to provide you with more details, I will have to come back to you about that.

I want to make it clear: any error in that situation is really not good enough, because individuals who are detained against their will should be detained only because they are serving a valid sentence of imprisonment imposed by a court. If that sentence has expired and the individual is still detained, then obviously that is not good. I will get back to the honourable member about that and see if I can provide more detail.

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