Adele Carle's Speech - Prison IOvercrowding Public Meeting

The following is a speech delivered by the Member for Fremantle, Hon Adele Carles MP (Greens) at the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee (WA) Inc’s Public Meeting on Prison Overcrowding to mark also the 2nd Anniversary of the deaths in custody of Aboriginal Elder Mr Ward in 2008.

Acknowledgement

I respectfully acknowledge the past and present traditional owners of this Nyoongah land where we meet.  I pay my respects to the elders past, present and future and I remember the knowledge of the custodians of this land.  I acknowledge the sovereign right of indigenous Australians to the State of WA.

It is 2 years since the shocking death of Mr Ward – 2 years on and still there is no compensation for the family – the fact that the Attorney General today said that the ex-gratia payment to the Ward family would be delayed shows that this is simply not a priority for the Government.  They can find $4 million to bail out Griffin Coal, but not the money for Mr Ward’s family.  This is disgraceful. 

Thank you for the invitation to speak at this meeting today. 

I pass on the apologies of my colleague the Hon Giz Watson who is in the south west but would otherwise have been here today. Giz holds the justice portfolio for the Greens.  She tabled the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee’s recent petition and she made a written submission to the Parliamentary Committee that is currently considering it.  She assisted the ABC’s Four Corners 2009 program “Who killed Mr Ward?” with background research.

Mr Ward’s death – two failures

The death of Mr Ward two years ago in the back of a government owned, privately operated prison van was a tragedy that in the words of the coroner was both wholly unnecessary and avoidable. 

His death was a reflection of two failures in Western Australia’s criminal justice system, notwithstanding that it has been almost two decades since the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was tabled. 

  • The first failure was that Mr Ward was in the van at all.  The legal process experienced by Mr Ward in the lead up to him going into the van was so inadequate that the coroner said in his report “a question arises as to whether or not the deceased was lawfully in custody at the time of his death” and “If the legislation had been complied with the deceased would not have been transported by GSL staff on 27 January 2008 and other arrangements would have had to have been made; he would not have died when he did.”   
  • The second failure was that Mr Ward’s health and safety was so poorly managed while he was in custody that he actually died.

That is, Mr Ward’s death could have been prevented either by diverting him from custody, or by ensuring that the conditions he experienced in custody were safe and humane.  

Prison overcrowding – the same two failures

Two years later, the current overcrowding of Western Australian prisons reflects exactly the same problem and exactly the same choice.  Either there must be fewer people in custody or Western Australian prisons must be developed so there is capacity to ensure the health and safety of the prisoners.  

Too many people in custody

At present, too many people are going into prison and too few are coming out.  In fact we are witnessing an explosion in prison population numbers for the following reasons:

  • A new strict approach of the Prisoners Review Board to parole
  • The failure of the juvenile justice system to divert juveniles from custody as often as it should.  This has been repeatedly brought to government’s attention.  For example within the last couple of years the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services, the Auditor General, the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Commissioner for Children and Young People have all pointed out this failure and made constructive suggestions about how to address it.  Prison is supposed to be a last resort, especially for children
  • Most especially, the current approach by most politicians to law and order.  

The most recent annual report of the Department of Corrective Services lists the negative effects of overcrowding:

  • reduced ability to place prisoners in prisons close to their home residence where support can be provided by family and community
  • increased tension within the prisoner population which potentially impacts on the safety and security of the community and staff as well as prisoners
  • increased pressure on ageing infrastructure
  • impaired ability to deliver programs and services to support re-entry to the community, resulting in increased time in prison and consequently increased pressure on capacity
  • increased risk of assaults, self-harm, suicides, and other critical incidents
  • need for more prison staff and heightened industrial relations.

Aboriginal prisoners, who are grossly overrepresented in prisoner numbers, and who are either incarcerated in the local prisons which are the very worst, or taken by prisoner transport to prisons far away from their country, their family and their supports, have it worst of all.

These conditions are not even safe let alone conducive to rehabilitation. 

The 1998 Casuarina riots were in part caused by overcrowding.  Those riots caused over $250,000 worth of damage, and 21 staff and two prisoners required hospital treatment.  The situation is urgent.

Current government spending on increasing prison capacity

The government has committed $655 million to increasing the prison capacity.   But 1657 new beds will not go far when prisons are already bursting at the seams and prisoner numbers are increasing at 940 per year.  And beds alone aren’t enough.  There are additional costs for staff, programs, food, water, power etc as well.  

It’s very expensive to imprison people costs nearly $200,000 per year to house one youth in the juvenile justice system – this is alot of money that could be put to better use.  We could use it for diversion programs and education programs for juveniles.  We could use it to build safe houses for kids at risk in our community to get them off the streets.  We need a whole new paradigm for how we deal with at risk juveniles.  Locking kids up is not working.

Current trends in legislation

The current trend in legislation is a tough on crime approach.

  • Last year the government passed the mandatory sentencing  -  I spoke out about how this could adversely impact on Aboriginal kids – removing the power of judges to apply discretion in sentencing is a dangerous and draconian,
  • Next the government introduced the new search powers bill – removing the ‘reasonable suspicion’ test.  Unprecedented and unwarranted – will target minorities  - this is what happened in the UK.  I said aboriginal people would be targeted – police union threatened to sue me for suggesting that any police office may be racist in this State.  We can’t even have an honest and open debate about the interaction between police and indigenous people in this State. 

People who resist being stopped and searched may ultimately wind up in prison because of the mandatory sentencing legislation, if the resistance develops into a scuffle.

  • This year the Attorney General has flagged that the government will be introducing a Bill that allows courts to prohibit offenders from what would otherwise be lawful behaviour, eg not allowed to buy spraypaint etc.   Breach of that prohibition could lead to a prison sentence.  The Bill will also provide for people with such court orders to be publicly named and shamed.  A draft version of the Bill has been put out for public consultation. 

Public attitude to making offenders suffer

It tends to be assumed by politicians that the public wants harsh measures that make offenders suffer.  But this is not correct.  As the Greens have pointed out in Parliament before, research shows that the public is less punitive than might be thought.  People want punishment that is proportionate to the offence, and based on evidence and research - not media beat ups.    

Two recent examples of this are the public reaction to the case where police charged a 12 year old with receiving a stolen Freddo frog, and the public reaction to the case where a doctor’s car was impounded under hoon laws even though the owner of the car was neither the driver nor had authorised the driver to drive the way he did. 

Public were outraged by the recent taser incident when an indigenous man was videoed being tasered in the back by police.  I have spoken out about tasers being used to control juveniles.

Every voter has the power to remind their local MP that they expect a proportionate approach to law and justice issues, and to voice their opposition to particular examples where this isn’t happening.  

-end-

Adele then spoke further regarding alternatives and solutions to incarceration and the need for diversionary programs for juveniles as expressed by the President of the WA Children’s Court Judge Denis Reynolds such as more safe houses for kids so they can be looked after and less likely to offend. There was also mention of other diversionary programs being developed such as ‘Cultural Corridors’ which had been operating for around 18 months in a response to concerns from the Noongar community in finding ways to divert young people from prison. These face funding and other challenges to make them work but that there were solutions out there. - DICWC