Appropriations Debate: Corrections

In the 2023-2024 budget, the ACT government announced funding for an electronic monitoring feasibility study for offenders. Additional funding for staffing was also announced. This will be the government’s third attempt to introduce electronic monitoring. Where many developed countries and every other Australian jurisdiction has succeeded in implementing a long running electronic monitoring program, the ACT government has failed twice. The reintegration centre continues to be delayed. It was announced and funded years ago but only just now is the government beginning to actually plan for it.

Despite the multiple recruiting rounds for corrections officers in the past few years, our prison continues to be understaffed resulting in over 6 million dollars of overtime payments in just the last two years. That is equal to 88% of what was spent in overtime payments over the past four years. While some amount of overtime will always be needed to cover colleagues on sick leave or on holiday, the sheer amount being spent is enormous. Large amounts of overtime can harm the mental health, personal lives and personal relationships of workers. This is especially true in a prison environment where time away from such an austere and volatile workplace is essential.

In one spot of good news, the government has finally agreed (after five years of requests, pressure and submissions) to increase funding for the Inspector of Correctional Services, though in typical government fashion, they have only increased funding by the bare minimum.

This is not good enough for a government that claims rehabilitation and reducing recidivism is a priority.

Click on the arrow button to read my speech.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak about the funding put toward our corrections system.

This year, the government has made a commitment to do a feasibility study to introduce electronic monitoring in the ACT for offenders.

There are certainly potential benefits for detainees, their families, taxpayers and the community at large to reintroducing electronic monitoring if it is administered well. Unfortunately, this government has so far, had a poor track record with the management of electronic monitoring.

This budget signals their third attempt to implement a long term, ongoing electronic monitoring program. At the same time, it would be their second attempt to reintroduce electronic monitoring after they scrapped the electronic monitoring program introduced by the Canberra Liberals in 2001.

Two primary reasons as to why the program was scrapped were suggested in estimates hearings. One reason stated for the removal of this tool was the low number of people found suitable for a home detention order. This is a weak excuse. They are correct in that government’s do not determine the sentence of offenders. They cannot force an offender to be sentenced to an electronically monitored period of home detention. What they can do though is expand the scope of what kinds of offenders are eligible through legislation. Such groups could be non-violent remandees and offenders or well-behaved detainees close to finishing their sentences. But this government did not do that. They simply canned the project. That was bad governance.

If the program was not working as intending but could obviously be made to work better as evidenced by the other states and territories that were at the same time running electronic monitoring programs, then you tweak the program, you improve it, you build off it, just like those other jurisdictions did. To just throw the program away was incredibly wasteful.

The other reason the government had for scrapping the program was that the technology was just not up to the task for use in a home detention program. I completely disagree with this. A more accurate statement would be that the government was not up to the task of administering a home detention program.

The technology did exist and had been in use in NSW as early as 1997. Western Australia was using it for home detention in 1995 as was the NT, and in 2000 Queensland was utilising electronic monitoring at the same time as South Australia was allowing early release of detainees into the community with electronic monitoring.

Internationally, the United Kingdom was trialling electronic monitoring as early as 1989 and continues to use it, the USA already had close to 20,000 people being monitored in 1998 and New Zealand had electronic monitoring in 1999. So not only did the technology exist, but it was also widespread.

Was the technology perfect in the 1990’s? No. It certainly would’ve had its limitations, but it was clearly good enough that many if not all of those governments still utilise electronic monitoring to track offenders to this day. And I would assume that since the 1990’s, they have matured their programs and updated their devices as the technology continued to advance.

But what did this government do? They ended our program. It wasn’t the technology that was to blame, it was their will and ability to administer and improve the program over time. And by so doing, they have likely condemned dozens or hundreds of people to prison where they otherwise would’ve been able to serve their sentences in the community. Who knows how many sentenced and unsentenced offenders had their lives derailed and put on a downward spiral when they were incarcerated because this government didn’t have the capacity to implement and maintain an effective electronic monitoring program when they had the chance? Who knows how many families were wrecked when offenders and the accused had to be incarcerated when they could’ve remained at home?

They had the chance to redeem themselves in 2017 but soon afterwards, found themselves making similar excuses to not pursue it such as service and delivery outcomes, resource implications and technological limitations.

But something appears to have changed. They are again exploring the idea of electronic monitoring 6 years after rejecting it.

What has changed? Surely it isn’t that the government has gotten better at service and delivery. Just a few months ago it was revealed that they flushed $76 million down the toilet on a failed new human resources management system. And surely, it’s not that the government has improved their allocation of resources with our debt costing us $400 million in interest payments a year and their procurement processes currently under the scrutiny of the Integrity Commissioner. Could it then be that the technology is now where they want it to be? Well, according to the Minister’s answer on what they want the technology to be able to do, they want it to be able to track if an offender is where they are supposed to be at a particular time, they want it to alert authorities when an offender goes somewhere they aren’t supposed to go, they want it to be tamper proof and to have location mapping.

Most of these specifications the government is after require GPS and geofencing. GPS has been in use in mobile devices since 1999 and literally everyone in Canberra and their dog has had fairly easy access to GPS capabilities on their person for over 10 years now. Geofencing was developed in the 1990’s and tamperproof ankle bracelets were in use in Victoria over 17 years ago.

All the technology the government wants now was available at least 15 years ago. I’m sure it is better now than it was back then, but it was good enough that many other jurisdictions were using it. I see no reason why we shouldn’t have been either.

The excuses they made in 2017 just don’t hold up. Their reasons for cutting the original home detention program are disappointing and while I hope they do better this time around, the Canberra community has good reason to have their doubts.

The reintegration centre continues to be delayed as well further withholding a valuable addition to the prison that would greatly aid in the rehabilitation of detainees. The detainees being released from the prison are fathers, sons, mothers and daughters. Many will return to their families, and many will become our neighbours. That being the case, it is essential that their time is prison is spent improving themselves in skills, education, and behaviour. Our community needs good fathers, good mothers, and good neighbours. This government denies our community those kinds of people when they withhold from our detainees the facilities they need to become better.

In this budget, the government has also committed to hiring more staff at the AMC. They have committed to doing this multiple times. One of those times was back in 2021 after, under questioning from me, the government revealed that between 2016-2020 a total of 101,909 hours of overtime had been worked by Corrections Officers at a cost of just under $7 million. This staggering amount of overtime was a clear sign that the government had been severely understaffing the prison. The CPSU said at the time that “staff are working longer hours and that means the prison is not as safe as it can be” and called for more staff and more training. Under pressure, the government conceded that this level of overtime was a concern and committed to reduce it by the next year.

This does not appear to have happened. As revealed in 2021, the government spent just under $7 million on overtime payments. In the very next year of 2021-2022, overtime payments were just under $2.8 million and in 2022-2023, it was over $3.3 million. In just two years, they have hit overtime payments equal to 88% of what they spent over the 4 years previous.

Just in the year directly after the government committed to reducing over time and hiring more staff, overtime hours reached 40% of the overtime hours worked in the 4 years previous.

It is astounding to me that after committing to reduce overtime, they are on track to equal the amount of overtime done in the last four years in half that amount of time. The government must do better. More people must be hired, and the government must work harder to retain them as well as prioritising higher the resources needed to improve their working conditions.

The cost to the taxpayer has been great and can be calculated. What cannot be calculated is the cost to the families of those officers. Long hours in a stressful environment can take a heavy toll and become a burden that is often felt by the entire family unit. But I doubt this government considers that. They have shown clearly that they do not understand or care about families.

One part of the budget I am heartened by is the increase of funding to the Inspector of Correctional Services. Since my appointment as Shadow Minister for Corrections, I have been called for this increase every year. The government’s response every time has been to waffle about how they will assess the increased funding request during budget considerations. At last, five years after the Inspector first began submitting requests for more funding, they have seen finally seen the light and the importance of funding our oversight bodies. But as can be expected, they have still short-changed the Inspector. The funds have helped certainly, but with a prison so beset with critical incidents that need reviewing, the Inspector’s budget will continue to be tight.

It is clear that this government is not capable of running our corrections system. The issues I have spoken about demonstrate this.

Government’s both domestic and international have managed to make electronic monitoring programs work for decades. Ours has not.

Government’s the world over know that if you want to reduce overtime, you improve working conditions to retain workers and hire more staff. These relatively simple tasks are beyond ours.

Democracies know that well-funded, independent oversight bodies are essential for keeping governments accountable and improving policies. This fact is lost on ours.

What this government does do well and excels at is cover ups, vanity projects, short-changing, fumbling of taxpayer funds and making excuses. They cannot be trusted to govern.

I wish to thank those that continue to keep our corrections system going flawed as it can be. Things would be far worse without our Corrections officers on the front lines and without ACTCS staff to support them and the maintenance of our prison. I thank the Inspector for their insight and unflinching reviews that help improve ACTCS policies prison conditions. I thank them all. Theirs is not an easy task. I hope the time soon comes that their working conditions are improved, and their efforts properly acknowledged.

Thank you.