“The government’s dogged pursuit of ‘nothing to see, nothing to do at the AMC’ is cringeworthy, both with respect to the prisoners’ lack of options and the embedded mismanagement,” writes HUGH SELBY.

Keeping people behind the wire, be they adults at the Alexander Maconochie Centre or youth at Bimberi, does nothing to change their approach to life. 

It means only that while they are there they can’t live among us with the destructive lifestyle that led to their being in prison.

It costs more than $500 a day to detain a prisoner in the ACT (the highest in Australia). We should all be interested in approaches that lead to ever more prisoners leaving the prison with the skills and assistance that will make them contributors to our community, not recurrent costs as recidivist offenders.

This is not some starry eyed, naïve idea that all those in prison can turn, or even want to turn, their lives around. There have always been, and always will be, people for whom prison is the only safe home, safe for them and safe for us. But these are a minority of prisoners.

There are some prisoners, too, for whom violence is the preferred means of communication – with other prisoners and with staff. It’s their default mode of interaction. Responding to them requires staff who are not only well trained in approved methods of force, but who also have the temperament, yes temperament, to use appropriate, measured responses for stopping the violence, defusing the situation, and – when appropriate – employing the prisoner disciplinary regime. 

A glaring example of undue force, coupled with a lack of temperament, is a 12-second phone video of what was showing on a court monitor one morning in 2015. 

That video shows a very large officer (now a very senior, large officer) throwing a handcuffed woman prisoner across a cell in the court complex. He does so with such force that she rolls and strikes the side of the bed platform.

The woman is no angel and she is very strong. That said, there were three officers there.

Last month the current Corrections Minister Marisa Paterson claimed to have seen the video and to be satisfied that all was well. The matter was closed and would stay that way.

The minister did not refer to when or how the forceful throwing of a handcuffed prisoner from the open door on one side of a cell to the bed platform on the other side became “an approved technique” for the use of force by an officer. 

Nor did the minister address why, given that there were three officers (two male and one female), any force was necessary.

Noting that the incident apparently happened in the court cells I wonder, in a musing sort of way, whether it took place before or after the prisoner appeared in a court upstairs. Just possibly there is a Legal Aid lawyer who remembers something. After all, if the force was not justified, then it was a criminal assault in a court house.

Before we leave the minister to reflect on her Pontius Pilate response there is also the matter of her saying that Corrections was searching for the miscreant staffer who had the courage and foresight to whip out their phone and record the untoward violence showing on the CCTV monitor.

That person deserves an award for initiative. The minister would be better to ask Corrections staff to search for effective measures to reduce the contraband trade into the prison by drones, visitors and staff.

I was “done with the Minister” for this article until I saw the media release on March 7 that includes the following: “The strategy (the subject of the media release), Preventing, Tracking and Responding to Sexual Coercion and Violence in the Alexander Maconochie Centre, was developed in response to Recommendation 7 of the Inspector of Custodial Services’ Healthy Prison Review 2022…” 

That’s around three years to put into place something that should have been in place the day that the AMC opened.

A half century ago I met an experienced, old-school policeman who emphasised the importance of having a fresh cuppa with a suspect.

He’d found that it worked rather better than hitting the suspect once or more with a white pages phone directory. (For younger readers, this was pre mobile phones. Once a year, thick, heavy, residential directories listing names, address and phone numbers for our city or region were left on our porch. Their attractiveness as a tool for inducing confession was that they left no marks.)

While preparing this article I was lucky to chat with a former prison officer who shared many cuppas with one of our most famous, now ex-prisoners who could be fractious. Mutual respect, whether built on temperament, training or both, goes a long way to defusing conflict situations. It is to be preferred to throwing handcuffed prisoners across a cell.

No interest in rehabilitation

Sadly, the notion that we should invest in a prisoner’s future, that we should run our adult and youth prisons with the focus upon changing the offenders’ approach to their lives and their ability to engage in lawful activities that are meaningful and satisfying, has no place in the thinking of current Corrections management and our “three party” politicians.

Here’s a telling example. The AMC has a transitional release centre (TRC). This is cottage-style accommodation, with the prisoners (male only, there is no TRC accommodation for women) able to move around, and – in theory – able to engage in day work-release programs. 

But too many of the prisoners don’t go out, because Corrections isn’t interested in facilitating that positive step back to being productive, law-abiding citizens.

So disinterested is Corrections in preparation for release that part of the TRC is being used for staff offices.

Corrections in the ACT is managed by people whose thinking is limited to containment and control. This is so despite the legislation encouraging a much broader rehabilitation focus (see the preamble and section 7 of the Corrections Management Act). 

Staff who come with the capacity and wish to offer more find that the embedded culture stifles opportunities for the prisoners to find paths to useful change. Those staff leave.

The staff who should be leaving are those with no interest in either their self-improvement or that of the prisoners. 

What is wanted are staff who understand that there are several keys that they need to master, of which a cell key is only one. The other keys open doors to personal growth: their own, and that of the prisoners in their charge.

First, address the mental health issues

It has been reported so many times that the rate of indigenous imprisonment is shockingly high. Less well known is that the incidence of mental health problems among all prisoners is high. Even less well known is that the imprisonment rate of former ADF personnel too is higher than would be expected.

While many of us would agree that opportunity comes to those who go looking for it, that looking needs to have some chance of success; that is, there needs to be real opportunities, prisoners need to be equipped to find them, and they need repeated encouragement to do so.

A focus upon the early identification of mental health issues and the provision of long-term skilled treatment (from appropriate counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists) is a must for any prison with a focus upon the personal and skills growth of its detainees.

One outcome of the 2024 findings of the recent inquiry into the Defence and Veteran Suicide is more Commonwealth funding for mental health services for veterans. Some of that funding might find its way to the AMC. 

Similarly, Indigenous Affairs could and should financially assist mental health services for indigenous inmates, for example by better funding for the Winnunga Nimmityjah health and community services presence at the prisons. 

Previous articles, over the past five years, have exposed the ease with which illicit drugs are available – for a price – in the AMC. The drugs are purchased because the buyers want them.

Better mental health (along with meaningful employment and education, both discussed below) will reduce the desire for those illicit drugs. Meantime, if there’s no hope for a better future, why not choose to be spaced out?

Second, provide meaningful job training

One contributor to this article (there have been a number) stressed the need to “provide meaningful pathways” for prisoners, pathways that give them the chance to have self-confidence and, in many cases, job skills that provide a very different social network to the one that led them to crime.

There’s a national housing crisis. In the ACT (as has been repeatedly explained in CityNews articles by Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed) the provision of land has been deliberately restricted, while the stock of community and public housing is way short of proven need. There is also a shortage of qualified trades people.

Trades training opportunities exist in the NSW prisons system. They don’t in the ACT. This failure is despite our CIT having multiple delivery sites around Canberra. 

There’s no will in the current management and government to find a way or ways to make good use of our small geographic size, and the range of education facilities, to give many of our detainees a real chance to shine and be productive.

It’s difficult for former prisoners to find work. Most employers want to know about an applicant’s background. 

A prison that ignores rehabilitation can’t provide a prospective employer with an insight about a prisoner’s prospects. A prison that is about growth and opportunity can provide a prospective employer with a lot of information about how an ex-prisoner job applicant has grown while imprisoned.

Third, support external relationships and industry

Earlier articles have pointed out the contraband trade in mobile phones and what a nice little earner this is for corrupt officers.

It’s hardly surprising that this trade is thriving because prisoners without phones must use the AMC facilities for which they are charged outrageous fees. What’s more this service is only to make, not receive calls.

What should be happening is that every prisoner should be given a mobile phone with technology to ensure that it can’t be used for criminal activity.

Facilities for visitors have gone backwards since pre-covid times. A prison focused upon rehabilitation and reintegration should be doing everything it can to maintain family connections, not just with mobile phones and visits, but also – when appropriate – family counselling.

And finally, there’s the issue of finding a way in which prisoners can make and save money for their release.

There’s not the space inside the wire to set up a typical prison industry at the AMC. However, we know about the contraband trade in drugs, how it rips off the prisoners, puts them into debt, and is a handy, tax-free earner for some.

The Tasmanian and NT governments issue licences for the growing of opium poppies. These are precedents for government regulation of otherwise illicit crops. The supply of medicinal cannabis is regulated in Australia. With some thought and planning it could be grown in the vegetable gardens at the AMC.

Locally produced medicinal cannabis may: reduce chronic pain and even save lives inside and outside the prison; be a profitable prison industry for prisoners, staff and government; put to good use the “special” horticulture skills of some prisoners; and, there may be fewer photos circulating of identifiable prison staff enjoying cocaine.

Relax. I needed a talking point and you were engaged, weren’t you? Collective intake of breath now noted, if only because there will be an irresistible impulse to run the media headline, “Stoners Prison”, this “thought bubble” will get more attention than everything else in this article. How sad.

More immediately, actually right now, the government’s dogged pursuit of “nothing to see, nothing to do at the AMC” is cringeworthy, both with respect to the prisoners’ lack of options and the embedded mismanagement. That’s the real talking point.

Hugh Selby is a former barrister and the CityNews legal affairs columnist.

It’s a disgrace: prosecute and clean out prison management