‘Confinement’ used for over 24 hours on juvenile population
A Budget Estimates hearing on 2 September revealed the use of confinement as a form of punishment is a practice that warrants further transparency.
NSW legislation empowers juvenile justice centres to confine a young person aged over 16 years for a period of up to 24 hours as a form of punishment for misbehavior. Juvenile Justice NSW indicated that current policy prevents the confinement of young persons over 16 years for a period exceeding 18 hours without approval by a centre manager.
Children can also be segregated from other detainees for their own safety or that of others. Segregation cannot lawfully be used as a form of punishment. Where segregation is used for over 24 hours it must be approved by a centre manager and the NSW Ombudsman alerted.
Juvenile Justice NSW has advised that confinement has been used in the state’s centres as a form of punishment for such minor misdemeanors as “lying” and “possession of offensive music” to more serious misbehavior such as fighting and harassment.
NSW Minister for Corrections David Elliot was forced to correct statements made on 2 September at Budget Estimates that there had been 13 instances of “confinement” for a period of greater than 24 hours in the last financial year. When asked by the South Sydney Herald to clarify this statement, Mr Elliot said there was, in fact, only one instance in the 2015-16 financial year of “confinement over 24 hours”.
Juvenile Justice has been asked to review its record keeping practices, yet broader questions remain as to how confinement is used at an operational level and how it is distinguished from the practice of segregation.
The coming month will see further information released surrounding the frequency and extent to which confinement is used in the state’s juvenile justice centres on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth. A review by the NSW Inspector for Custodial Services into the use of force in centres is also underway and will complete in October. Part of that report will comment on how the use of confinement is monitored and recorded.
Greens’ MP David Shoebridge has filed a parliamentary motion calling for the cessation of the use of solitary confinement as a form of punishment, in line with current international standards for the treatment of children in detention. Commenting on the practice, the MP observed, “Isolating children in particular, because of their need with a developing mind to be socialised, can produce lifetime damage.”
His view is that the state “should ensure that we never impose punishment that can do harm.” Given the opportunity, the Minister for Corrections failed to comment on the utility or ethicality of the use of confinement on young people.
State investment favours prisons, not communities
The NSW government has allocated $3.8 billion over the next four years to develop prison infrastructure and administration in response to growth in prisoner numbers to a record 12,000 this year.
The figure has been criticised by Labor and The Greens who have highlighted that the Government has simultaneously made cuts to the budget for prison educators. The Baird Government’s investment in prison capacity contrasts with its attitude towards preventative measures designed to divert young people away from the prison system.
The Productivity Commission’s 2015 Report on Government Services indicated that the cost of incarcerating a young person in NSW is over $1,200 per day. Evidence of the effectiveness of incarceration at preventing crime is limited.
In 2002 one of the largest reports ever published on the relationship between incarceration and crime was written by three Canadian writers, Paula Smith, Claire Goggin and Paul Gendreau. It canvassed results from 117 studies since 1958, involving 442,471 offenders in total. The study found that prison should not be used with the expectation of reducing criminal behaviour. It further indicates that incarceration increases the likelihood that a prisoner will re-offend, with the severity of the sentence compounding this potential.
The former NSW Inspector for Custodial Services, Dr John Paget, published a damning report in July 2016, highlighting the lack of evidence in support of the Government’s investment in detention for the purposes of deterrence and exclusion. An alternative approach – often referred to as ‘justice reinvestment’ – utilises community building programs and disciplinary systems that do not involve periods of incarceration.
Just Reinvest NSW is a not-for-profit organisation currently conducting a trial program in Bourke, NSW, to gather evidence of the capacity for community services to address the underlying causes of crime compared to more drastic and cost-intensive penal options. The program was recently the subject of a Four Corners program, ‘Backing Bourke.’
Sarah Hopkins is the Chair of the organisation and has worked as a solicitor for the Aboriginal Legal Service for over 15 years. Having seen the workings of the prison system first-hand, she believes that an alternative is needed. Hopkins suggests that this can be tough in the face of a persistent “mythology” that any response to crime that avoids imprisonment is somehow soft.
“Committing to justice reinvestment involves admitting that the system is broken,” she says. “That’s a tough admission for any government to make but it needs to be made so that we can start looking at ways to fix it.”
One community that appears ready to approach the issue of crime differently are the citizens of Cowra in Central West NSW. Recent research by a team led by Dr Jill Guthrie found widespread support for a local-forged response to crime within the community.
A community-wide deliberative process identified eight categories of crime a majority in the community would like to see handled outside the prison system. These crimes are non-violent, property and procedural offences such as petty larceny, non-payment of fines and driving offences.
According to Dr Guthrie’s research, prosecuting and punishing these offences costs the Cowra community some $2.3 million annually in direct costs alone. The community has indicated that it would prefer this money to be spent on mental health services, drug and alcohol services, a homework centre for young people who are disengaged from school, half-way houses and other diversionary or rehabilitative amenities.
The mayor of Cowra, Councillor Bill West, has confirmed that the concept has received support from Cowra Shire Council which passed a Justice Resolution in December 2015, voting to investigate possible paths to implementation of justice reinvestment in the town.
Programs aimed at keeping young people out of prison through education, training and peer support are plagued by a general lack of government assistance. Previously a youth worker, counsellor and now CEO of Weave Youth & Community Services, Shane Brown laments the inconsistent support for programs of proven efficacy.
He describes how funding is offered by way of tender, a process that favours competitiveness and results in otherwise collaborative organisations fighting one another for existence. “We lost our funding to a large charity organisation,” he recalls, “then they called us afterwards looking for advice on how to do what we do.”
Weave is a community-built organisation based in Waterloo that provides multiple levels of support to young people. The Kool Kids Club is a Weave program that provides after-school and holiday activity programs for young people experiencing trouble at home and at risk disengaging at school. It is available to all children aged 7-13.
Mr Brown explains that the program aims to “work on behaviours and self-worth, understanding how to use [young people’s] time well, as well as dealing with issues in families.” He explains that while the programs offered by Weave may not seem as proactive as expanding the state’s prison capacity, “long term solutions are very achievable. They take a while but they’re worthwhile.”
The Kool Kids Club has operated for over 15 years and worked with over 600 children. Ninety-nine per cent of them have not been placed in detention of any kind. That result spells victory to Weave as 85 per cent of participants identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, a group that comprises over 50 per cent of all incarcerated children in NSW, despite only representing around 2.9 per cent of the population.
The Kool Kids Club costs $330,000 per year to operate but in 2014 it lost its entire funding allocation from the NSW government. Brown emphasises, “The answers to solving crime are there. We don’t need to reinvent anything. There are people doing it right now. All they need is proper funding.”
