Andrew Fraser | Mick Gentleman's treatment of Canberra prison worse than ignorance

"Oh, dear lady! I do so understand. I've read all the published papers!"

But, when pursued about something practical, like the cost of half a pound of butter or how long a 50p piece would run a one-bar radiator, the secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs had no idea.

Sad to say, when it comes to prison policy, ACT Corrections Minister Mick Gentleman is making a very fine fist of the role of an antipodean Sir Humphrey.

As Peter Brewer reported this week, Gentleman has chosen to ignore magistrate after magistrate in the territory's courts, Prisoner's Aid and the Justice Reform Initiative - three groups of people with hands-on experience of offenders and their progress into and, more importantly, back out of prison.

But worse than this ignorance, he has gone on the attack about the second and final report of Neil McAllister, the independent inspector or correctional services. The minister suggested that not only was the report wrong in its conclusion that ACT prison conditions are deteriorating but also claimed there was progress "that was not recognised in this report" and that some of the report's data was out of date.

Gentleman knocked back recommendations for more transparency and reporting about jail operations, particularly the transitional release program. Keep it out of sight and out of mind, minister?

Gentleman should listen to the people on the ground, and he should want to know, and want the electorate to know, what is happening - or, more accurately, what is not happening at the prison.

When Magistrate Beth Campbell came on to the bench in 1998, she had to sentence people to prison in NSW. The great hopes of an ACT prison were not realised until a decade later - but the Alexander Maconochie Centre, and the many very fine people who work in it - are not getting the support they need.

A well-supported prisoner is not some dreadful indulgence or mollycoddling of a lawbreaker, it is the community's best protection against re-offending.

Magistrate Campbell resigned this year and took aim at the government over the prison in her address to her ceremonial farewell sitting.

Despite "all its explicit promise of being human-rights compliant", the AMC had failed "to live up to its lofty ambitions of rehabilitating rather than punishing prisoners". Campbell quoted the McAllister report at some length.

"It points out that many detainees have little to do all day," she told the court.

"Many have no routine or daily responsibilities and there is, therefore, little incentive for them to get out of bed. Boredom, as any parent knows, creates trouble.

"Distressingly, the report says the situation is getting worse.

"How can it be that there are so few real education opportunities available at our human rights compliant jail?

"Why is it that we cannot stop drugs and contraband getting into the AMC?

"And how can it be that in the past month I have had two male defendants speak to me directly of recently having been sexually abused while in custody?

"More importantly, how can these problems be addressed? Is it really beyond our capacities?"

Is it too much to hope that our Corrections Minister might be moved by the voice of a quarter-century of judicial experience?

Rather than seeking fault in the data or the detail of the McAllister report, perhaps Gentleman could lend an ear to Glen Tibbitts, manager of Prisoners' Aid, the man who works with offenders up to and upon their release. It is Tibbitts who fills their homes with furniture, ensures they get lunch on the first day back in society and helps them get to medical or Centrelink or parole appointments (as well as their kids getting to footy training while Mum or Dad is locked up).

"Just letting them know there is someone who gives a damn counts for so much," he said in these pages in March. He has many examples of how his organisation has prevented people returning to prison.

"Each person we kept out of incarceration for a 12-month period was over a $100,000 saving.

Each person when they came out probably cost only a couple of grand to help, as in materialistic things, home appliances and bedding and lounges etc, to try and assist people in moving forward and not re-offend."

The Justice Reform Initiative's Jailing is Failing report this year noted that Australia "now imprisons more people than at any time since 1900, in both total number and per capita, at a cost exceeding $3.6 billion annually or $110,000 per prisoner per year". Our incarceration rate is above all Western European countries and Canada, among many others. Maybe Gentleman thinks doing anything for offenders is an affront to victims?

The JRI report says, "Victims of crime tell us that they are not helped by 'tough on crime' rhetoric. Victims have frequently called for support and processes that recognise and give voice to their experience as victims, alongside programs that genuinely address the causes of offending and also ensure that people who have committed crime are held accountable for their actions. Restorative and Transformative Justice processes are examples of this kind of approach."

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The ACT has a restorative justice system, with finite resources, and this writer and other criminal defenders don't perhaps seek to refer clients to it often enough. We have a drug and alcohol sentencing list in the Supreme Court which has achieved rehabilitation where previously there had been none, but its places are still limited, despite a recent increase.

Long-time judge Richard Refshauge, who has had carriage of that list for the past three years has described it as the most fulfilling work of his distinguished half-century in the law.

But the problem remains: those for whom the last resort - full-time custody - has to be applied. What can be done to make them contributing members of society?

Being busy is the blindingly obvious answer.

McAllister's earlier report, from November last year, following a nine-month review, found nearly 80 per cent of AMC detainees were bored most of the time. As Lucy Bladen reported at the time, "The review found there was a 'gross shortfall' in programs delivered there and detainees were missing out on an 'important key to rehabilitation'."

Brewer reported this week that Gentleman has now shunned two successive independent calls over four years for a "modest" multi-purpose industry centre.

No, Minister, there are no votes in it. It's just the right thing to do.

On reflection, the Mick Gentleman-Humphrey Appleby comparison is grossly unfair.

To Sir Humphrey,

He was but a mere administrator, "the humble functionary" in his own description, whereas Gentleman is the minister, "he whose word is law", the one with the power to make change - and the one with a duty to listen.