THE EMINENT Mercury columnist Wayne Crawford has turned his blowtorch onto Labor Attorney-General Judy Jackson, saying it’s about time she “stood aside from her responsibility for prisons.”
Crawford says in his Saturday Mercury column (May 21):
The destructive takeover of Risdon Prison by violent and frustrated prisoners may have ended peacefully — but Tasmania’s antiquated prison system remains under siege.
“And it will continue to be so for as long as Judy jackson remains responsible for prisons.”
Crawford says Jackson, while boasting on her website of being Tasmania’s “leading reform attorney-general” has been very selective in whose civil rights she is prepared to champion.
“It is all very commendable for her to have legislated to recognise the status of same-sex couples. But she has not been so keen to defend the rights of the very people who are under her direct care and control as the prisons minister — those who are therefore most reliant on her for protection.
Crawford highlights the difficulty of wearing two hats:
Jackson has not shown herself able to combine the responsibility for operating a secure prison with that which goes with also being attorney-general.
The two portfolios create a direct conflict of roles – described to me once by a former Tasmanian attorney-general as being the difference between on one hand “locking ’em up” (as minister responsible for prisons) and on the other “letting ’em out” (the attorney-general, as the state’s chief law officer and guardian of legal rights and liberties).
It is a conflict of interest which few have proved themselves able to cope with.
Mind you, she’s not alone there: Crawford has to back 30 years to find “the last attorney-general to introduce any decent program of prison reform in Tasmania … Sir Max Bingham. And that was nearly 35 years ago.”
Praising progressive, reforming Liberal Bingham Crawford says:
“Bingham led the world by introducing the first system of community correction orders (the so-called weekend work orders) to keep minor offenders out of jail by making them spend a specified number of hours doing community work as an alternative to being locked up in the “Risdon university of crime”, learning the tricks of the trade from Tasmania’s finest criminal minds with whom they would be forced to share cells.”
Since then — the early 1970s — reform of Tasmania’s penal system (which under Bingham included weekend work orders, and the first of the education programs introduced to help prepare prisoners for their eventual release from jail) has come to a virtual standstill.
And there’s simply no excuse for that. For Crawford points out that in 1999 a Legislative Council committee inquiry into the Tasmanian prison system chaired by Don Wing, the highly respected Paterson (Launceston) MLC and now Legislative Council President, recommended a series of sensible reforms — which the Government promptly ignored.
“Committee members inspected prisons throughout Australia and around the world and concluded Risdon not only had the worst conditions of any jail in Australia but compared unfavourably with prisons in the third-world African nation, Swaziland. The design was decades out of date when the prison was opened in 1960 and was unsuited for Tasmania’s climate.
“Successive governments — keenly aware there are no votes in prisons — allowed Risdon to deteriorate dreadfully. Wing wrote in the committee report that `”conditions in most parts of the prison range from inferior to appalling”, and place strains on staff and prisoners which invite the eruption of tensions as happened two weeks ago when a warder was taken hostage by prisoners frustrated at not having their complaints taken seriously.”
The committee found conditions at Risdon so bad it said the entire complex should be bulldozed and replaced with two new prisons, one in the South and one in the North or North-West (in such a decentralised state, prisoners should be held in a jail close enough for their family and friends to be able to visit).
“But when the Government belatedly got around to deciding to build a new prison, it ignored every piece of advice proffered by the Legislative Council. There will be just one new maximum and medium security complex, which is being built on land adjoining the existing Risdon jail. At least initially, the old “pink palace” will be retained and refurbished as the minimum security prison.
“The Government also ignored the committee recommendations for reforms including home detention and periodic detention (minor or non-violent offenders being allowed to serve their time at weekends and during their annual holidays, so as to allow them to keep jobs and not disrupt their families).
It is not only better for the offenders to keep them away from the criminal influences of jail — it’s also cheaper. The Department of Justice says the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail is about $190 a day. The cost for supervision of community service orders is a bit over $10 a day.
Crawford ends with a withering observation from a citizen wrongly jailed.
“And it takes no account of the fact that in Tasmania the maximum-security jail is used to house not only dangerous murderers and rapists but people who are not convicted and are being held on remand; citizens held for unpaid fines; people who have been wrongly convicted or wrongly jailed.
“And yes, it does happen. Take for instance the recent case of Senator Brian Harradine’s son, Richard — wrongly locked up on the say-so of a woman who was later charged with making a false allegation against him.
“He has said the experience — the inhumane conditions of being caged like an animal and fed inedible meals — has left him psychologically damaged.”
And that was after only four days in Risdon.
Contact the Eminent Crawford at: [email protected]
Extract from The Mercury report on Harradine:
He backed complaints about prison conditions made by prisoners during the siege.
“Everything they’re saying is true. It’s all true. I really understand their frustration,” Mr Harradine said.
“Four days was enough to give me an insight into prison life and it is no gateway into rehabilitation.
“If they want to release better people back into the community, they have to treat prisoners like the people they want back in community.”
He said he joined other prisoners as they threw food on the floor during two meals.
“The food was not fit for human consumption on two of the four nights I was at Risdon.” he said.
“The food was trashed on the floor. In fact, I was one of those who did it.”
Mr Harradine said he believed the food might have been “dangerous” to eat.
“I believe [that], apart from getting a variety of better meals into the prison, inspectors need to go into the prison and monitor food hygiene standards,” he said.
Prison exercise yards were just large cages in which there was nothing for prisoners to do but walk up and down, he said.
“They’re not being given a proper opportunity at rehabilitation. Under that system there’s a great possibility of prisoners returning to crime,” he said.
