STRIVING TO PUNISH - SMARTLY

When correctional services commissioner Penny Armytage finished her
private budget briefing on Tuesday, an auditorium full of prison
administrators, social workers and researchers could come up with
only three questions.

It was as if what they had just heard was too good to be true: $194
million to build four new state-of-the-art jails; an extra $43
million a year for temporary accommodation until they are built;
another $18 million a year for programs to keep offenders out of
jail; an extra $1 million a year for drug services; and $20 million
to refit existing cells to cut the risk of suicide.

But once the guests had drained their post-briefing cups of tea and
digested the glossy budget brochure, questions began to bubble to the
surface about what Armytage's spruik did not cover.

Questions like: what will happen to the two remaining private prison
operators? Even after the new jails are built, the planned closure of
at least two public prisons means about one in three Victorian
prisoners would still be in for-profit jails if the private
operators' contracts are renewed next year.

Questions like: what has the government done to implement
recommendations by coroner Graeme Johnstone after his inquest into
the deaths of five men at the private Port Phillip prison?

And what makes Corrections Minister Andre Haermeyer so confident he
can reverse the explosion in prisoner numbers and the recent increase
in recidivism?

Victoria's prison population has jumped 40per cent since 1995,
largely due to the drug problem.

But the budget briefing projects that after peaking around 3600 next
year, the number behind bars will stabilise around 3500 in three
years' time.

In an interview with The Age, Haermeyer said that ultimately the $80
million over four years he has put into alternative sentencing and
rehabilitation will be of far more benefit than building 1100 new
beds. The extra $15 million a year for community corrections and home
detention would keep hundreds of people from going to prison, where
they were likely to pick up habits that would lead to further jail
time.

The new community corrections money will fund 100 specialists to deal
with the surge in offenders with drug problems.

Haermeyer said the running down of community corrections under the
Coalition led to poor supervision and inadequate programs.
Magistrates lost confidence in the system and were using
incarceration as a last resort.

"Magistrates were telling us, 'we have young drug-addicted people
coming before us, we'd like to put them in detox or rehab but we are
told there will be a five or six week wait for a bed'. They were
worried in that time the offender might be found face down in an
alley dead or reoffend, so they were sending them off to prison."

Haermeyer said initiatives already announced in the government's drug
strategy would support the rehabilitation services he will introduce.

Home detention would provide another alternative for the courts.
"Now, there is nothing between community service orders and jail,"
the minister said. "Home detention has real advantages in that people
can keep working, keep with their family and the experience both here
and internationally is that the rate of reoffending is 5per cent. For
people who go to jail it is more like 60per cent." Although he
conceded the two private prison operators were meeting the standards
set by the Kennett government, these had "nothing to do with running
a good prison".

Therefore he would force the private operators to bid against the
state system when their five-year terms expired next year, with much
more emphasis on quality of programs.

However, Haermeyer's office was later forced to concede he could not
call a tender without first giving the incumbent operators the chance
to negotiate a new deal.

Peter Olszak, managing director of Group 4, which runs Port Phillip
prison, said although the minister had declared he wanted "the profit
motive" taken out of the system, he expected him to approach the
contract renewal in good faith. Haermeyer said he was also reviewing
the public availability of the private prison performance reports,
which are now only released a year after they are filed.

Olszak claimed the private operators brought innovation to the system
and by providing competition with public prisons had lifted standards
overall.

Australasian Correctional Management, which runs Fulham prison, near
Sale, said that for the past three years it had received its full
bonus for meeting its performance standards. Unlike Port Phillip,
which had four suicides in its first year, Fulham's attention to
high-risk prisoners had prevented any successful suicide attempts.

ARMYTAGE yesterday outlined action taken on the coroner's
recommendations. A prototype cell, approved by the coroner, has been
designed to eliminate hanging points. A new framework had been
drafted for sharing information between medical, counselling and
prison staff and a new system for investigating prisoner deaths had
been introduced.

She said the Federation of Community Legal Centres, which represented
families of the dead Port Phillip inmates, had been briefed in
December on the cell redesign.

However, Shelley Burchfield, a lawyer who represented one of the
families, said this was not good enough. She was also concerned there
had been no decision by the Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, on the
proposal he consider mandatory reporting of follow-up action on death
in custody coronial recommendations.

"Unless there is some mandating in relation to implementation, the
same mistakes will repeat themselves," she said. "The government and
the company ignored 165 recommendations of the Royal Commission into
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody by building a new prison with obvious
hanging points."

A spokesman for Hulls said his department would soon finish its
consultation on the coroner's recommendation.

Burchfield said legislation requiring prison monitor reports to be
presented to parliament was needed to ensure accountability.