“Commissioner Minty has paid significant attention in her report to the importance of a ‘structured day’ in the rehabilitation of prison detainees,” writes indigenous advocate JULIE TONGS.
The Inspector of Custodial Services, Rebecca Minty, has released the 2025 Healthy Prison Review of the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC).
That the review is titled the “Healthy Prison Review” should not be interpreted as an endorsement that the AMC fits that description.
However, at the outset I congratulate the inspector on the depth and quality of her report.
That said, I am deeply concerned at the apparent lack of any progress in the implementation of a raft of recommendations that have been made in previous “healthy prison” and other reviews of the AMC, including reports of the Auditor-General.
The current report, which is almost 200 pages in length, contains a total of 60 formal findings and 30 recommendations.
Notably and unsurprisingly Commissioner Minty has paid significant attention in her report to the importance of a “structured day” in the rehabilitation of prison detainees.
This is some of what she had to say: “Unfortunately, consistent with previous reviews, we found that detained people at the AMC simply are not engaged in meaningful activity for a large part of their time out of cells, whether that is education, employment, programs or recreation.
“At the end of 2021 the then contracted education provider at the AMC did not exercise the option to extend its contract.
“ACT Corrective Services re-tendered to engage an education provider, but that failed to result in any contract being awarded.”
Corrective Services committed to develop a long-term plan to provide specific courses, however, the inspector advises that, “three years later, this plan has still not been finalised” and that “this is unacceptable”.
“In 2024 there were three Registered Training Organisations to deliver specific courses,” the inspector says.
“There are no ACTCS staff qualified to deliver trade instruction. There is no centralised student information management system to record education data.
“ACT Corrective Services was unable to provide information on how many people who identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander were participating, how many women etcetera. The barriers for meaningful access to education, identified in 2022, persist including accessing course materials and research tools.
“The current approach is ‘ad hoc’ piecemeal and not strategic.
“In terms of employment within the AMC, data suggests that the ACT performs well with 89.2 per cent of detained people employed.
“However, until ACTCS converts detained people job numbers to FTE numbers this data is meaningless. In the inspector’s view, very few employment roles are improving prospects of employment on release or contributing to a reduction in reoffending.
There are 40 distinct types of roles for men and 12 distinct roles for women, of which most occupy just a few hours a week and do not develop skills or align with vocational competencies.
For example, being a ‘sweeper’ on an accommodation unit requires as little as an hour or two a week.
“The ACT is the only jurisdiction in Australia that does not operate a commercial prison industry (that supplies goods or services to the community, eg laundry).
“In the Healthy Prison Review 2019 OICS recommended that ACTCS explore the feasibility of providing a modest multi-purpose industries building in the AMC. The rationale was to provide flexible options for employment and vocational education. We again recommend that the ACT government fund a multipurpose industry building.
“The review also found insufficient programs at the AMC particularly those available to women and people on remand.”
While unsurprising but nevertheless deeply disappointing the inspector also confirms that the ACT continues to have the highest crude ratio of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander to non-indigenous imprisonment in Australia.
In 2024 in the ACT an Aboriginal person was 29 times more likely to be imprisoned than a non-indigenous person.
To our enduring shame, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman in Canberra was 76.5 times more likely to be imprisoned than a non-indigenous woman. This is more than twice as high as the next highest rate in Australia and shames us all.
In the above I have touched on only one aspect of the issues raised by the inspector-namely issues related to the importance of a “structured day”.
This is an issue that is regularly raised, for example 10 years ago the Auditor-General, in a report titled “The Rehabilitation of Male Detainees at the Alexander Machonochie Centre”, made a series of recommendations, virtually none of which have been implemented, and which have, in effect, been mirrored in their entirety in this latest excellent report of the Inspector of Custodial Services.
Over to you, Thomas Emerson.
Julie Tongs is CEO of the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services.
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