New Bill Enhances Management of Extreme Risk Prisoners to Boost Safety

Legislation to strengthen the management of prisoners who pose an extreme risk to prison or public safety while in prison has passed its first reading today, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says.

The Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill underscores this Government’s commitment to restoring law and order.

It will see real and practical steps taken to enhance prison and public safety, and a strengthened legislative framework to manage the small number of prisoners who pose an extreme risk to prison and public safety, while balancing natural justice, says Mr Mitchell.

Extreme risk prisoners include those connected to transnational organised crime, or who pose a risk to prison or public safety from their radical ideology, or those with a history of serious violence towards others.

The Bill introduces a robust statutory process to determine whether a prisoner poses an extreme risk and needs a higher level of custodial oversight.

These prisoners will likely be subject to more stringent measures than other prisoners, such as receiving fewer hours of unlock and fewer contact visits. However, they will also have a cell with a self-contained yard, which provides them with more personal space than other prisoners.

The Bill strikes a careful balance between managing the risks posed by these prisoners and protecting their rights to natural justice.  When making a determination on which prisoners pose an extreme threat, the chief executive is informed by an expert advisory panel’s recommendation, and any other information the chief executive considers relevant.

To ensure fair consideration is taken, prisoners will be able to provide written information to the panel for consideration before they make a recommendation to the chief executive. The chief executive is also obligated to review a designation if new and relevant information comes to light, or there has been a change in circumstances that may make the determination inappropriate or unnecessary.

The Bill will also explicitly prohibit prolonged solitary confinement for all prisoners.

Making this explicit in legislation ensures it aligns more closely with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, particularly rules 43 and 44. Under the Bill, all prisoners must receive 10 hours of meaningful human contact over each 14-day period, with a desire for Corrections to aim to provide prisoners with 14 hours of meaningful human contact each week, Mr Mitchell says.

The other substantive changes in the Bill include: the introduction of a new segregation ground that recognises the complex risks that some prisoners pose to public safety amendments that will enable prison managers to more easily move segregated prisoners between restricted and denied association to align with the risks they pose a new provision allowing Corrections to apply to the High Court to destroy the property of a prisoner who, on their death, was a designated terrorist entity the introduction of new provisions to reduce the risk of illicit use of prisoner trust accounts.