Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Tuesday 12 April 2011

BREAKING THE CYCLE STRATEGIC PLAN

Mr DEAN ( Windermere) - I will make a brief contribution here. Others have probably mentioned this; I was not here at the beginning as I was trying to placate a journalist who the Leader was trying to say was not reporting accurately.

Mr Parkinson - Are you going to dob me in?

Mr DEAN - The position with this is there is nothing really new in this document. When I was a police officer in 2002 we were talking about most of these issues then. They are issues that have been on the board for a long period of time.

Mr Parkinson - Yes, but this is a plan, this is a documented plan, a first.

Mr DEAN - Yes, that is right, and I was going to say, it is now good that we have it documented in a plan to move forward.

The problem is that whilst it is in a plan it has been spoken of -

Mr Parkinson - Yes, but it makes it accountable, you see, it is in a plan.

Mr DEAN - That is good. The unfortunate thing about it is that when it comes to money we know that it is not going to go too far. That is the problem we have. That is the annoying part of the whole thing.

There are a couple of points that I wanted to make. We talked about facilities and where they should be. There was a classic case recently. I could name the person and it would not matter too much. Currently there is a person in the prison at Risdon who is from the Launceston area and he comes from a good background. He is dependent on his mother. I did raise with Corrections and the prison service the fact that the mother gives up her full day most weekends to travel from Launceston in the City Mission bus to come to Hobart to visit her son in the facility here.

Because of the structure that was in place at Risdon to get these people through the gates and in to visit their relatives and in this case a son, there was a hold-up in the process of getting through and doing everything they needed to get in, and that was being deducted from the time that the people were available to see their relatives and their close friends et cetera, sons and daughters and so on.

She was devastated on one weekend when she came down here because of the process that she went through. I am not quite sure what the visit length is now - half an hour or three quarters of an hour - and it was cut down to only a few minutes because of the hold-up that occurred at the jail in getting them all in there. She was devastated. She left home at about 8 or 9 a.m. in the morning and got back home at about 6 p.m., just to spend that short time. I did take that up and the matter has been fixed. Around the State these people who are in these prisons do have loved ones out there, people that they depend on and they want to see them do the right thing and do good.

There is another one that I want to mention, and it is referred to at page 3 of the document, people losing their accommodation and their employment. Madam President, I had another good example of this. I had a devastated lady from Rocherlea, her daughter was imprisoned for a relatively short period of time and I do not remember exactly what it was but I think it was a six-month period that she was jailed for or thereabouts. Because of the system with Housing Tasmania where they are away from their accommodation for a certain period of time, two or three months but I think it is two months, they will lose their accommodation.

Mr Wing - In the Housing department?

Mr DEAN - In Housing Tasmania - the Housing department. This lady was devastated and she came to me for support because the one thing her daughter had in her life, so the mother was saying, was the fact that she had this home to go back to. She had three children and the mother was looking after her three children while she was in jail and to think that she was then going to lose her house just absolutely added to her turmoil, and in fact she did lose her house. I went to Housing Tasmania and tried to get some support from them to keep this house available but they would not hear of it. It was just devastating. Then she had to come out and I meant to contact the mother again to see what has happened but the mother -

Mr Parkinson - I presume she got another house.

Mr DEAN - I presume she may have done, but I need to follow up on that. She was going to come back and live with her mother with the three children until she could get more accommodation. This is what happens; she was in jail doing it hard and then she had that on top of it to add to all of her problems. I would have thought there would have been a better system in place, to be quite frank. I know they cannot hold up houses for long periods of time but by the time they clean it up and get somebody into that home I would have thought the sentence was probably finished by this person anyway, or close thereto.

They are just some of the issues, Madam President. The other point I would make and other members have raised it, on the select committee of inquiry into Ashley about three or four years ago we talked about halfway houses for prisoners to go into rather than a facility like Ashley, for instance. We were saying that there should be a halfway facility somewhere and we made a strong recommendation on that and that still has not been addressed and it is not likely to be addressed, unfortunately. We are talking about it here again in this document but, unfortunately, it is a lot of rhetoric, it is a lot of talk and we really do not see much action. That was something we raised some time ago.

The other subject I will refer to is the sentencing options, Madam President. I recall talking to a member of the magistracy about four years ago about sentencing options and he was saying just how frustrated he was that he did not have more sentencing options and it was causing concern. They knew of many cases they had dealt with of where a custodial sentence was necessary very clearly but if there had been other options of the bracelet, electronic devices, in-home custody and so on, it would have satisfied the need in those situations but they were either having to send them to jail or release them on probation or give them a suspended sentence or do something else. It was causing them heartache really because these other sentencing options are in place in some places in the world and we do not have them here. It was really causing them problems. I am quite certain that if we spoke to Randolph Wierenga from the Police Association of Tasmania he would much prefer to see some of these offenders, who seem to think that police are punching bags, with a bracelet doing custody in their own home or whatever it is rather than being released on some probation order or suspended sentence or what have you because the police see that as no sentence at all. I think he would be seeing this as a much better option as at least there is some control and some custodial aspect to the sentences imposed on some of these people.

If you look at this and if you look at the sentencing structure, it is like bail and the consideration is here to have bracelets on people who are on bail, Madam President. I can tell you now, as an ex-police officer, that there are very few people out there who take notice of bail conditions. In fact the only people out there to take notice of bail conditions are really only those first-time offenders who are really genuine about wanting to do better and who are very upset with what has happened. They are about the only ones who comply with bail conditions and the first-time persons in custody and so on that are released on bail.

Most others do not so things like that would certainly be a bonus, there is no doubt about that, and it would relieve the police of a lot of pressure because they do police bail from time to time because it is a known fact that many people on bail commit offences, unfortunately. Those sorts of things I think would be very good and I just hope that this plan comes to fruition, Madam President, and the sooner a lot of these options are taken up the better as well. Having said that I certainly support the motion.

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