In 2008, 2009, and 2010, Julian Knight from Port Phillip Prison in Melbourne wrote three separate essays, one each year, as part of a series of annual literary competitions co-ordinated by the New Bridge Foundation.
The New Bridge Foundation is a registered UK charity based in London. It was founded in 1956 with the intention of using volunteers to support people in prison to resettle back into the community after release, by prominent prison reformer Lord Longford. For over 65 years, its volunteers have offered a bridge to the outside world to people serving prison sentences across England and Wales (and more recently Australia) by offering non-judgemental social contact to some of the most isolated and vulnerable in our society. In 2021 it reached over 1,000 people across 74 prison sites.
The foundation’s volunteers form connections with prisoners across the country through letter writing and visits, which:
- reaffirm the person’s sense of self-worth and feeling of belonging in any community
- help to aid successful reintegration after release, reducing reoffending
- combat loneliness and improve the mental health of those serving long prison sentences
“Our vision: Every person in prison feels a meaningful connection to the outside world.
Our mission: We match people in prisons with trained volunteers who offer long-term support through a combination of correspondence and visits. This provides people in prison with a bridge to the outside world, along with an increased sense of value and potential for their future.
Our Values: underpin our approach to all of our work, and are shared by all of our volunteers. New Bridge is:
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- Non-judgemental: we believe every person has value beyond the worst thing they have done
- Inclusive: we accept applications from any person in prison, and any volunteer who shares our values
- Independent: we are wholly separate from and not influenced by the criminal justice system
- Prisoner-led: our volunteers shape their correspondence and visits around the needs of the person they support
- Constant: we provide a reliable connection between those inside and outside prison.”
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READ MORE: https://www.newbridgefoundation.org.uk/index
Mr Knight’s three essays are reproduced on this website via these hyperlinks thus:
- ‘A Penological Redirection for Victoria: How the Prison System Can Be Improved’ (2008) (read below)
- ‘How the Prison System Can Be Improved by the Three ‘R’s‘ (2009)
- ‘How to Improve the Prison System – A 10 Point Plan‘ (2010)
“A Penological Redirection for Victoria:
How the Prison System Can Be Improved”
by Mr Julian Knight
CRN 49821
Port Phillip Prison
Sentences – 2008 Annual Literary Competition
(An essay on ideas about how to improve the Victorian prison system)
The greatest threat that any prisoner faces is not the threat of being bashed, raped or stood over, it is the grave risk of being institutionalized. The fundamental barrier to reducing this risk is the entrenched mindset of prison officials that, consciously and reflexively, inculcates institutional behaviour in prisoners.
Prison, as an institution, imposes a regimentation of, and a structure to, all aspects of a prisoner’s daily existence that seeks to make the prisoner dependent on the institution. Prisoners are expected to be unquestioning in their obedience to the dictates and wishes of prison officials, and as reliant on prison staff for their personal and daily needs as children are on their parents.
Overlaid on this institutional structure is the perceived need of prison officials to maintain a total surveillance of a prisoner’s already regulated and restricted contact with the outside world. Any behaviour exhibited or attitudes expressed by a prisoner that run counter to these expectations are viewed as a threat to the integrity of the institution.
In a 2006 court report the Clinical Director of Forensicare, Professor Paul Mullen, noted that a ‘continued capacity to argue, battle with, and pursue demands against the wishes of correctional staff and administrators is paradoxically a potentially positive sign of mental health.’
In a 2008 court report the forensic psychologist Ian Joblin asserted that:
‘There is no doubt that the values, attitudes and behaviours on which prisoners rely in order to complete a sentence satisfactorily are those that are inappropriate in wider society. … the longer a prisoner is incarcerated, the more difficult it is for such a prisoner to abandon those values, attitudes and behaviour on release.”
As opposed to a prisoner, an adult member of the community needs to, and is expected to, think, act and live independently. To improve the prison system in Victoria these foundational facts need to be recognized, accepted and then addressed at each stage of a prisoner’s management from reception to release.
To begin with, the supposed blueprint for a prisoner’s sentence management is their Sentence Plan, contained in their IMP (Individual Management Plan) file. It is supposed to lay out the prisoner’s planned progression through the prison system and include a plan to address the prisoner’s educational, offending behaviour and reintegration needs.
However in practice, the IMP is usually no plan at all but merely a file notation as to the prisoner’s current location and employment and recent behaviour. Even the Ombudsman identified this problem in his July 2006 report: ‘There is little evidence in IMP files of a sentence plan.’1
The Ombudsman’s comments followed the earlier detailed criticism of the many deficiencies in the use of IMP files made by the Auditor-General in his May 1999 report.2 To improve the prison system the existing post-sentence Reception Assessment needs to incorporate a planned timeline of prison transfers, recommended programs and program completion objectives. The difficulties in creating a long-term plan are no excuse for having no plan at all.
A stated guiding principle of Sentence Management is to effect the graduated release of prisoners.3 In order to achieve this goal prisoners are expected to progress through the three security levels – Maximum, Medium and Minimum – to enable the prisoner’s release from the least restrictive environment possible. This ‘cascading effect’ is based on the principle of ‘graduated release’, also known as the principle of ‘thirds’, whereby a prisoner can generally be expected to serve the first third of their sentence in Maximum Security, the next third in Medium Security, and the final third in a Minimum Security open camp.4 This has long been recognized by the prison authorities as being in ‘a prisoner’s best interests’.5
In reality, Security Ratings are assigned in most cases depending on which third of their sentence the prisoner is currently serving, with all prisoners beginning their sentence with a Maximum Security rating irrespective of offences committed, sentence length, personal circumstances or community safety requirements. As a result, of all the Australian prison jurisdictions Victoria has consistently had the highest rate of prisoners in “secure” (i.e. walled) prisons. Remand prisoners, who are automatically assigned a Maximum Security rating, comprise only around 19% of all prisoners, and only around 9% of sentenced prisoners have a Maximum Security rating. In the State’s maximum security prisons only 25-60% of the prisoners actually have a Maximum Security rating. In the medium security prisons 20-35% of prisoners actually have a Minimum Security rating. Even the Ombudsman has identified ‘the need for improvements to the assessment and classification arrangements’ 6 due to the ‘inconsistencies in the way classification rules are applied’. 7 To improve the prison system there needs to be ‘greater flexibility in the current classification procedures’ (as highlighted by the Ombudsman) combined with a sentence management system geared away from a simple logistics exercise towards one that adheres to well constructed sentence plans.
To improve the prison system the issue of so-called ‘protection’ prisoners also needs to be addressed. The ‘problem’ of increasing numbers of protection prisoners is largely one of the prison authorities own making.
Twenty years ago the small protection prisoner population consisted almost exclusively of convicted child sex offenders and identified Crown witnesses or police informers. The State’s then smallest prison, the 65-bed Sale Prison, was the only protection prison and even then was not used exclusively for protection prisoners.
All prisoners, excluding the categories mentioned above, but including all other sex offenders and child killers, were expected to serve their sentences in the prison ‘mainstream’ and almost all did so. Prisoners who were the victims of ‘stand over’ or bashings, who incurred drug debts, or who were involved in inter-prisoner conflict were simply relocated to another division in the same prison or were transferred to another prison entirely.
In the early 1990’s, the prison authorities adopted a policy of automatically placing almost all such prisoners, along with the majority of prisoners arrested over high profile crimes, straight into protection whether they requested protection or not. In this instance the prison authorities reacted proactively to address a problem that did not exist and by doing so actually created a problem that continues to snowball. This change in policy also allowed certain prisoners to rack-up drug or gambling debts, or repeatedly steal from other prisoners, then seek sanctuary by claiming protection.
By June 1993, it was necessary to convert Ararat Prison to a protection prison, and later to expand it by 160 beds, to accommodate the ever increasing number of protection prisoners. By January 2008, around 25% of the State’s male prisoners (but only 5% of female prisoners) were classified as protection prisoners, two of the State’s 13 prisons were classified as protection prisons, and 7 of the remaining 11 prisons had units allocated for protection prisoners.
According to the Seamer Review in 2005, only 35% of male protection prisoners had been assigned a ‘protection’ status due to being convicted of sexual offences against children.8 A further 20% were under protection simply because of a prior protection status. This resulted from a policy which ‘requires that once a prisoner has been a ‘protection’ prisoner previously, this status remains unchanged upon re-entry to prison, even though the reason for the earlier protection status may no longer exist’.9
In many cases – too many – the prison authorities have decided to proactively err on the side of caution by assessing a first-time prisoner on reception as being unable to survive in the general mainstream prison population, or have taken the decision for perverse logistical reasons, or have decided to ‘manage’ a certain prisoner under the guise of ‘protection’ when a placement in a management unit cannot be justified.
To resolve this mainly policy-created problem, and thus improve the prison system, the prison authorities need to progressively reverse their corrosive policies in this area.
The prison system – along with the wider community – can be fundamentally improved by simply not sending so many people to prison. Almost a quarter of the prison population in 2006 was unsentenced (i.e. on “remand”) or dual status.10
In every case before the courts the presiding magistrate or judge needs to ask ‘does this person really need to be remanded in custody’, and then later ‘does this person really deserve to be imprisoned?’ Members of the judiciary would doubtless assert strongly that they always ask these questions, but is it a coincidence that whenever a new prison opens supposedly to relieve current or projected system overcrowding it is filled almost immediately? Where were all these new prisoners held the day before the new prison opened?
In the weeks after the MRC opened in 2006 were the most common expressions heard in Victoria’s courts “bail denied” and “I have come to the conclusion that a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case”?
In 1994 the Department of Justice estimated that the State’s prison population would be 2,795 in 2001.11 By 2001, the actual prison population was 3,391.12 In 1988 there were 2,071 prisoners. Twenty years later there are 4,200: a 103% increase!
Victoria has the highest rate of prisoners in secure custody (92%) and has the lowest rate of persons in community-based corrections.13 Victoria also has only one prison-to-community transition facility (the 25-bed Judy Lazarus Transition Centre) and no “work-to-release” programme.
Victoria’s Home Detention Program only commenced in 2007, and in 2006-2007 the Adult Parole Board received 295 applications but only made 47 home detention orders.14 In contrast to these low numbers the APB asserts that the preparation of ‘offenders for release on parole or a home detention order begins as soon as they enter the prison system’.15
To improve the prison system the dual aims of the judicial system should be to place as few people in it as justice requires, and to get those who do enter it out of it as soon as justice dictates.
In improving the prison system by keeping people out of it a concomitant objective should be striving to ensure that those who do pass through it do not re-enter it. At present over half (53%) of prisoners have been in prison before.16
To strategically attack this statistic requires a framework combing offending behaviour programs with education and vocational training. Over 90% of prisoners have not completed their secondary schooling,17 and 63% were unemployed when they were arrested.18
The provision of education and vocational training has long and widely been recognized as the two best employed methods in reducing recidivism rates. They are also both recognized as providing the most substantial components of a prisoner’s structured day.
It should be a twin objective outlined in each prisoner’s Sentence Plan to raise their education level by at least one level – or to at least attain literacy – and to complete vocational training in at least one vocation whilst being employed in that position within the prison system (e.g. cook, cleaner, etc). Given that all prisons contain an education centre, and all sentenced prisoners are required to work, the prison system would be improved by formally including these aspects of each prisoner’s structured day into their Sentence Plan.
The prison authorities also need to recognize that nearly all off-campus courses are now offered on-line or at least require access to the internet. They similarly need to recognize and address the financial disincentives prisoners face in pursuing education studies:
- TAFEs no longer exempts prisoners from off-campus course fees
- There has been no scholarship for prisoners since the demise of the Prisoner Study Award Trust in 1989
- The AUSTUDY regulations specifically preclude prisoners from receiving AUSTUDY assistance
- Prisoners are not exempted from HECS payments, and,
- Prison paid full-time education pays less than most prison employment positions.
In order to improve the provision of education to prisoners and thereby improve the prison system, a new framework needs to be instituted that addresses these issues.
Given the prolonged removal of prisoners from the workforce the provision of vocational training is even more important than education. The optimum synthesisation of vocational training with prison employment existed in the “industry lane” in Pentridge Prison. The four main industries there – print shop, formed wooden products, metal fabrication, and tailors shop – were run in a way that replicated corresponding industries outside, employed prisoners from every division in the prison, and operated on a 9-day fortnight. On every fortnightly rostered day off industry-specific and nationally recognized training was conducted in each industry by qualified TAFE teachers. Such a prison industry set-up should be the norm throughout the prison system.
In 2003 the Auditor-General noted that the extremely limited provision of rehabilitation programs ‘has been identified as a key factor in the rising level of recidivism in the Victorian corrections system.’ 19 This deficiency has been partially rectified by the implementation of a range of offence-related and offence-specific rehabilitation programs. The Ombudsman has stated that ‘the value of such courses cannot be underestimated and can have a significant impact on a prisoner’s reintegration into the community.’ 20 These programs need to be expanded, delivered in a timely manner, and their suitability and effectiveness needs to be evaluated.
Over the years the degree of community involvement with prisoners and the involvement of prisoners in the community has significantly diminished. To improve the prison system this trend needs to be reversed. In the 1970s, bands and theatre groups regularly attended Pentridge Prison. In the 1980’s there were regular sports nights and the annual “Bluestone Challenge” sports day. In the 1990’s HM Prison Barwon held a custom bike show. Such events are a defunct aspect of the prison system. To improve the prison system they should be resurrected.
As far as prisoner involvement in the community is concerned, another aspect of the prison system that has been progressively restricted since it was established in 1973 is the “weekend leave” programme. Twenty-five years ago long-term prisoners could – and did – commence having up to 72-hour unescorted leaves ten years out from their eventual release on parole.21 Nowadays the programme is so restrictive that leaves can only begin in the final year of a prisoner’s sentence. The Ombudsman is one of many who have recommended that the program be expanded.22
A significant way to both improve the prison system and serve the community would be to establish Country Fire Authority stations at each of Victoria’s three minimum security prisons. Aside from the benefit to prisoners of reconnecting with the community by serving it directly, there would be an intrinsic benefit to the community in having permanently manned CFA stations available for immediate call-out in three rural areas.
Overall, the prison system can best be improved by managing it according to proven and recommended practices, and not in reaction to the dictates of editorials in the popular press.
The habitual practice of “management by editorial” is management by the pusillanimous and obsequious at the urging of the ignorant and malevolent. Likewise the courts, when sitting in judgement on cases brought by prisoners need to guard against succumbing to judicial deference to the supposed experience of prison administrators: just because they claim that the prison system is faultless, doesn’t make it so.
End Notes:
- Ombudsman, Conditions for persons in custody, page 96.
- Auditor-General, Victoria’s prison system, pages 126-130.
- Corrections Victoria, Sentence Management Manual, Section 1, page 1.5.
- Correctional Services Division, Prison Profiles, page 28.
- Corrections Victoria, op cit, Section 3, page 3.9.
- Ombudsman, op cit, page 73.
- ibid, page 76.
- Seamer, Review of Corrections Victoria SM Process, page 70.
- Ombudsman, op cit, page 77.
- Office of the Correctional Services Commissioner, “Statistical Profile:
The Victorian Prison System 2001-2002 to 2005-2006”, Table 13, page 22.
- Correctional Services Division, op cit, page 9.
- Office of the Correctional Services Commissioner, “Statistical Profile:
The Victorian Prison System 1995-1996 to 2000-2001”, Table 10, page 19.
- Seamer, op cit, page 21.
- Adult Parole Board, “Annual Report 2006/2007”, pages 23-24.
- ibid, page 2.
- Office of the Correctional Services Commissioner, “Statistical Profile:
The Victorian Prison System 2001-2002 to 2005-2006”, Table 12, page 21.
- ibid, Table 28, page 37.
- ibid, Table 29, page 38.
- Auditor-General, Addressing the needs of Victorian prisoners, page 69.
- Ombudsman, op cit, page 95.
- see Keith Ryrie v DPP (CCA, 23 February 1993) BC9300642 at 4-5.
- Ombudsman, op cit, page 109.
References:
Adult Parole Board, “Annual Report 2006/2007”, Melbourne, 2007.
Auditor-General Victoria (C.A. Baragwanath), “Victoria’s prison system: Community
protection and prisoner welfare”, Special Report No 60, Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, Melbourne, May 1999.
Auditor-General Victoria (J.W. Cameron), “Addressing the needs of Victorian
prisoners”, Performance Audit Report, Audit Victoria, Melbourne, November 2003.
Correctional Services Commissioner, Office of the,
– “Statistical Profile: The Victorian Prison System 1995-1996 to 2000-2001”, 4th Edition, Department of Justice of Victoria, Melbourne, March 2003.
– “Statistical Profile: The Victorian Prison System 2000-01 to 2004-2005”, 6th Edition, Department of Justice of Victoria, Melbourne, February 2006.
– “Statistical Profile: The Victorian Prison System 2001-02 to 2005-2006”, 7th Edition, Department of Justice of Victoria, Melbourne, January 2007.
Correctional Services Division, “Prison Profiles”, Department of Justice of Victoria, Melbourne, December 1994.
Corrections Victoria, “Sentence Management Manual” (Version 01/07, 8 May 2007).
Ombudsman Victoria (George E. Brouwer), “Conditions for persons in custody”, Victorian Government Printer, Melbourne, July 2006.
Robert Seamer, “Review of Corrections Victoria Sentence Management Process”, Corrections Victoria, Melbourne, 28 October 2005.
© Julian Knight 2008