IndustriesThe Department for Correctional Services has two main operational arms - prisons and community corrections.
Prisons provide secure and safe facilities to carry out the orders of courts which incarcerate offenders.
There are nine prisons in South Australia, all responsible for accommodating only adult people (18+)
Many people in the community have an impression of prisons as a place where criminals are simply locked up for punishment. That opinion would have been true 50 years ago. After many years of experience and study, government and judicial systems have recognised the need for prisons to be places of change.
A basic question needs answering - what is the use of a prison system which returns an offender to the community the same if not worse than when he or she entered prison? The philosophy in most modern prison systems is to try and change the behaviour of offenders by developing in them skills which see all people live in the community without resorting to crime.
Because almost every prisoner is one day going to return to the community. The rather loose term "rehabilitation" covers a wide spectrum of activities but in SA there is a deliberate pathway each prisoner treads.
Shortly after a person is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment they will pass through an assessment and induction process. This will happen to males at Yatala Labour Prison and females at the Adelaide Women’s Prison. The process is designed to find out as much information as possible about the prisoner and design a sentence plan for the time of their term of imprisonment. This plan will carry through until the person no longer has contact with corrections.
Prison administrators need to know matters such as education levels and work capacity and skills level, health needs and perhaps whether they are in need of protection for any reason.
It is believed that 60 to 80 % of all prisoners have some problems with literacy and to improve this and give offenders the opportunity to improve their lifestyle, the Department has an active literacy and numeracy learning process available in every prison.
Our teaching can articulate into prisoners achieving the General Certificate in Education for Adults. The Department is in fact licensed as an education provider under the name of Vocation and Education Centres of SA ( VTEC-SA). This education unit is also dedicated to providing courses to offenders to improve their skills level and therefore their ability to obtain work.
The Australian National Training Authority has accredited a number of prison officers and their workplace to teach courses which can result in the granting of recognised certificates in vocational subjects such as welding, catering and kitchen hand work, forklift driving, baking and basic computing.
In some institutions, prisoners are also taught skills to run their own business, deportment, how to apply for a job and resume writing.
IndustriesThe biggest hurdle all prison administrators try to overcome is boredom of prisoners. While education can fill in some part of the day for some prisoners, it is the Department’s intention to have as many prisoners as possible involved in some work.
There are many tasks around a prison which can be fulfilled by prisoners such as cleaning, painting and general maintenance etc but an active production unit is highly valuable.
This Department has established its own corporate arm - Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Manufacturing Enterprise - which actively seeks out contracts with private enterprise to supply them goods for sale.
PRIME currently has several contracts to produce tables, bed frames, light fittings, a range of metal consumer items and a multi-purpose sports facility which are available through private enterprise for public sale.
Other prison industries are involved in making food products which are consumed within the prison system. The Cadell and Port Lincoln prison farms also produce a wide range of food items which are either supplied to private industry (fruit, vegetables, cereals) or consumed in prisons (milk, vegetables, fruit, meat). The dairy at Cadell and Mobilong bakery have achieved ISO 9002 standard that places them on a level with other commercial operatives in Australia. PRIME's Central Office function also recently was accredited with this standard.
Some of the work performed by prisoners is attached to TAFE certificates that earn prisoners qualifications of value within the community.
This whole operation is designed to earn income for the prison system while providing valuable skills and work ethics to prisoners for their eventual return to the community.
It is recognised in most modern jurisdictions that while improving the education and work skills of prisoners to improve their position in society, there is also a need to tackle the very reason why some people offend. We have identified the six main reasons for offending and have applied programs to deal with them. We call them Core Programs:
The programs an offender or prisoner requires generally will be identified during the assessment process but may not manifest itself until later. Almost all prisoners in SA have access to psychological services. The Department employs psychologists. In the case of sex offenders programs are run through the Sexual Offenders Treatment and Assessment Program that is an organisation outside the Department.
Drug and alcohol awareness and anger management programs are run in-prison by social workers. On occasions the Department imports services to tackle particular problem areas, mainly within the Aboriginal prison population.
These programs are run by qualified and experienced people in efforts to steer Aboriginal people away from activity that traditionally has seen them imprisoned - alcohol or substance abuse and violence.
Some of these programs concentrate on teaching Aboriginal culture. Through awareness of this culture it is hoped that Aboriginal people will change their lives that in turn will divert them from offending.
Anger management covers a wide range of subjects that basically give the offender some skills to deal with a situation rather than resort to violence. This may be through negotiation, dealing with provocation, violence against women and racist situations. This program also outlines the effect violence has on victims.
The Ending Offending program provides offenders with skills to deal with alcohol consumption.
Staff are also on hand to assist offenders deal with grief and loss situations.
Men’s and women’s groups have been established in prisons and these use group sessions to discuss and deal with issues specific to both genders.
Perhaps the most intense and radical program to be introduced to Corrections in the past decade is the introduction of cognitive skills training.
This program was developed by Canadian forensic psychologists and by working on the thinking skills of offenders, research has found the program has reduced recidivism rates.
Staff across the Department have been trained in this technique and it has been introduced in both prisons and community corrections.
The implementation of Case Management practices across the Department will result in better management of all offenders.
Case Management is an individual service delivery process which plans the management of offenders from the time of reception into a prison to termination of their involvement with the Department (sentence completion).
The plan contains recommendations for prison placement and programs which will assist the offender live successfully in the community without resorting to crime following release.
There are three components to a case plan: the offenders social development, social welfare and social control.
The following steps are taken in the process of Case Management:
Anybody who believes today's treatment of prisoners panders to them, is mistaken. Prisons are not motels, as the media likes to portray them. All prison cells are small, a bit smaller than an average bathroom. Some of these cells contain little more than a bed, chair and table.
The SA prison system is based on incentives. Prisoners who demonstrate their willingness to change through programs, shun violence and don’t bully and stay free of drugs, will gradually receive more freedoms and more privileges. They are permitted to have televisions and radios which they must supply. They can have some basic luxuries which they also must buy themselves.
Remember a prisoner’s pay starts at $2.33 a day and rises to just under $6 a day (five days a week) depending on work performed. Family members on the outside are permitted to place money in a prisoner’s account which is administered by the prison. No prisoner handles cash.
A proportion of this money goes to the prisoner's resettlement and is available on release. Another proportion may go to criminal compensation or the crime levy. That doesn’t leave much for items like tobacco or cigarettes, shampoo, deodorant, women’s hygiene essentials etc that the prisoner must buy.
In the past, good behaviour in prison meant remissions. This was a period of time taken off non-parole periods which resulted in prisoners serving a small portion of their actual sentence. Truth in Sentencing now means prisoners serve the full non-parole period. A prisoner sentenced to 12 months or less will serve that period and will not have a non-parole period.
They will receive a non-parole period if the sentence ranges from 12 months to five years and for these people parole will be automatic. Those with sentences of five years of more will serve the full non-parole period and then will need to apply for parole before it will be considered. This will depend on their behaviour and attempts to better themselves within the prison system.
The Parole Board can refuse parole for these prisoners.
But the incentive for all prisoners is better accommodation in cottages, transfer to prisons which have more freedoms, working on prison farms and ultimately being granted day leave for work or education and home detention.
Not all prisons have day leave programs. The Adelaide Pre-Release Centre and Adelaide Women’s Prison run the main day leave programs.
When approaching the end of a sentence, it is possible for a prisoner to be released each day to attend work or education within the community. For example the pre-release centre has some 5,000 prisoner movements in and out the front gate each year.
The basic theory behind this is to gradually resettle long-term prisoners back into society rather than just dumping them which has had negative consequences in the past.
Custodial officers at both these establishments are constantly assisting prisoners to find jobs. Others are education specialists who assist prisoners to enrol in courses that teach them skills that ultimately can lead to employment.
Those who don’t behave in the prison system will not receive the same opportunities. In fact the Department has a process enshrined in law by which it can fine prisoners for antisocial behaviour. Hearings into matters can be conducted by prison managers or visiting Justices of the Peace who both have the power to fine prisoners from their accounts.
Drug use happens in every prison. Prisoners are inventive people and they are known to have established trafficking methods that are extremely hard to detect.
The Department tackles drug use by education and detection methods. Drug abuse programs are run for prisoners and there are highly active measures to detect drugs coming into prisons.
This ranges from searches by the Dog Squad by either dogs or technical methods, regular raids on prison cells, searching visitors and education of prisoner’s partners who generally bring the drugs in.
The Department's Intelligence and Investigations Unit has also been highly effective in combating drug trafficking.
People have been charged with trafficking drugs into prisons - an offence which carries very stiff penalties (e.g up to 15 years jail or a $100,000 fine.
