As at 30 June this year some 29,300 prisoners were held in 'corrective services adult custody', ie an imprisonment rate of 175 prisoners per 100,000 adults. Eight in 10 of those prisoners were born in Australia. (Recent figures on adult and juvenile crime are highlighted here and here.)
The proportional increases were greatest in Western Australia (up by 17%) and the Northern Territory (11% increase). Those jurisdictions also had the highest imprisonment rates (260 and 660 prisoners per 100,000 adults respectively).
56% (ie 16,270) of all prisoners had served a sentence in an adult prison prior to their current incarceration. The most serious offence or charge for nearly 1 in 5 prisoners (5,600 people) was 'acts intending to cause injury'. The most serious offence or charge for older prisoners (those aged 55+) was sexual assault and related offences. The ABS doesn't give a breakdown of sexual and other offences committed by inmates against other prisoners, highlighted in last month's 59 page Predator or Prey? An Exploration of the Impact & Incidence of Sexual Assault in West Australian Prisons [PDF] by Brian Steels & Dot Goulding. (Recent figures on juvenile incarceration are highlighted here; context is provided in the recent Offending Youth: Sex, Crime & Justice (Federation Press, 2009) by Kerry Carrington.)
Prisoners were sentenced to an average prison term of 4.8 years, with an average expected time to serve (the earliest date of release taking into account the type of sentence, good behaviour, time already served, etc) of 3.5 years.
The rate of Indigenous imprisonment continued to rise; the rate was 14 times higher for Indigenous prisoners than non-Indigenous prisoners. However, their average sentence length was less than non-Indigenous prisoners (3.6 years compared to 5.3 years). The ABS notes that the number of women prisoners increased by 57% between 1999 and 2009 compared with a 35% increase in male prisoners during that period.
The Steels & Goulding study, drawn from interviews with 150 ex-prisoners and with prison staff, is consistent with research such as Heilpern's Fear or Favour (1998) which noted that one in four males between 18 and 25 years reported that they had been sexually assaulted while in NSW custody. It indicates that -
• 81 or (54%) of the participants interviewed said they had knowledge of sexual assault in WA prisons.The authors comment that Australia as a society is -
• 35 or (23.3%) of the participants interviewed disclosed that they had been placed under pressure at some time during their sentence in a WA prison to provide unwanted sexual acts. Most claimed that the incidents occurred within the first six months of their sentence.
• 116 or (77.3%) had knowledge of an assault and had experienced a degree of pressure to perform some kind of sexual act.
• 21 or (14%) of participants said they had been sexually assaulted whilst held in a WA prison.
• 6 or (4%) acknowledged predatory sexual behaviour in prison. 4 of these said they had previously been sexually assaulted in prison themselves.
• 7 or (4.6%) were unsure if sexual assault occurred in prisons or not.
• 4 (2.6%) claimed that sexual assault incidents do not occur in prisons.
measured by our capacity to apply basic human rights, even to those that are being sanctioned by the community, in an institutional setting. That prisoners are the victims of sexual abuse and assault in those very institutions is an indictment on the system that turns a blind eye. This research is confronting. It is by its very nature, shocking.Sadly, its findings - other than information about the distress experienced by some custodial officers who deal (or in practice don't deal) with the assaults - are not new and one might be sceptical about whether much is going to change in dealing with an environment where -
Prison sexual assault remains largely hidden from public view, is usually left out of corrective services’ annual reports, is frequently ignored by senior policy makers, and goes largely unchallenged by judges and lawyers, creating little more than a disinterested whisper outside of prison walls.Meanwhile the BBC reports that "the number of young offenders ordered to wear electronic tags in England and Wales has seen a steep rise", with around 20,000 15 to 17-year-olds being tagged last year. More than half of those teenagers - unsurprisingly - "breached their restrictions, either by removing the tags or breaking curfews". Tagging has been adopted for people as young as 10, ostensibly both as a cost-effective alternative to custodial sentences and "to deal with the problem of youngsters who made the lives of others a misery through anti-social behaviour".
The BBC quotes a UK Ministry of Justice spokeswoman as claiming that -
Electronic monitoring provides the courts with a credible alternative to custody. It can be used alone, or as an enhancement to other community interventions. Curfews introduce regularity into what are often chaotic lifestyles. They enhance supervision and can disrupt the pattern of offending behaviour.The spokesperson did not refer to past criticisms of the way that tagging has been implemented, with for example instances where private security services either ignored automated alerts when tags where removed or simply did not bother to follow-up when tagged teens moved out of a designated precinct.
