Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just wanted to have a bit of guidance from either yourself or the Minister of Police. We’ve got a significantly large amendment bill that’s been tabled, and my understanding is that it reprints a significant portion, if not the whole bill, through the amendments as well. I’m just wanting a bit of guidance, while we go through the committee stage, will the Minister in the chair be looking at Amendment Paper 809 or the bill as reported back from the Justice Committee? It would also be good to hear from the Minister his intentions with the Amendment Paper. I understand this was tabled yesterday at 1.30 p.m., so some guidance on what the Minister intends to achieve with this Amendment Paper, and also wanting to know which sections or which clauses it will be applicable to, and how we should manage this.

CHAIRPERSON (Tom Rutherford): Yep, fair question. For Amendment Paper (AP) 809 from the Minister, it’s a revision-tracked AP, so you should treat that, effectively, as the bill that we’re going to be progressing through in this committee stage.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll just start with that and start with Part 1, and I just wanted to start with the very first clause here, which is the “Principal Act”. I have had a bit of a look at—actually, are we starting with the “Principal Act”, or we starting with the “Title” now in the revision-tracked version? It’s still with clause 3, is that right?

CHAIRPERSON (Tom Rutherford): We’re on Part 1. Yep.

I have a question, really. One of the issues with this bill that has been controversial is the application of Minimum Standards, often known as the Mandela Rules. That’s in the Corrections Act 2004 and section 5(1)(b) states that the purpose of the corrections system is “for corrections facilities to be operated in accordance with rules set out in this Act and the regulations made under this Act are based, amongst other matters, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners;”.

The question is, really, how does the primary principal Act—which is what’s outlined in clause 3 of the amendment bill, and section 5, “Purpose of the corrections system”, which does go through the Minimum Standards—interact with this amendment bill that has standards which do outline what minimum standards are for prisoners but—and this is certainly in some of the submissions that we received at the Justice Committee—may be different from the United Nations Standard of Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners? That’s kind of quite an important point. Does this bill change the purpose of the principal Act because of the fact that the principal Act states that the United Nations Minimum Standards is one of the purposes of the Corrections Act? So kind of a small point, but also kind of fundamental to which rights would take precedent once this bill is enacted.

Committee of the whole House

Just a very quick follow-up on that. If the Minister of Police could explain, please, the purpose of the Amendment Paper and why it was brought to the House yesterday, so that we have a bit of context for what’s happening.

Committee of the whole House

The amendments were developed after the bill was introduced. They are important to make now to ensure Corrections can be held accountable and prisoners are protected. In late 2025, the High Court issued a mandamus order to the chief executive of Corrections, which noted concerns about the consistent delivery of prisoners’ exercise entitlements. Subsequently, Corrections identified the need for stronger monitoring and oversight of daily exercise exceptions.

Further operational work identified gaps and uncertainty in the current law, including how the entitlement is applied across prisons. It was identified that stronger protections for prisoner rights were needed, and the bill delivers those. Operational improvements can strengthen practice, but they don’t resolve uncertainty in the legislation. Legislation creates a clear and durable framework that staff can apply, prisoners can understand, and oversight bodies can review.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. I guess it’s time to start stepping through what this bill does. Obviously, having just finished the second reading, we’ve talked about the overarching objectives of the bill and the fact that it looks at prisoners of extreme risk. Then I see in clause 5 of this bill, new section 3AA, we’ve got a definition of “organised criminal group”, and obviously that feeds into what is a prisoner of extreme risk or a prisoner who can be subject to the designation provisions.

What I guess I’m a little confused about is we’ve now got the Gangs Act, which sets out gangs and, also, the schedule there, which sets out organised criminal groups, also known as gangs. But then we’ve also got section, I think it’s section 98A of the Crimes Act, which also deals with the offence of belonging to an organised criminal group. So we’ve already got statutory definitions of gangs or organised criminal groups, and now we’ve got a another one. I’d be interested to understand why it is that we need another definition of “organised criminal group” when it’s kind of already an established concept, particularly in section 98A of the Crimes Act; and, in fact, whether those two definitions are identical and, if they’re not, what’s the reason for the difference? I would have thought the easier thing to do would be to say in your interpretation section, “organised criminal group has the meaning given to it in section 98A of the Crimes Act”.

Similarly, we’ve got a definition in there of “serious violent offence”. Now, again, there are already, in the Criminal Procedure Act, offences that are graded in bands from 1 to 4. It would seem that, once again, we’ve got this proliferation of definitions across the statute book, which just makes things more confusing. Admittedly, the Criminal Procedure Act doesn’t necessarily divide out violent offences, but it does have a grade of seriousness. It would have been just as easy to say that a category 3 or 4 offence that is a violent offence is, in fact, a violent offence for these purposes. It’s interesting in the definition here that damage to property is seen as a part of the definition of violent offence—although that does touch on physical safety, so I guess that would include, I don’t know, tampering with someone’s brakes, but, also, perverting the course of justice.

Now, perverting the course of justice sits, in the Crimes Act, under a particular category of crimes against justice, right along with corruption and bribery and things like that. And yet, you’ve now got a definition of “perverting the course of justice” and called it violent. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of violent. It’s a crime of subterfuge. It’s a crime of trying to achieve an end by trickery, deception, and coercion, rather than any kind of violence at all. I always worry about definitions that actually kind of include something which is the opposite, because it’s not a very good statutory device. But I’m particularly interested in why we’ve got this new definition of “organised criminal group” when we’ve already got, essentially, more than one definition already.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just wanted to touch on clause 5, new section 3AA, subclause (2). I think it is: “obtaining a material benefit”. This subclause essentially broadens the definition of a material benefit so it’s not just about cash changing hands. I understand why, because modern organised crime is more sophisticated than that. They’ve got multiple forms of currency. But whenever we start talking about indirect benefits, things can get quite murky. You know, a prisoner might help another prisoner out, pass on information, might arrange something for them, or maintain a relationship. Sometimes that’s innocent; sometimes, it isn’t. The challenge is making sure that front-line staff have a clear understanding of where that line really sits. Otherwise, there’s a risk that one prison may interpret this differently from another, or that different staff may interpret it differently. Most of us would agree that if someone is helping facilitate serious criminal activity, they should be captured, but we’d also want confidence that ordinary behaviour isn’t being swept up in all of that, as well.

My question to the Minister of Corrections is, essentially, how will Corrections distinguish between conduct that is genuinely supporting organised criminal activity and conduct that is simply part of normal day-to-day interaction between prisoners? Thank you.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. The meaning of “organised criminal group” is consistent with section 98A of the Crimes Act, for the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. The bill improves prisoner rights in light of the Mandela Rules as much as possible. The bill significantly introduces, such as the Mandela Rules, on prolonged solitary confinement.

In terms of the Amendment Paper that was lodged yesterday, quite simply, that is just highly technical changes that ensure the bill is consistent with the Act itself.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. My questions follow along from the previous questions regarding clause 5, new section 3AA, around the meeting of “organised criminal group”.

It’s a pretty simple question, really. I wanted to ask the Minister of Corrections whether he thinks that this definition could potentially be too broad. He spends a lot of time—well, I’m not sure if it’s a lot of time, but he goes into prisons and has a look at what’s going on in there. One thing that I observed during my time visiting some of the prisons under our statutory ability to do so was that the prisons are just really struggling to manage the number of organised crime groups or gangs in the prisons, and that that presents a real challenge for them in terms of getting the combinations right. From my observations and from just talking to the people who are working in there, it seems like that’s probably one of the biggest issues for them, managing the number of people who belong to an organised criminal group.

My question in relation to this new section for the Minister was—sorry, and it’s also in relation to the physical infrastructure of the Prisoners of Extreme Risk Unit (PERU), because it’s quite a small unit. My question is: does he know or can his officials advise in terms of this definition, because it’s broad, as to whether there is the actual infrastructure within PERU to capture people who might fit under this definition, in line with this bit, as well as the other parts to the bill as introduced? Or whether he’s aware of any kind of projections or modelling around who might be captured by this definition?

Committee of the whole House

Yeah, I think that’s a good question. I guess I can answer it for both Tamatha Paul and also Dan Rosewarne. The fact of the matter is that people that are coming into our corrections system don’t come in and they don’t suddenly become demure sort of people that go to yoga class in the morning and play tiddlywinks in the afternoon; they’re already part of really sophisticated, often violent, criminal organisations and gangs. Just because they suddenly come into the corrections system doesn’t mean that they don’t suddenly stop developing those networks, trying to organise their illegal activities—that carries on. Our corrections staff, quite simply, do an outstanding job of having to police that and monitor it and make sure that they take action where it becomes obvious.

It’s very late and we’re going to be wrapping up here shortly, but let me just take the chance to put on the record just how good our corrections officers are; we don’t talk about them enough. When I became Minister of Corrections, the only key performance indicator I set was a reduction of serious violent assaults on our corrections officers, because everyone deserves to go to work and come home safely.

It’s a really complicated system, as you would have seen. I acknowledge the member for taking the time and interest to actually go and visit the prisons and see how they operate, speak to the people that are actually delivering the services, because I can say that there are tens of thousands of positive actions that take place every day amongst all of our corrections team, whether it be behind the wire or whether it be out with community-based sentences. But the fact of the matter is they’re dealing with violent, highly organised and sophisticated criminal groups that don’t stop behaving like that just because they’re inside the prison estate.

Committee of the whole House

Thank you, Mr Chair. Because the Minister of Corrections has raised it, I also echo the acknowledgement of the corrections officers. That’s a really tough job and a very risky job as well; they do go towards danger and they do deserve to be safe at work. Certainly, the people who work in the prisoners of extreme risk unit (PERU) are no exception to that. They seemed to be an exceptional group of people there too. So certainly, our scrutiny of this kind of legislation is not a reflection on their work, but it’s important that we get it right. Actually, when we did visit the PERU unit, they did say they do have yoga classes there, so that’s something for you to check out next time when you when you visit.

I just want to stick with clause 5 for now, just because I think there’s a little bit more there. There is a definition of “serious violent offence”, which is quite extensive, and I think it goes a little bit to one of the key issues with this unit, which is, I think, that there’s an acceptance that there needs to be—well, certainly, there’s at least one prisoner that, I think, there’s agreement that that person needs to be there. The issue really comes when you look at the other prisoners within that unit and what their security classification is, what crimes they’ve committed, and what danger they are to other people. That’s really, I think, probably, where the useful part of this debate will be, is focusing on those other people who will definitely be in there a shorter time and, probably, have a high likelihood of re-entering society at some point as well.

So who is making—and I think we’ll talk about that in the next clause—the decision around what a serious violent offence is? You know, interestingly, “perverting the course of justice”, which is in the definition at new section 3AA(3)(b)(iv)—that’s an interesting way to see violent crime. I think “perverting the course of justice”, you wouldn’t, necessarily, think of that as a violent crime, but that’s there in that definition. I wonder if that is because of the nature of some of the risk factors that you’re talking about. Obviously, we’ve got “organised criminal group” there as well, which we’ve already discussed, but the definition of who is actually covered by this unit is quite key.

I mean, I do think that, and, you know, when we did meet with some of the staff at the PERU unit, they could cite examples where people had colluded—

CHAIRPERSON (Tom Rutherford): I apologise to the member, but the time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Tom Rutherford): Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Corrections (Management of Prisoners, and Prisoners’ Property) Amendment Bill and reports that it has made progress on the bill. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 22 September.

The House adjourned at 11.56 p.m. (Saturday)

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