The greatest reservation about the ACT having its own jail is that the magistrates and judges might set about filling it up. At present ACT prisoners are sent to NSW jails. The prospect of sending someone to the NSW prison system — a modern day form of transportation — might affect judicial minds so that they weigh on the side of non-custodial sentences. If a jail were built in the ACT, judges and magistrates in borderline cases go for imprisonment.
On the other hand, the fact that ACT residents have go to NSW is the strongest reason for having a jail in the ACT. Once a person convicted in the ACT is sent to NSW, contact with family is made more difficult, ACT authorities lose all control over them, rehabilitation and parole are out of the hands of the judicial and administrative system that did the sentencing. At present ACT prisoners go all over NSW, not just nearby Goulburn which is a high-security jail.
For quite some time, the ACT was too small to justify its own jail, on cost grounds alone. Moreover, the detriments of transportation did not outweigh possibility that a jail within the borders of the ACT would encourage more imprisonment. Those arguments no longer hold. Other developments have probably swung the balance to having a jail within the ACT.
The present judiciary has made it fairly clear that they regard jail as a last resort and that other forms of punishment like weekend detention and community-service orders would be applied to people who might otherwise have escape a jail term purely on the ground that they would be sent to NSW. Moreover, it is likely that forms of home detention enforced through electronic bracelets may become another punishment option before long.
The appalling state of the Belconnen Remand Centre means that a new remand centre has to be built soon. It would be better to build it at the same time as a new jail. Building and running the jail and remand centre together would enable economies of scale.
Also it seems imrpovements in electronic survelliance, building design and staff training mean it is possible to run a single jail for all categories of criminal or both sexes.
The ACT Government has suggested that it can build and run a jail for about the same $8 million a year cost of sending the 120 ACT prisoners to NSW. However, the Government is yet to produce detailed figures. One of the reasons is that it could not cost the jail until it knew where it was to be sited. The decision this week to put the jail at Symonston was an obvious one, though it took the Assembly committee and the Government long enough to arrive at it. Symonston is closer to existing infrastructure, including Quamby youth detention centre. More importantly, making things easy for families to help rehabilitation is one of the main reasons for having a jail, so it should be in a place close to existing bus routes, not way out on the edge of the city.
The remaining question is whether the jail should be privately or publicly built and run. The record of publicly run jails has not been very good, nor has the record of privately run jails in Australia. Overseas experience suggests jails designed, built and run by the same company have better prospects.
The important question is the extent of accountability. Commercial-in-confidence must not be cited as an excuse for secrecy in the running of jail. The public interest is too great. It should be subject to a freedom-of-information regime and the contract should be a public document.