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Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 10:39:29 +0800
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From: Dot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: casuarina lockdown
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please find attached media release from PASS, CCSA, Restorative Justice Network of WA. Redistribute as you wish
cheers
Dot Goulding
Media release 23rd May/150 Days since the riot at Casuarina
5 months after the riot at Casuarina prison more than 600 prisoners are still locked up for 22 hours per day. In most cases prisoners are locked up two to a cell. These cells were designed to contain ONE person locked up for an average of 12 hours per day. Collective punishment is being used as a retributive measure at Casuarina prison contrary to Australian Correctional Guidelines to which Mr Foss is a signatory.
Most prisoners are being denied basic facilities. The oval, gym and education centre are not operating. Medical parades and industries are operating at a greatly reduced capacity. Phone calls to families are restricted and visit hours have not been increased although the prison muster is almost doubled. The prison is once again in crisis.
According to the Smith Report, overcrowding and under resourcing were major contributing factors to the riot. The tinderbox continues while the Minister talks of more prisoners! If Mr Foss believes that his present strategies will reduce the crime rate then he is ignoring the advice and research results of experts worldwide. What Mr Foss is delivering to the Western Australian community is an expensive, counterproductive prison regime which ensures that prisoners emerge from prison socially deskilled and resentful. They will, however, have accrued more anti-social skills and made their friendships and business partnerships within a subculture of crime.
Why does Mr Foss wish to take our community down the track of more prisons and the consequential higher crime rate? Has he decided that crime is the growth industry for Western Australia? Private police, private prisons and increased home security, is this really what we want as a community?
We now have sea containers to house some of our prisoners. The community should be aware that these constructions cost more than conventional buildings. Who in the Ministry of Justice is responsible for this economic disaster? Where is the accountability and transparency we were promised with the emergence of the new style management? The sad truth is that the MOJ is still as accountable as a new born babe and as transparent as pea soup. The buck must stop with mr Foss. The same Mr Foss who was heard to utter on all channels of the electronic media that he would not take responsibility for the riot which was a direct result of his counterproductive policies.
Casuarina prison has increased overtime for already overworked staff. Surely employing more staff would be a better long term solution to this ongoing problem. Current strategies are putting both staff and prisoners at further risk. Although the prison muster has increased alarmingly the number of Prison Support Officers has remained the same. It has become almost impossible for these workers to carry out their tasks effectively. Staff stress is at a maximum and prisoner resentment increases daily.
The Minister has failed to address these issues. The MOJ is being neither honest nor transparent about what is happening. Staff and prisoners have genuine reason for resentment. Apportioning blame to a few prisoners and then collectively punishing them all is not just.
The prevailing zero tolerance strategy in Casuarina prison has resulted in an increase in prison charges. Visiting Justices are getting further behind and the backlog of prisoners waiting to have their fate decided grows in proportion to their resentment. Many of these charges would be laughed out of court but there is no natural justice and due process for prisoners within the system. The phenomenon that is ‘Section 43’ is still being used by Management as a means to collectively punish. Prisoners have lost privileges, possessions and the right of movement around the prison. As a management tool, ‘Section 43’ speaks volumes of the spirit and culture of the MOJ.
Prisoner advocacy groups have been kept ill informed about events at Casuarina. All meaningful information has come to these groups via alternate routes. Stakeholders are continually ignored unless they adhere to the MOJ line of secrecy and keeping the community in the dark regarding prison issues. Both victims of crime and families of prisoners are concerned that offending behaviour appears to be nourished rather than challenged within prisons.
PASS, the Christian Centre for Social Action and the Restorative Justice Network of WA ask when will this government take responsibility for the woeful performance of our prisons? Collectively we suggest that there are positive solutions available and that we should, as a community, demand that these be investigated. We need to develop a sense of the common good and seriously contemplate the social justice issues which underpin the crime rate in Western Australia.
There is no quick fix answer to crime but we assure you that a continuation of the lockdown at Casuarina is not the solution.
For PASS Management, CCSA and the Restorative Justice Network of WA,
Dorothy Goulding - 9497 8061, 041 347 8347
Brian Steels - 9272 9141, 041 990 7016
|\/\/\/| ****** Jim Duffield GMT+08 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******** | o o| C _) "In Germany, they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up | ,____| because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and | / I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then, they came for | | the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist, then they came for the Protestants and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time, there was no one left to speak up."
Pastor Martin Niemoller,when arrested by the Nazi Gestapo in the late 1930s:
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