Tas: Tasmanian prison investigation delayed 18 months

AAP General News (Australia)
12-14-2009
Tas: Tasmanian prison investigation delayed 18 months

By Paul Carter

HOBART, Dec 14 AAP - Tasmania's ombudsman says he thought the state's prisons minister
might have known about his investigation for breaches of international human rights standards
in Hobart's Risdon Prison.

Ombudsman Simon Allston announced in September last year his inquiry into a notorious
solitary confinement unit at the jail.

The prison's medium-security unit was the scene of a riot and four-hour standoff on Sunday.

Mr Allston and the state government said they expected the human rights report into
the Tamar Unit to have been completed by the end of 2008.

The ombudsman said a lack of government resources had forced a delay on the report,
which he now expected to table in Parliament in May 2010, 18 months after it was due and
after the March election.

State Corrections Minister Lisa Singh was asked for an update on the report on Monday
while appearing at a news conference about Sunday's riot in which two prison guards were
bashed.

She said she was not aware of any reasons for the report's delay.

Ms Singh said she thought the report was due this year.

She was then asked by reporters to describe the terms of reference for the ombudsman's report.

"That was before my time. But I think it was in relation to a particular incident in
maximum security," she said.

The inquiry is into the management of the Tamar Unit.

"You might have expected her to know that much," Mr Allston said.

Shadow justice spokeswoman Vanessa Goodwin said the state government had promised Mr
Allston's review would be completed by the end of last year.

"The government must now explain why this review will not be completed until 18 months
after it was due," she said.

Mr Allston started the investigation after receiving complaints that prisoners in the
Tamar Unit had been receiving insufficient fresh air and sunlight.

He'd been told that they had been held in the unit without any certainty about what
they had to do to work their way out of the unit, or about when they would leave the unit
if they behaved.

Until September last year, two inmates had been held in the unit since it opened two
years earlier.

Those two inmates had been held in solitary confinement for a total of five and three
years after spending three years and one year in the old prison's Division 7.

The pair were removed from the Tamar Unit after Mr Allston announced his inquiry.

Mr Allston's investigation was looking into all of the conditions in the unit and how
its Behaviour Management Program was managed.

It is examining whether that management complies with Tasmanian laws, international
human rights standards, and best practice standards of prison management.

AAP pc/jnb/cdh

KEYWORD: RISDON

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