The Justice and Community Safety Directorate (JACS) has published a new guide for dealing with detainees in the ACT corrections system.
According to the Minister for Corrections and Justice Health, Shane Rattenbury the new guide sets out a clear set of principles on how detainees should be supported from their initial contact with the corrections system through to their release.
“While the ACT’s Human Rights Act 2004 applies to everyone in the Territory, these formal principles clarify what that means for those in our adult correctional centres,” Mr Rattenbury said.
“These principles give real meaning to our commitment to human rights and supporting the successful reintegration of offenders into our community.”
He said the principles reflected what detainees, the ACT Government and the broader ACT community should expect from our corrections system.
“It will help to ensure detainees are not only safe, but continue to have appropriate access to treatment and rehabilitation,” Mr Rattenbury said.
“These principles will assist ACT Corrective Services to develop correctional centre policies and procedures that better support all detainees, including female, male, intersex and gender diverse, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, culturally and linguistically diverse, those with a disability and older detainees.”
He said the principles aimed to connect the detailed legal human rights framework governing correctional centres with detainees’ experiences and the daily work of staff so that detainees, their families and the community could be clearly informed about how human rights should be respected.
The new 16-page guide can be accessed at this PS News link.
