Image: Sue Higginson MLA has led calls for the parliamentary inquiry. Photo: Sue Higginson/Facebook.
Solicitor, Greens MP, and spokesperson for Justice Sue Higginson, has spoken out on the Minns Labor Government’s recent move to enable Corrective Services NSW to find inmates guilty of crimes without enough evidence to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
NSW Premier Chris Minns and the Labor Party have gone completely against the recommendation and evidence proven in the NSW Ombudsman report, which states that 1 in 3 charges laid against inmates during discipline proceedings were incorrect.
Higginson described the decision as distressing and highly problematic.
“It’s utterly astounding that rather than fix the defiance and injustice, the Minns Labor Government is defying the Ombudsman to absolve decades of lawbreaking and injustice,” she said.
Corrections Minister Anoulack Chanthivong announced the changes, declaring there will be changes to the standard of proof for convicting and penalising inmates.
This will mean inmates can be found guilty in the presence of probabilities rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
Changes go against Ombudsman NSW recommendations
The Ombudsman reports that corrective services in NSW had broken the law multiple times in using the incorrect standard of proof when penalising inmate behaviour.
The Ombudsman investigation uses a trend analysis of more than 57,000 inmate discipline charges chosen between 2018 and 2023. An in-depth review of a sample of over 350 individual determinations was also conducted.
The NSW Ombudsman also found that Corrective Services NSW forces inmates to sign forms declaring guilty of offences when they had evidence to prove their innocence.
Corrective Services NSW had reportedly defied international law by imprisoning young Aboriginal men without clear reasoning, and had stripped inmates to call witnesses for inmate discipline hearings, which disobey legal requirements.
The Ombudsman includes a case study of those affected, including Kent, an Aboriginal man known to have a history of self-harm who was punished with 28 days’ loss of buy-ups after being found guilty of disobeying a direction.
Officers reported finding him in his cell holding a razor blade and threatening to hurt himself. They said they gave him several orders to hand it over and warned that they would use force or chemical spray if he didn’t comply within two minutes. Kent hesitated at first, but eventually put the razor down.
He was then handcuffed, strip-searched, and placed on hourly suicide watch. However, records show there was no follow-up support plan created for him after the incident.
There are 43% Aboriginal inmates penalised, as revealed by the Ombudsman report.
‘Nasty kangaroo court’
Supported by reports over the year, the Ombudsman released that 1 in 3 charges laid against inmates during discipline proceedings were incorrect, and 80% of the cases where the inmate pleaded not guilty contained no record of reasons for the subsequent guilty finding.
Another case study given was Colin’s case, he was found guilty of the offence of failing to comply with correctional centre routine and the offence of intimidation. Knowing his right, he requested to call a Justice Health Nurse as a witness in the hearing, but the delegate refused his request since he didn’t know the nurse’s name.
He was restricted in his rights in the court and made a complaint to the Ombudsman upon his denied request to call the nurse.
The governor later dismissed the charge, noting that the inmate had not been given procedural fairness. The disciplinary record was updated to reflect the dismissal, and the inmate was informed of the decision.
“The NSW Ombudsman found that in the dark underbelly of NSW prisons, a nasty kangaroo court system is being used to impose punishment on inmates where Corrective Services does not have enough evidence to prove their guilt, by using the “balance of probabilities” as the lesser standard of proof, rather than the proper criminal standard. We are talking about decades of deliberate and harmful law breaking by a public agency,” said Higginson.
“Corrective Services has been running an illegal kangaroo court, unfairly dishing out harmful punishments on powerless inmates. It’s incomprehensible that now the Minns Labor Government wants to enshrine this unfair, arbitrary, oppressive and currently illegal approach in law.”
The Ombudsman report includes 48% of cases where Corrections Officers broke the law by failing to notify governors, nurses, and security, and 70% of charges were not finalised until after a guilty verdict had already been determined.
For those affected, the Minns Labor Government’s decision is more than change of laws — it’s a question of whether our justice system is just.
“Labor Premier Chris Minns is defying the Ombudsman, defying the presumption of innocence that underpins our justice system, and defying his obligation to uphold the law in New South Wales by changing this standard of proof and by letting Corrections off the hook after 20 years of lawlessness and harm,” she said.
You May Also Like
