Discovering Balance
Abstracts - Imprisonment stream
Session 3 Breakout 2, 1.30-3.30pm, ECL1 - Chair: Magistrate Deen Potter.
Question time is included at the end of the breakout session
Dying on the Inside: An examination of women's deaths in prison custody in the UK 1990-2007
Marissa Sandler and Deborah Coles (Women in Prison Advocacy Network - WIPAN)
Dying on the Inside provides a comprehensive analysis of women's deaths in prison in the UK between 1990 - 2007. It presents the findings of INQUEST's women's deaths is custody project (Marissa undertook the research project for INQUEST, an NGO concerned with deaths in custody). Dying on the Inside examines the individual deaths in the context of the policies and practices in place across the women's prison estate. It highlights systemic problems and identifies practices which breach these women's human rights. A comparative discussion of the situation in Australia will be provided by Women In Prison Advocacy Network spokesperson, Kat Armstrong. Based on personal experience and her work mentoring women in prison, Kat will highlight similar, concerning statistics relating to women in prison in Australia with a focus on indigenous women, the crucial need for alternatives to prison for women and the urgent need for more post release services.
Session 3, Breakout 2
Date & Time: Thursday 2 October (1.30pm)
Location: ECL1
Making it on the outside: Supporting women after release
Melissa Lackner (Edith Cowan University, WA)
National and international research shows that many prisoners come from, and return to, dire social and economic circumstances that may contribute to their offending and/or re-offending behaviour. With this knowledge, it seems that a progressive approach to crime control should include efforts directed at ensuring prisoners are released into healthier environments, emphasising the need for effective social supports for those returning to the wider community. For women, the availability of such support, in both practical and emotional terms, is particularly important since statistics attest that many female offenders grow up and live in situations where personal social support networks are either lacking or are highly dysfunctional. In these situations, where necessary support cannot be supplied by an individual's personal relationships, social work services, supplied within the broader community, need to come into play. This paper discusses the importance of the availability of social support for women returning from prison, drawing on the narratives of released women who have sought post-release support from community-based service providers in the Perth metropolitan area.
Session 3, Breakout 2
Date & Time: Thursday 2 October (1.50pm)
Location: ECL1
Sentencing, risk and correctional administration; barriers to redemption
Ms Maggie Hall (UNSW)
The progress of the prisoner through the correctional system is mediated by a number of outwardly contradictory discourses and practices. In NSW, the aims of sentencing now include accountability and attention to harm to the victim, which suggest a therapeutic jurisprudential approach. DCS NSW is committed to a "risks and needs" approach to prisoner rehabilitation, confining access to programs to "high risk offenders". Increasing numbers of prisoners to manage has confirmed the ascendancy of managerial approaches. The relationship between sentencing and correctional administration becomes apparent at parole where the prisoner is held accountable for their efforts to reduce their risk factors, the sentencing remarks of the judge often being used as a template. This paper explores the relationship between the sentencing regime in NSW, technologies of risk, rehabilitation and the outcomes for prisoners of these processes and discourses.
Session 3, Breakout 2
Date & Time: Thursday 2 October (2.10pm)
Location: ECL1