Excerpt from The Weekend Australian 7-8th January 2023 newspaper
In addition to shuttering Boggo Road, Mr Hamburger, 78, a reforming head of corrections from 1988-97 for ALP and National Party-led governments, closed Woodford jail, north of Brisbane, when a drop in prisoner numbers and fall by about a third in recidivism made it surplus to requirements.
The state’s largest maximum-security facility, holding nearly 1000 prisoners, now stands there. Queensland’s prisoner population has exploded from about 2500 three decades ago to 9592 on the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics count. A 15 per cent rise in imprisonments for 2020-21 was the nation’s largest, greatly outstripping overall population growth.
“Our approach to corrections is just wrongheaded. Worse than that, it is counter-productive; worse than that, it is criminogenic.”
Mr Hamburger’s plan is to replace juvenile detention with tiered “healing and rehabilitation” centres that would be secure but more holistic than existing custodial sites so no child would be put behind bars in a state where the age of criminal responsibility starts at 10.
Instead of being immediately processed by police, juvenile offenders, plus those considered at risk – such as young children encountered unsupervised on the street at night – would ideally be taken to a separate around-the-clock reception centre where they would be assessed. They could still be charged with a crime and face the Children’s Court.
If found guilty, the offender would be sent to a healing-rehabilitation centre on a court-supervised control order. These facilities would be staffed 24/7 and fenced with an electronically monitored perimeter, but less prison-like than a detention centre.
Crucially, they would be small: a maximum of six beds for violent and serious offenders to allow individualised care, learning and skill development; 12 beds for the next level down. Mr Hamburger said the capital outlay would be recovered from the reduced operating costs and he had made a submission to the government for a trial, supported by prominent Indigenous leaders and researchers in the field.
