Explicit descriptions of sex crimes available to some prisoners
Court decisions containing graphic descriptions of sexual and violent offending are available to some prisoners, the Department of Corrections has confirmed.
A prominent criminologist, Emeritus Professor John Pratt, was stunned it was happening.
“In the world of the prison, all that information, this is dynamite,” he said. It was clearly very sensitive, delicate material, he said.
The first case Pratt looked at on a publicly available legal information website, which The Post has chosen not to name, contained a pretty “full on” description of a sex offence. “The details are quite striking in some of them.”
The department said it must give prisoners adequate facilities for “litigation purposes” – people who represented themselves preparing an appeal, application, defence or plea.
The prison director decided whether access was needed to the website that contained court decisions, Corrections said.
But once access was granted for litigation purposes, prisoners could see all content on the site. One of the prisoners who can see the website is convicted murderer and child sex offender Phillip John Smith.
Pratt said Corrections was in a very difficult position. “If they [the prisoners] are defending themselves they have to have access to the material.
“I don’t see any way around it, unfortunately. “Clearly it might lend itself to irregularities but at the same time Corrections has to give them access.”
Some prisoners would enjoy the details, he said.
Also, when some prisoners go to prison they try to hide details of their offences. But if their case was among those included on the site it was one way of revealing the truth with potentially unpleasant consequences, Pratt said.
Someone jailed for sex offences, for instance, might say they were there for burglaries, Pratt said.
But Dr Paul Wood, a former prisoner who started studying while serving more than 10 years of a life term for murder, said that before computers, a small number of prison officers would pass on details of a prisoner’s crimes.
In any event, suspicion alone was more than enough to justify violent action against others, he said.
Wood, now a psychologist specialising in organisational development and helping people cope with stress and challenges, said he was concerned about what inmates might read in the decisions.
But he had greater concerns about restricting their access.
“If you restrict people’s access to everything you fail to prepare them for life after prison.”
Some would have access to the material anyway during temporary home leave from prison or being released to work in the community. “If you don’t give people the opportunity to learn and make decisions, they cannot improve. Of course some people will abuse it but greater numbers will not.”
It was a risk but people should have the chance to make good choices, Wood said.
Corrections was able to trace what people had been looking at, he said.
Wood saw no easy answers to the tension between security and rehabilitation.
“I don’t want people coming [straight] from maximum security and moving in next to me. I want people given the opportunity to learn skills that would help them make the right decisions and be contributing members of society.’’
It was an extra burden on Corrections staff to try to police that kind of material which some prisoners had a right to, irrespective of how difficult that policing might be, he said.
The computers were part of the secure online learning facilities in prison.
Corrections said use of the computers was monitored to ensure it was “appropriate”. A staff member checked and approved any material the person printed to take back to their cell.
Extra in-person monitoring was available if it seemed a prisoner who needed access to the site for litigation purposes had also used it in ways not consistent with that purpose.
Anyone found to be inappropriately using the site could face an internal prison misconduct charge and lose access to the computer, Corrections said.