21 December 2012

Sex offenders preying on the vulnerable in the Prison rehab?

| johnboy
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Justice Penfold appears to be clearing her in-tray before Christmas with a second intriguing judgment.

In this one she outlines numerous reason why on “KC” is a menace to society and then proceeds to add a single month to his sentence.

The leniency was based around a single, late mention of his desire to drink less alcohol (one wonders how much he is getting in the AMC?) which he’s decided not to act on in prison because:

He said that he was not interested in the Solaris Therapeutic Community in the AMC because some of the participants are sex offenders and he would not want to be around “people like that”; he also expressed the view that residential rehabilitation programs do not usually work.

Normally the statements of KC would not carry much weight, but Justice Penfold appears to have based a single month’s additional sentence for six charges of burglary and five of theft on taking this seriously.

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muscledude_oz said :

bundah said :

Yet another special POS who must remain anonymous. Penfold stated that he only recently turned 20,so at what point will his identity be revealed if ever?

It is my understanding that under the law his identity will never be revealed even if he commits further offences as an adult. He will go to his grave without anybody ever knowing he is a crim.

Sorry, incorrect. The vast majority of offenders have juvenile criminal histories, and it doesn’t stop them being named in public as adults. It’s their juvenile record that can’t be referred to, though I notice it often is in sentencing comments, but probably not the specifics i.e. “you robbed X on date Y in location Z when you were 16”.

The man who ran down Clea Rose is a special case, because of all the interest in him every time he reoffends. The media could name him in relation to each new offence, but they would have to avoid making the link with the Clea Rose case – they choose instead to make the link, and complain about not being able to name him.

There must be some reason why this man KC’s identity is being protected, but we don’t know the reason – he could even be in witness protection or something, or be related to a Judge or politican. He’s too young to be the KC from KC And The Sunshine Band.

It may be possible to find out from reading the full sentencing transcript, if it’s available from the court.

IP

IrishPete said :

bundah said :

@ Irish Pete

Nowhere has JB stated that KC is afraid of sexual offenders.What is clear however is that Penfold has noted that the offences that she was passing sentence on occurred around the same time as his previous offences for which he had already been sentenced.So it really is just a case of ah well i will just lump them altogether and for some illogical reason add an extra month.She may as well not have bothered given an extra month is pretty much a token gesture.

The headline for the thread: “Sex offenders preying on the vulnerable in the Prison rehab?”. There’s nothing in the judgement that says SOs are preying on the vulnerable in the rehab. That headline, in conjunction with the quting of the judgement, clearly implies that KC doesn’t want to go to the rehab because of the risk of being preyed on. Anyone not reading the judgement would assume this is the case.

IP

When i first read the headline grab i suspected that JB was being facetious particularly as there was a question mark at the end of the grab however i would agree the grab could be misinterpreted.

More importantly here is a grab from the Solaris website which contradicts KC’s claims.

Treatment in the Solaris Therapeutic Community begins 6-12 months prior to release from AMC and is a three-tiered program. Detainees on methadone or stable on other pharmacotherapies are able to access the program however men with a history of sex offences are ineligible, due to the nature of their offence.

So who is telling porkies?

muscledude_oz11:10 am 24 Dec 12

bundah said :

Yet another special POS who must remain anonymous. Penfold stated that he only recently turned 20,so at what point will his identity be revealed if ever?

It is my understanding that under the law his identity will never be revealed even if he commits further offences as an adult. He will go to his grave without anybody ever knowing he is a crim.

miz said :

I personally have grave concerns about the management of AMC after reading the attached judgment.

Based on the uncorroborated statement of a convicted thief? Wow!

Are you interested in buying a secondhand bridge?

IP

bundah said :

@ Irish Pete

Nowhere has JB stated that KC is afraid of sexual offenders.What is clear however is that Penfold has noted that the offences that she was passing sentence on occurred around the same time as his previous offences for which he had already been sentenced.So it really is just a case of ah well i will just lump them altogether and for some illogical reason add an extra month.She may as well not have bothered given an extra month is pretty much a token gesture.

The headline for the thread: “Sex offenders preying on the vulnerable in the Prison rehab?”. There’s nothing in the judgement that says SOs are preying on the vulnerable in the rehab. That headline, in conjunction with the quting of the judgement, clearly implies that KC doesn’t want to go to the rehab because of the risk of being preyed on. Anyone not reading the judgement would assume this is the case.

IP

The AMC is already a complex of ‘separate’ prisons – for example, female inmates. They would not dream of running these custodial rehab programs with males and females together. Similarly, sex offender inmates (almost always male) are a special category that should be completely segregated from mainstream (male) prisoners at all times. The only way it could occur is if the sex offender himself agrees to be reclassified and go into mainstream (this is unusual because of the risk to the person’s safety, but it does happen from time to time as protection is even more boring than mainstream). There are, of course, other special category inmates that should similarly be kept separate from mainstream, e.g. vulnerable prisoners who are at increased risk of being molested/assaulted by other prisoners, due to youthful appearance, intellectual disability, etc. In a well-run prison, all this is taken into account through the classification process.

It was inevitable that it was going to cost the ACT a lot more money to have our own prison than to send them all off to NSW. This was obvious simply in terms of economy of scale. They should not now be scrimping on such a vital issue as prisoner rehabilitation.

People who commit crimes are, in general, well aware that their actions are likely to result in the removal of certain personal human rights for the good of society as a whole (eg their liberty, and their conditional liberty whilst on parole). The ACT should stop thinking they are doing the world a favour having a ‘human rights’ prison. Other jurisdictions have tried in the past and it has failed. They should wake up and smell the illicit substances!

I personally have grave concerns about the management of AMC after reading the attached judgment.

miz, agree that populations should be separated, but with a single prison the ACT by necessity is going to have to compromise on some practices larger systems can take advantage of. i think there reaches a point where there is “save money” and “simply not the numbers to legitimise running a separate program”.

@ Irish Pete

Nowhere has JB stated that KC is afraid of sexual offenders.What is clear however is that Penfold has noted that the offences that she was passing sentence on occurred around the same time as his previous offences for which he had already been sentenced.So it really is just a case of ah well i will just lump them altogether and for some illogical reason add an extra month.She may as well not have bothered given an extra month is pretty much a token gesture.

Another one where johnboy seems to get it quite wrong. This edited transcript does not suggest that KC is afraid of sexual offenders – only that he doesn’t want to be around them. This is common in prison, where prisoners have their hierarchies, and sexual offenders are considered the Untouchables (in the caste sense, not the Kevin Costner movie). Within the category, SOs against children are the lowest, and SOs with adult victims are often not treated the same by other prisoners (some are able to mix freely), and the in turn refuse to mix with the SOs with child victims. SOs with teenage girl victims test the boundaries of that hierarchy.

Ironically, many prisoners become sexual offenders in prison, raping others or grooming them or forcing into sexual relationships.

People who physcally abuse of kill children generally get lumped in with the SOs with child victims.

Prosecutors can unintentionally affect this hierarchy – if someone rapes and kills, but are only charged with and convicted of homicide, they’ll quite likely go through their prison time without the brand of a SO. Its usually hard to hide that the victim of a homicide was a child, but that also does occur.

In that context, its best to take KC’s comments with a sackload of salt – it would be difficult for SOs to safely be in a residential therapeutic community. Unclear why the judge didn’t ask Corrective Services for some confirmation or rebuttal of KC’s comments. However, she may not have actually taken them into account in her sentencing, so may not have felt the need to test them. In that case, why she felt the need to mention them is a mystery. She only mentions them in the background to the sentence, not in delivering the sentence.

A full transcript would be very interesting.

WHY do prisoners have this hierarchy? Well, everyone needs to feel superior to someone. But a large part of it is that many (maybe half of men, most women) were themselves victims of sexual offenders, usually as a child, and so it’s personally traumatic for them to have to mix with SOs.

Domestic violence offenders usually don’t have a problem from other prisoners, unless their victim’s relative is also in the prison.

IP

bundah said :

Yet another special POS who must remain anonymous. Penfold stated that he only recently turned 20,so at what point will his identity be revealed if ever?

I can suggest what the ‘ C’ might stand for, its the ‘K’ I am having trouble with.

Yet another special POS who must remain anonymous. Penfold stated that he only recently turned 20,so at what point will his identity be revealed if ever?

From the attached judgment, this 20 yo is already in the AMC and is being sentenced in relation to additional offences.
She says ‘having regard to . . . [several factors including] . . . the fact that the current offences fell within a period during which KC committed many other offences for which he has already been sentenced, and the fact that most of these current offences could apparently have been dealt with when KC was being sentenced for other matters’ she decided that ‘it is inappropriate to require any further custodial time to be served by KC at this stage.’ In other words, these new offences should have been dealt with as part of the previous package of offences.

I think this reasoning is valid, and he did get more ‘time’ (albeit backdated and already served) for the new offences.

However, what does concern me is what the judgment reveals about the AMC. If the offender’s claims are correct, ACT prison administration is trying to save money by including sex offenders in mainstream prison programs. Sex offenders should not be mixing with mainstream prisoners AT ALL, for a myriad of reasons.

ACT prison administration needs to go to other jurisdictions where they do basic things like prisoner classification, internal security and prison programs well (e.g. NSW) and do a bit of research.

And they will just have to accept that smaller jurisdictions inevitably cost more because of smaller numbers. Yes, they might have to run some programs twice – once for mainstream and once for sex offenders. But they should not be trying to ‘save money’ by including sex offenders with mainstream prisoners.

Importantly, the ACT prison administration clearly has to get a grip on the entrepreneurial cunning of prisoners. They are clearly running rings around the administration while they keep this ‘extreme human rights’ BS up (e.g. prison child-porn ring post, OD on drugs that were available in prison).

The goal of prison is to ensure, as far as possible, that prisoners who are released into the community are CLEAN and REHABILITATED. It does no one any good, particularly not the wider community, to turn a blind eye to these issues in the name of alleged human rights. The community has human rights too.

OK, rant over. I wish I felt better, but I don’t, now that it is confirmed just how appallingly things are being run at the AMC.

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