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SCOTT:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Scott Mitchell, filling in for Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

After someone goes to prison, the parole system exists to help offenders who are no longer deemed a risk to the community begin to re-enter the society.

But the death of an indigenous woman in custody, who had been eligible for release for a year, has raised questions about whether the laws are too strict.

In Victoria, the state where Heather Calgaret died, 40% of parole applications are denied - often for reasons unrelated to the crime.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Denham Sadler, on the consequences of Victoria’s parole laws and the argument for reform.

It’s Tuesday, November 14.

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SCOTT:

Denham, you've been following the case of a woman held in prison named Ms Calgaret. What happened to her?

DENHAM:

So the case involving Ms Calgaret. She was an Indigenous mother of four who was incarcerated at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, which is the only women's prison in Victoria.

This was in 2021 and she'd served the main part of her sentence and she'd come up to, kind of, her eligible parole period to apply for parole in about like 2020. And she applied for it the following year, but she was rejected in about October 2021 due to a lack of suitable accommodation on the outside. In about November 2021, she was found unresponsive in a cell, she was taken to hospital and she eventually died at the end of November 2021. And that's now being looked into by the coroner in Victoria. And her family, including her sister, have spoken out and saying she's meant to be on parole, she shouldn't have been in prison and her death could have been avoided because of that.

SCOTT:

Right. And Denham, I want to ask more about how her family can get those answers but before we do, I want to ask you about parole. Can you tell me what the purpose of parole is and how it's supposed to work?

DENHAM:

So at its core, parole is meant to kind of make the community safer, like it is something there to help people ease back into the community after they've served the large majority of their sentence. It's set by a court, so there's an eligible parole period where people can apply for it. And if they meet this whole bunch of criteria, they can serve the last part of their sentence out in the community. But this is with, sometimes, very strict restrictions and with a lot of support and resources that you don't get if you just finish a sentence and get released. So the idea is to, kind of, help with that transition back to the community, which in turn is meant to reduce offending and make the community safer. So it's meant to obviously help get people out of prison that don't need to be there anymore, that don't pose a risk to the community, and to help them get used to life on the outside, basically with these restrictions and a lot of help as well that comes with parole that you just don't get if you finish your sentence. And that's, that's how it's meant to work in theory. And that's, kind of, as the Adult Parole Board is the body in Victoria that handles it, and that's how they describe it themselves, that it is meant to provide these, kind of, guardrails to make the community a bit safer so that that's how it's meant to function. But in Victoria, there were some major reforms to parole about a decade ago, and they really led to a sharp increase in the prison population because people were staying for longer than they were previously. There's a really noticeable reduction in people accessing parole, following these reforms. And coupled with similar crackdowns on bail in Victoria more recently, that's seen the prison population skyrocket.

SCOTT:

Right. So Ms Calgaret finds herself in prison as these reforms and changes are, kind of, building and compounding, I suppose, in the Victorian justice system. What do her family say about her being denied that parole just before her death?

DENHAM:

Basically, her family want answers. They want to know why she was denied parole. Why this kind of issue of suitable accommodation has led to her being in prison and ultimately led to her death. And they're pushing, so there is a coronial inquest now into her death that will obviously look at the health issues and what else would have contributed to her death. But her family and her lawyers are pushing for that parole decision to be kind of included in the remit of the coronial inquest, which would obviously give more of a scope to look at whether it's adequate and fair to deny parole based on accommodation issues outside of prison.

So I actually spoke to the lawyer who's representing the family at the inquest, and that's Sara Schwartz from the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, and she kind of described the secretive nature of the parole process in Victoria, and she referred to it as one of the most opaque parole systems in the country.

And one of the main reasons behind that is the Victorian Government have allowed them to not have to follow the rules of natural justice. So those include an opportunity to be heard by the decision makers, a lack of bias in the decision making process and access to the reasons behind a decision, in order to potentially challenge them. So none of those apply to the parole board, they're not required at all to kind of deliver on any of those aspects in their decision making. And she really wants this to be looked at as part of the inquest.

SCOTT:

Coming up – how criminal justice reform is having unintended consequences.

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SCOTT:

Denham, we're talking about parole laws. And you were telling me how, at least in Victoria, reforms have made parole harder to access and a bit secretive. Where can we trace this move back to? Where did this trend start?

DENHAM:

So the trend in terms of parole started, it was about a decade ago.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“The Premier has promised sweeping changes to Victoria's parole system, declaring community safety will be put first after a scathing report into the Adult Parole Board's failures.”

DENHAM:

We saw in 2012 there were some very high profile, very horrific violent acts by men on parole, which led directly to two reviews of parole and then this big reform package that was pretty much entirely aimed of making it more difficult to access parole.

Audio excerpt – Premier:

“Dangerous offenders in the past have been given the benefit of the doubt that they shouldn't have been. That changes today.”

DENHAM:

So that included, they kind of put the community safety as the main paramount consideration. They added the clause about suitable accommodation on the outside. There were new requirements around what programs people had to complete in prison and they kind of had to be completed whether they were available or not, or else you just couldn't get it.

Audio excerpt – Premier:

“The safety of the community will be the highest priority for the Adult Parole Board.”

DENHAM:

And then I think that there's two other exemptions there that also contribute to that in terms of the parole boards not subject to Victoria's Charter of Human Rights and they're expressly exempt from following the rules of natural justice, which also contribute to kind of this, this ability to make decisions without much oversight or transparency and without having to expressly consider human rights. And I think that all coupled together has created this system that is very heavily skewed, in terms of being very risk averse and community safety, probably too far to that way. That means the system's not working as it should, which is about community safety.

SCOTT:

And can you tell me a bit more about how these reforms have actually changed the prison population, the kind of things we're seeing as a result of this trend?

DENHAM:

Absolutely. So in 2012, 2013, which was the last year before the reforms kicked in, about 17% of parole applications were denied. So really the overwhelming majority were approved, a lot of them were kind of low level offenders, non-violent. It was pretty uncontroversial. But in the last financial year, just under 40% were denied. So it's a pretty clear jump and that just equals more people in prison. It's more parole being denied people are serving longer prison sentences. And it means more people getting released with no support. So people that are denied parole because of a lack of accommodation usually don't magically find accommodation at the end of their sentence. They're probably getting released into homelessness or unstable accommodation so it's not necessarily improving safety.

SCOTT:

And Denham we've been focusing on Victoria, but how does it compare to the rest of the country? Is Victoria an outlier, or is this shift something we're seeing across Australia?

DENHAM:

I think broadly we do see it across Australia. I think the risk averse aspects we see in most jurisdictions, but every lawyer, all the experts I spoke to do particularly point to Victoria's like, significantly opaque, even less transparent than other states. So we see Victoria has exempted the whole parole process from its Charter of Human Rights and the two other jurisdictions in Australia, the ACT and Queensland that also have charters, have not done that. They've proved it's completely fine to be kind of governed by these human rights and still have a functioning parole process. And we see all those states that are kind of slightly better at transparency. New South Wales post a lot of decisions publicly, which goes a long way to public trust, and other states are much more transparent with the whole process. In Victoria, you don't have access to legal help to make your parole application, but in other states, including New South Wales, there are specific legal organisations and groups that help people and you do get access to that. So I think Victoria does seem especially poor in terms of the secretive nature of it and the lack of assistance for people. That's kind of been building across the last decade with those reforms.

SCOTT:

And finally Denham, what does this whole situation of parole and bail laws tell us about how, I suppose, Australia deals with criminal justice?

DENHAM:

I think it speaks to the different priorities. I think it shows that there isn't really much emphasis on actually reducing recidivism and rehabilitation, because I think this is something around the world that has been proved to work in that regard. If it's done properly in terms of parole and people getting out and having assistance. But the emphasis here is almost just on locking people up and forgetting about the problem, even though at some point they are going to get out. And I think it shows our approach to criminal justice reform as well can be very knee jerk. These are reforms that were made in response to two awful events, but very much outlier events and they've led to these reforms that have impacted not at all the type of people they've wanted to get impacted by them. They've impacted low-level, non-violent offenders and led to more people being locked up. And almost from every way you can look at it, it's not good even financially. Obviously, people are locked up is very expensive, let alone the impact on the actual individuals. And not having a functioning parole system isn't really keeping the community safe either in many ways you look at it. So I think it just points to a system that's kind of been driven by media coverage and kind of political interests rather than the actual interest of the people they’ve impacted and the general safety of the community.

SCOTT:

Denham, thank you so much for your time.

DENHAM:

Thanks for having me.

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SCOTT:

Also in the news today...

The Director-General of the WHO has warned of a dire and perilous situation in Gaza’s hospitals, stating that more patients - including premature babies - are dying.

Gaza’s two largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and Al-Quds, have both closed.

Israeli spokespeople earlier said it was helping people evacuate and providing safe passage from the hospitals, something doctors inside both hospitals said was not happening.

And,

The trial of whistleblower David McBride began yesterday in the ACT supreme court - over the alleged leaking of documents relating to war crimes in Afghanistan.

McBride faces 5 charges and has pleaded not guilty.

I’m Scott Mitchell. This is 7am, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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