Review into Corrections’ notification and community engagement policy

Please attribute to Darius Fagan, General Manager Case Management and Probation:

Corrections has strengthened our notification policy following an independent review PDF, 985.9 KB into our community notification and engagement process.

Public safety is our top priority and we are committed to making sure our communities feel safe, informed and confident in the work we do.

The review, carried out in 2023 by Dr Gwenda Willis, made seven recommendations. We have accepted all recommendations, and work is already underway to improve our community notification and engagement processes.

We have significantly changed our referral process for people requiring intensive reintegration services. These are residential services with a high level of monitoring and support. Decisions to withdraw referrals for intensive reintegration services must now be made with oversight from a panel of experts, including senior Corrections and Police staff, to ensure people are being referred to the appropriate services where their level of risk can be safely managed and public safety upheld.

We have expanded our community notification criteria to include more offenders, including adult sex offenders. While our previous notification policy predominantly focused on community notification for people who offended against children, we can now notify for people who have committed sexual offences against adults or general violence assessed with an above average risk for sexual or violent reoffending. Decisions around who and under what circumstances an individual is considered notifiable are complex and assessed on a case-by-case basis. When deciding whether to notify a community, our primary consideration is whether this will enhance public safety and help us further manage an offender’s risk. There are times when it isn’t appropriate for us to carry out a notification, especially if previous offending has happened within a family setting, or the survivors are known within a small community. We must always be confident that any notification will not inadvertently lead to the identification of the victims of crimes and cause them further harm and distress. In making all notification decisions, Corrections staff have to balance this risk with the benefit of providing communities with information. We will now carry out this assessment for a wider range of offence types.

We are providing staff with additional support and oversight. This will ensure staff are well-supported to carry out regular engagement with communities on how we manage offenders in the community. This will also further support staff to follow a robust decision-making process when determining whether to notify about a specific case.

We are also looking at what additional training and guidance can be provided to staff to ensure they actively consider notifying for individuals with convictions for sexual offending against adults or violence, and what the process in these cases might look like.

We fully acknowledge that the location of offenders can be a concern for communities, and we work hard to balance this concern with our obligation to safely manage people in the community when they can no longer lawfully be detained in prison. Approximately 15,000 people are required to be released from prison each year and our highly experienced Community Corrections staff work hard to ensure each person is safely reintegrated into the community, has suitable conditions to mitigate risk and has safe, suitable accommodation.