Attorney-General Natasha Fyles reveals findings of NT parole system review

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Natasha Fyles has released the findings of an audit into the Territory’s parole and electronic monitoring regime after a review was ordered

Attorney-General Natasha Fyles has released the findings of an audit into the Territory’s parole and electronic monitoring regime

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Natasha Fyles has ordered Corrections to immediately increase the frequency of drug and alcohol testing for high-risk offenders following an independent review into the Territory’s parole and electronic monitoring regime.

The audit recommended “additional resources” be allocated towards testing and “to conduct more intensive audits of offender management” after finding 15 per cent of parolees were not tested within the recommended time frame.

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Ms Fyles ordered the review after accused Darwin shooter Ben Hoffmann allegedly gunned down four men while on parole last month.

While the audit “did not identify any serious issues” in the management of parolees or other offenders on electronic monitoring, it found at least 15 per cent of each were not tested in line with the time line set under the Offender Management Framework.

Ms Fyles said although the request for additional resources would not necessarily translate into extra funding in the short term, Corrections was already in for a $12 million cash injection in the 2019-20 financial year.

But despite the government’s fiscal belt-tightening, Ms Fyles didn’t rule out further funding boosts in future.

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“We need to make sure we’re respectful to taxpayer dollars but Corrections is a front line agency that is responding to community needs but we certainly will make sure they have the resources they need,” she said.

“We had acknowledged that it had been underfunded and that’s why we’d provided those additional resources and of course we’ll continue to work closely and if it comes down to resources we certainly will consider that in future budget cabinets.’

Corrections Commissioner Scott McNairn said in the cases where the policy requirements were not met, “this reflected a short period where testing has not been sufficiently frequent, rather than the absence of testing”.

Mr McNairn said the random nature of drug and alcohol testing was also highlighted as an issue in some cases due to the unannounced nature of the testing, particularly in remote communities.

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“Some of my staff have got to travel, six, seven hours, sometimes we’ve got to fly to some of these communities and at times we do get offenders in communities and at times we don’t and we’ve just got to keep going back,” he said.

Despite his auditors asking for more resources in their recommendations, Mr McNairn said he would also look for efficiencies before going to the government with any specific funding request.

“The review will look at focusing on those higher risk offenders and looking at those lower risk offenders and see if I can rebalance where the drug testing and alcohol testing will be,” he said.

“(High risk offenders) are the priority but we also test as frequently some of the low risk offenders so I want to look at that, I want to review that and I want to rebalance how I test people so I might be wanting to actually test the high risk offenders even more.”