CLP to reveal corrections policy promising more prisons, sentencing options, and consequences

The NT Opposition will promise more prisons, more sentencing options, and more penalties for people convicted of crimes if it wins government this August.

The Darwin Correctional Precinct in Hotlze. Picture: Che Chorley

If elected, the Northern Territory Opposition is promising more prisons, expanded sentencing options, and stronger penalties for people convicted of crimes.

The Country Liberal Party on Thursday will unveil the corrections policy it will take into the August election, with hopes its tough on crime approach will convince Territorians at the ballot box.

“Under the CLP if you do the crime, you do the time, and while you do the time you will learn job ready skills,” Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro told the NT News in an exclusive preview of the policy.

“Whether its jail time, sentenced to a skill, sentenced to a job or compulsory community service, there will be real consequences and genuine pathways to break the cycle of crime.”

She said the CLP would fast-track the scope and design work for two new women’s prisons to urgently commence construction – separate to Labor’s announcement last month that two existing facilities would be repurposed for women inmates in the second half of this year.

Leader of the Opposition Lia Finocchiaro. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

The CLP plan includes:

• Two new purpose-built women’s prisons in Alice Springs and Darwin
• $10 million for two new adult prisoner work camps
• A New Work in the Community Home Detention program
• $5 million Sentenced to a Skill program
• Compulsory alcohol, drug and behavioural change rehabilitation for related offences for sentences more than three months
• Creation of a stand-alone corrections agency, which will include youth justice
• Boost Sentenced to a Job program
• Compulsory community service for youth offenders
• Two Youth Boot Camps located in Darwin and Alice Springs
• A commitment that all future prisons will be built at Holtze

Mrs Finocchiaro said her party would immediately begin work to set up two new adult prisoner work camps worth $10m and built to support 50 prisoners each.

“Plus $5m for our Sentenced to a Skill program, which will build a new skills training detention centre, starting in Alice Springs, to provide routine, structure, skills based training and therapeutic support,” she said.

The policy has hallmarks of the existing Sentenced to a Job program - implemented by the CLP in late 2012 but modified under Labor in following years.

Shadow Justice Minister Steve Edgington. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

The CLP expects this plan to free up at least 270 prison beds across the Northern Territory.

Shadow Justice Minister Steve Edgington said the Labor government had failed to invest in corrections or plan for soaring prisoner numbers.

“Our prisons are bursting, with numbers up nine per cent last financial year, and yet Labor continues to force police to use watch houses to house prisoners,” Mr Edgington said.

“Around 75 per cent of NT prisoners have been in jail before, showing Labor is failing repeat offenders.

“Our Sentenced to a Skill program will give youth offenders a real opportunity to end the cycle of crime for good.

“It will give youth offenders an intervention to turn their life of crime into a productive life.”

If elected, the CLP will also promise an immediate $15m to fund the new work camps and skills programs, plus a slice of the budget once building costs for the new prisons have been identified.

Labor last month committed $57m to deliver its two women’s prisons, one each in Darwin and Alice Springs.

Some of that money will also go to temporarily repurposing the current Don Dale Youth Detention Centre as a training facility for male prisoners – a temporary use while future planning continues as part of the government’s Corrections Infrastructure Master Plan.