Recommendation 170

This recommendation is assigned to CSNSW.

Recommendation

That all correctional institutions should have adequate facilities for the conduct of visits by friends and family. Such facilities should enable prisoners to enjoy visits in relative privacy and should provide facilities for children that enable relatively normal family interaction to occur. The intervention of correctional officers in the conduct of such visits should be minimal, although these visits should be subject to adequate security arrangements.

Context

The Royal Commission report emphasised the need for sensitive and humane environments for prisoner interaction with families and friends with as far as possible, relatively normal and personally meaningful conditions for regular interaction. Recommendation 170 is directed at balancing security arrangements and family visits environments to enable normal family and friend interaction as far as possible for inmates.

Detail of implementation

CSNSW recognises the value of visits between inmates and their families and friends, the importance of maintaining significant relationships, and the need to facilitate contact within the security confines of the correctional system.

Visits with family and friends are supported by CSNSW, as an important part of rehabilitation for people in custody. Visits help to strengthen their sense of connection and belonging with their family and friends, including their relationships with their children. It is argued those who maintain contact with their families during incarceration function more adaptively post-release. The suggestion is that family connectedness, associated post-release planning and support have positive impacts on recidivism, substance misuse, mental health and general community functioning. Each correctional centre has a dedicated space for such visits.

Visit area refurbishments

The Corrective Services New South Wales (CSNSW) Infrastructure Standards comprise of the CSNSW Infrastructure Principles, a suite of nine Functional Specifications, Best Practice Examples and Data Sheets and four Performance Specifications. Functional Standards for Visits areas in correctional centres have been developed to include the following four major planning and design themes:

1.   Enhanced Community Support and Security

2.   Flexible Correctional Infrastructure

3.  Staff Support and Offender Outcomes

4.   Cost Effective and Efficient Operations

The purpose of the Visits building is to provide a secure environment within the correctional centre in which inmates may receive visitors. Maintaining contact with family and friends is an integral part of the rehabilitation of the inmate. It is important that corrections infrastructure is designed and implemented to facilitate and encourage families and other support networks to make frequent positive contact with offenders and with one another.

Through the construction of new and refurbished existing infrastructure as part of the Prison Bed Capacity Program, CSNSW increased inmate visitation capacity by 4,738 additional weekly visits, bringing the total visitation capacity to 13,586. Newly constructed and refurbished visitor areas have been designed with more welcoming and open space, with family friendly facilities such as children’s play and nap areas, and private breastfeeding rooms whilst maintaining centre operations and security. Additionally, CSNSW / PBCP have increased the number of audio-visual link (AVL) suites to provide greater connectivity for inmates for family visits. The increased number of available AVL suites was critical during the CSNSW COVID-19 response which enabled CSNSW to support inmates to maintain contact with family and friends while in-person visits were suspended.

SHINE for Kids

SHINE for Kids is a Non-for-Profit organisation that supports children and young people affected by the criminal justice system. SHINE for Kids has been engaged to facilitate child-friendly weekend visits and child-parent activity days for people in custody, who have a parental or care relationship with their children in the following correctional centres:

• Bathurst Correctional Centre (CC)
• Cessnock CC
• Goulburn CC
• Frances Greenway Complex – Geoffrey Pearce and Dillwynia
• Long Bay CC (No child-parent days)
• Mid-North Coast CC
• Silverwater Complex
• South Coast CC
• Wellington CC
• Parklea CC
• Clarence CC.

SHINE for Kids delivers 18 child-parent activity days each year, usually in the school holidays. In the post-COVID environment, some of those correctional centres have resumed normal service delivery, while others are not yet ready to resume the complete suite of child-activity events and have opted for alternate options to keep children and parents connected, such as ‘Storytime’. This is where the parent records themselves telling a children’s story that is then delivered to the child.

A key function of the Children and Families of Offenders Steering Committee is to support continuous improvement of CSNSW policies and processes to support as normal family interaction as possible for people in custody. The Strategy, Planning and Policy directorate is currently updating the Committee’s Terms of Reference to expand its focus to include:

• potentially any activity that builds and maintains social capital for people in prison and outside of prison to emphasise connectedness, including social support, social networks, and social cohesion
•  identifying gaps in policy and practice related to any activity that builds and maintains social capital and pro-social relationships 
• challenging existing practices that do not foster pro-social relationships
• initiating and oversighting the piloting of new approaches to foster people’s relationships with their families and their social capital more broadly
• formulating related research questions and commissioning research
• providing robust governance for an enlivened CSNSW strategic plan for this area
• identifying training and development needs for staff, people in custody and their families.
• these updates will enable a bolder and refocussed Committee to resume its meetings in the latter half of 2023.

COPP 10.1 Visits to inmates by family and friends

An unsentenced inmate may receive one visit on reception, and thereafter they may be visited twice weekly. Sentenced inmates may receive a visit, and then as often as the Governor of the correctional centre determines.

Visits and visit procedures are approved by the Governor of the correctional centre and subject to appropriate staffing arrangements, suitable facilities and security considerations.

An inmate may refuse to receive a visitor (other than a government official engaged in official duties).

• Under special circumstances, and on the recommendation of a Services and Programs Officer (SAPO), an extra contact visit between an inmate and a family member or friend may be arranged subject to the Governor’s approval. Such contact visits are additional to normal entitlements.
• A person who requires to be accompanied by an assistance animal e.g.: guide dog, is permitted to enter a correctional centre with the assistance animal for the purpose of a visit to an inmate or any other type of visit outlined in COPP section 10 Visits to correctional centres and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992

Visiting hours and duration of visits are at the discretion of the Governor of the correctional centre and subject to any minimum requirements provided in the Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Regulation 2014. The Governor must ensure that inmate visits are for the duration of the advertised times, except in circumstances where safety and security of the correctional centre prevent this.

COPP 10.11 Managing Child Visitors explains that Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW) provide appropriate visiting facilities for children to maintain positive contact with adults that they have significant relationship with. CSNSW is responsible for the safety of visitors under 18 years of age and ensures children are not placed at risk of harm when they visit a correctional centre. It is important that children maintain positive contact with adults that are a significant parent or carer. Child visitors should not be disadvantaged due to the behaviour of their adult parent or carer. Many correctional centres make arrangements to ensure a child has contact visits when the inmate or accompanying adult is subject to non-contact visits. Allowing children to have a contact visit with their inmate parent or carer is not intended to weaken sanctions imposed for the good order and security of a correctional centre but intended to put the focus on the best interests of the child. Governors are encouraged to exercise their discretion to allow children to have a contact visit with their inmate parent/carer, if appropriate. In such circumstances, only the inmate and child will have contact, any accompanying adult would not have contact with the inmate unless deemed necessary by the Governor.

Correctional staff are expected to be tolerant of children exhibiting age-appropriate behaviour. While correctional staff must have regard to safety and security and the rights of other visitors in the visits area, a reasonable balance needs to be struck to ensure unrealistic demands are not imposed on children.

Child visitors under the age of three may have specific food and provision needs which cannot be met by vending machines. Correctional staff must be sympathetic to the different dietary needs of children in this age group and exercise discretion when accommodating these needs. With approval from the Governor, a baby’s parent/carer may be permitted to bring in adequate provisions to meet a young child’s needs during visits. Restrictions are not to be placed on where and when nursing mothers may feed their child. While some correctional centres may offer female visitors a more private area to breastfeed, at no stage should correctional staff direct a nursing mother to remove herself from the visit area.

COPP 10.11 – 5.1 Child-parent activity days - The purpose of child–parent activity days is to provide an opportunity for inmates and their children to develop and maintain relationships. They offer the opportunity for children to spend quality time with their inmate parent/carer. Activity days involve only inmates and children with whom there is a parental or carer relationship. If possible, activity days should be held at least twice yearly. SHINE for kids is a community-based organisation that provides a range of services to children who have parent(s) and/or family in custody. SHINE assists CSNSW in the planning, coordination and supervising activity days.

Family Matters Strategy

CSNSW is building on work to date to ensure that the impact on families of offenders is better understood and that greater effort is made to directly involve families in the pre-release work to reintegrate offenders back into the community following a period in custody. The ‘2018-2021 Family Matters Strategy’ (the Strategy) will drive the importance of social bonds and family throughout the work of CSNSW in custodial and community settings as well as continue and expand a number of initiatives that directly promote closer family ties and strengthen key support networks. Through strategic partnerships with non-government organisations, CSNSW is supporting greater positive family contact between offenders and their families. These partnerships work for the benefit of both offenders and their families and also fit with the broader objectives of CSNSW programs and services to reduce reoffending and the likelihood of intergenerational crime. CSNSW is committed to creating better connections between families and offenders and ensuring that working with families is not seen as ‘something else’ but is part of the mainstream work of CSNSW.

CSNSW is committed to:

• Understanding and recognising the pressure on families with a relative in prison
• Promoting the value of family connections throughout an offender’s contact with the corrections system
• Recognising families as an important source of support for inmates while in prison and a motivating force to desist from reoffending
• Working with a flexible definition of family that includes people that provide emotional and other support as well as direct family
• Understanding the importance of kinship and culture to Aboriginal offenders and their families
• Understanding the unique challenges that children face when a parent or primary carer is sent to prison

Regarding visits, this strategy commits to looking at new ways to enhance visits and post release support by:

• Developing a resource for ‘First moment’ of contact for families of offenders recently incarcerated
• Examining ways to provide support to inmates who receive no or little family/social support
• Looking at frequency and timing of visits including increasing leading up to time of release
• Examining new design standards for visiting facilities
• Developing learning module for Custodial officers responsible for oversight of visit facilities

Evidence

• COPP 10.1 Visits to inmates by family and friends (PDF, 944.7 KB)
• COPP 10.11 Managing Child Visitors (PDF, 3.9 MB)
• 2018-2021 Family Matters Strategy (PDF, 2.3 MB)