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NEAL FUNNELL[*]
Tracing the origins of the High Risk Management Unit (HRMU) is to traverse some of the ‘most sordid and shameful episodes in NSW penal history’.[1] Goulburn’s supermax follows a trajectory that began with the ‘intractable’ section in Grafton gaol and was interrupted with the closure of Katingal’s ignominious ‘electronic zoo’ in 1978, after the Nagle Royal Commission stated that the ‘cost of Katingal is too high in human terms’.[2] Like Katingal before it, the HRMU replaces ‘physical brutality to so-called ‘tracs’ with sensory deprivation’.[3]
A prison within a prison, the HRMU is shaped, at least rhetorically, by the seemingly irreconcilable goals of harsh punitive sanctions and new age rehabilitation, an idea encapsulated in the Department of Corrective Services’ idiom ‘secure but humane’.[4] At the official opening of the HRMU the then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr proclaimed that the new supermax facility would detain the worst prisoners in the NSW prison system:
[These prisoners] pose a high security risk to the community, correctional centre staff and other inmates. They cannot, or will not, fit into normal rehabilitation programs while in gaol. These are the psychopaths, the career criminals, the violent standover men, the paranoid inmates and gang leaders. The intensive programs in place in the HRMU will try to break the cycle of violence so these prisoners can safely be placed back into the mainstream prison system…[5]
Five years on, the HRMU bears slight resemblance to the rehabilitation-driven facility projected by the Premier.
To be admitted to the HRMU a prisoner must be designated ‘extreme high risk’. It was not until an Upper House inquiry into the operations of the Department of Corrective Services (DCS) almost five years after the inception of the HRMU that a management plan for the unit was made publicly available. Earlier refusals to release policy guidelines were justified by the Department on the grounds that the HRMU is ‘a section within a very different department where the norm is not the norm’.[6] The HRMU Management Plan, together with the HRMU Referral Form and the Administration of Sentences Regulations, reveal that the Commissioner of Corrective Services has absolute discretion to designate a prisoner as extreme high risk and place that prisoner into the HRMU.[7]
Significantly, the regulations do not require the Commissioner’s opinion as to a prisoner’s security rating to be informed or even reasonable. This discretion is enhanced by the HRMU’s referral process that operates after a prisoner has been designated extreme high risk. The referral form effectively usurps the evidentiary process as prisoners need only be suspected, charged or convicted for an indicator in the form’s checklist to be satisfied. For example:
Has the inmate been suspected, charged or convicted
of gang membership/affiliation: χ Yes χ No
As there is no requirement that a prisoner be charged with an offence, a positive ‘finding’ that a prisoner is suspected of gang membership is unreviewable, placing them outside any legal safeguards. The Department unashamedly acknowledged this position in 2003,[8] and in December 2005 Commissioner Ron Woodham went further, arguing that HRMU prisoners ‘should not have access to the courts at all’.[9]
Konstantinos Georgiou’s designation as extreme high security illustrates the broad discretion of the Commissioner. During the appeal against the severity of his sentence, Georgiou raised his segregation in the HRMU as a mitigating factor.
In Way the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal (NSWCCA) had affirmed the principle that more onerous conditions of confinement justify ‘some moderation in sentence’.[10] In that case, it was held that during sentencing, the court is required to make some ‘prediction about the nature of the custody that will be endured by the prisoner’.[11] This by itself poses problems for many HRMU prisoners (including Georgiou) who have been transferred to the HRMU post-sentence. Commissioner Woodham’s response, ‘Well don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time’,[12] is difficult to reconcile with the principle that offenders are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. And while it is widely recognised by courts that, ‘conditions are considerably more restrictive for prisoners housed in that Unit than they are for prisoners in ordinary discipline’,[13] the decision of the NSWCCA in Hamzy demonstrates that courts are reluctant if not unwilling to review administrative decisions made by the Department.[14]
Much of Georgiou’s appeal focused on why he had been transferred from Lithgow to the HRMU. Georgiou was designated as an extreme high security prisoner on 16 February 2003, five years into his sentence. According to Crown Prosecutor Robinson QC there were three bases on which this designation was made:
One goes to the three mobile phones. The second, which is believed from other intelligence, that he is attempting to conduct a business. There is an assessment about his personality and there is also intelligence that suggests a level of desperation on his part about being in gaol.
James J responded by pointing out:
None of [the bases], on their face, would justify finding somebody to be an extreme high risk, bearing in mind that I would have thought that a most substantial portion of the gaol population has some sort of desperation about being in gaol.[15]
Moreover, the Department could not verify that Georgiou had phones in his cell, had never investigated the matter, and had never charged Georgiou with such an offence. In New South Wales, legislation prohibits the possession of mobile phones within a correctional centre, but the Department did not apply those provisions in this instance.[16] Later, John Salway for the Department conceded that he was not sure whether the Commissioner had designated Georgiou because he constituted an extreme danger to other people, or because he constituted an extreme threat to good order and security, or both.[17] Salway did offer another reason for the designation: ‘On the basis of risk, perceived risk of escape, for the good order of the institution’.[18] Oddly, the Department has never classified Georgiou as an escape risk, although for such a classification to be made pursuant to the regulations, an ‘escape offence’ would need to have been committed.[19] Ultimately, as it became clear that Georgiou’s placement was unfounded, acting HRMU Superintendent Mark Phillip Wilson tendered an affidavit claiming public interest immunity over the basis of the Commissioner’s determination.[20]
The obscurity of Georgiou’s placement in the HRMU is not exceptional. Another prisoner, Bilal Skaf, was placed in the HRMU after it was discovered that prisoners at Long Bay were conspiring to inject him with HIV-infected blood.[21] A rationale of ‘protection’ is clearly outside the HRMU’s admission guidelines.[22] Further, of the 45 prisoners being held in the HRMU in November 2003, it was known that at least 11 of those were either on remand or serving sentences of 12 years or lower, rather less than the tariff associated with ‘psychopathic career criminals’.[23] Of the 36 prisoners presently detained in the HRMU, at least five are on remand.[24]
Georgiou’s path into the HRMU can be contrasted with the proposed standards of supermax confinement in Western Australia. A 2005 review by the WA Inspector of Custodial Services recommended that:
There should be strong barriers to the placement of prisoners to higher security levels … there should also be a high maximum-security prisoner management committee to provide strong external review.[25]
The WA Inspector stressed the importance of independent and external assessment to the delivery of outcomes, although no such review exists in NSW. At every stage of the HRMU’s operation — from referral, to placement, to initial assessment, to review, to prisoner support, to the overseeing of prisoner progress — the HRMU functions at the caprice of the Commissioner and the Department.[26]
Nagle could hardly have been more critical of the Department’s role in the secrecy surrounding the creation and management of Katingal. However Nagle’s critique is now being rewritten by the Department justifying Katingal’s closure by its lack of security. Commissioner Woodham recently asserted:
There are a lot of lessons from the Katingal experience. Katingal had no perimeter security. Prisoners broke the unbreakable glass, they broke into it and they broke out of it.[27]
Nagle observed that ‘there is no doubt that Katingal effectively isolates prisoners who are difficult to contain in the normal prison system’[28] — the problem was its inability to perform this function in a manner consistent with the humanity in the man within the criminal.[29] While Nagle censured the Department for failing to consult the medical profession in the design of Katingal, Commissioner Woodham boasted that ‘security experts’ who toured Katingal to learn from its mistakes, were responsible for designing the HRMU.[30] The NSW Justice Minister is similarly vague about how the planning and design of the HRMU differ from that of Katingal:
A number of professionals were consulted in the development of strategies for inmate services and specialised programs …The architect’s brief for the HRMU required a safe, secure and humane environment while maintaining use of natural light and ventilation where possible.[31]
This is clearly a reference to art 11 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners which requires:
In all places where prisoners are required to live or work — (a) The windows shall be large enough to enable the prisoners to read or work by natural light, and shall be so constructed that they can allow the entrance of fresh air whether or not there is artificial ventilation.[32]
In fact there is negligible natural light in the HRMU — cells have no windows to the outside world — and no fresh air; instead what the Commissioner describes as ‘forced air’. Despite this clear breach Commissioner Woodham continues to maintain that the HRMU meets all UN guidelines.[33] Meanwhile, prisoners complain of claustrophobia, freezing temperatures and stale air, no doubt exacerbated by daily 23-hour lockdowns.[34] And while cells have an external area attached to their rear, access to that area is at the whim of prison staff. As Commissioner Woodham put it: ‘They will go when we want them to’.[35]
The UN Standard Minimum Rules also prescribe the treatment and care of prisoner health, but even this appears to be a privilege in the HRMU. In the Georgiou case, the prisoner was held in the HRMU for seven months before the Department ‘wanted’ him to access his rear yard; he waited eight years for shoulder reconstruction surgery at an external hospital. Hours after emerging from surgery, Georgiou was transported back to his cell in the HRMU where he was left to recover in isolation.
Like Katingal before it, the Department maintains that the HRMU is not part of its segregation program. Consequently, HRMU prisoners are placed outside the safeguards offered by the Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Act 1999 (‘the Act’). The Act regulates the segregated custody of prisoners requiring, among other things, that:
• prisoners are informed in writing why they are there (s 13)
• the Commissioner review the segregated custody direction every 3 weeks (s 16)
• the Minister be notified if the total continuous period of segregated custody exceeds six months (s 18).
The Act also enables prisoners to apply to the Review Council for a reassessment of the segregated custody order (s 19). In HRMU parlance, prisoners are afforded none of these ‘privileges’; rather, they are left to slowly lose their minds:
We are being housed in a segregation type environment and yet we are being told that we are not in segregation but on normal discipline status … it is causing us inmates in the HRMU a lot of stress and frustrations, anger and the feeling of injustice on a daily basis over the continual depriving of quite a lot of day to day necessities which normal discipline inmates have access to.[36]
Adding to the torment is the uncertainty about when they will be placed back in the mainstream prison system. There are no fixed sentences in the HRMU; even the Acting Superintendent of the HRMU concedes that ‘it is impossible to accurately estimate how long [prisoners] will remain in the HRMU’.[37] Commissioner Woodham himself has conceded that for some prisoners, the only way out of the HRMU is death.[38] According to the NSW Justice Minister it is policy not to inform some prisoners of the reasons for their placement.[39] Even at Katingal, new prisoners were given a document which outlined ‘how prisoners are expected to behave in given situations, and about the facilities and privileges available’.[40] No such information is available to HRMU prisoners.
The HRMU’s Management Plan states:
The interaction between inmates and staff at the HRMU is considered the primary strategy for managing the behaviour of inmates. This includes the rule-making, personal intervention strategies, procedures for increasing pro-social behaviour …[41]
Inside the HRMU, ‘procedures for increasing pro-social behaviour’ include isolating prisoners in their cells for 23 hours per day. Prison officers are entrusted to participate in case management strategies by ‘providing pro-social re-enforcement and being a role model’.[42] However, considering their increased level of responsibility, HRMU prison officers receive only one extra 10-day training course that includes ‘techniques for maintaining control of the relationship between inmates and correctional officers’, in addition to the mandatory 10-week training course that all prison officers complete.[43] It has also been revealed that officers with as little as two years’ experience in the prison environment have been posted to the unit.[44]
In 2001, the then Justice Minister John Watkins stated: ‘the HRMU is not going to be a dumping ground. The prisoners will be properly assessed and managed …’[45] Despite this, the Management Plan reveals that prisoners accepted for placement at the HRMU include:
Severely paranoid inmates who are not able to participate in programs which require interactions with others and who can be unpredictably violent so that they cannot be managed in mainstream correctional centres or a psychiatric/clinical setting.[46]
The Management Plan seems to formally embrace the American experience where, as the severity of a prisoner’s mental illness increases, and normal ‘psychiatric settings’ become more strained, the supermax becomes the ‘default placement for disruptive, troublesome, or inconvenient mentally ill patients’.[47] Further, as Haney notes, ‘prisoners who cannot ‘handle’ the profound isolation of supermax confinement are almost always doomed to be retained in it’.[48] The Management Plan states that,
A relevant factor determining the length of stay will be the degree to which the individual inmate is able to achieve demonstrable changes in his attitudes and behaviour.[49]
It is a disturbing paradox that draws mentally ill prisoners into the HRMU, and then, because of their inability to conform to the strict regime there, creates impossible targets for their release back into the mainstream system. Both the Minister and the Management Plan maintain that ‘inmates are assessed as to their criminogenic risk and needs at entry to the HRMU, and programs are delivered based on an inmate’s identified needs’.[50] In fact, only one ‘rehabilitation’ program exists in the HRMU, the ‘Hierarchy of Sanctions and Privileges’, a troubling sequel to the ‘crude Pavlovian theory’ that existed at Katingal, where prisoners were expected to conform to the discipline of the institution by responding to incentives.[51] The absence of variation in the HRMU’s rehabilitation scheme can be contrasted with the WA Inspector of Custodial Services’ pronouncement that, ‘[f]acilities with flexible programs targeting the criminogenic needs of the population have the best rehabilitative outcomes and lowest return rates’.[52]
Scott Simpson was a prisoner suffering a severe mental illness detained on remand in the HRMU for almost 12 months. In March 2004 he was tried for murder — the following history is taken from that case.[53]
On 29 March 2002, two days after telling police that he was hearing voices and pleading to be taken back to prison, Simpson attempted to attack a friend with a baseball bat. He was arrested and charged with malicious damage and assault and transferred on remand to the Metropolitan Remand and reception Centre. Upon admission Simpson was assessed as having a history of serious mental illness. Contrary to both previous and immediate warnings, he was placed in a cell with another prisoner, Andrew Parfitt. Twelve minutes later Andrew Parfitt was dead.
Later during a psychiatric assessment, Simpson referred to the CIA, ASIO, Iraq, microwaves and electromagnetic technology. Within two months he was placed in segregation in the Multi Purpose Unit in Goulburn, where in January 2003 he was assessed as, ‘certifiable under the Mental Health Act [and] requiring treatment in a psychiatric hospital’.[54] Instead, at the Commissioner’s direction, Simpson was placed in the HRMU.
The HRMU’s classification system, described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘carrot and stick approach to privileges’,[55] punishes non-conforming prisoners by removing their most basic provisions. The system works by exploiting the ‘sparse’ design of the HRMU and liberally expanding the scope of what constitutes a privilege. In the HRMU, associating with another prisoner, talking with family, eating a hot meal, exercising in an outdoor yard or reading a book are all defined as privileges. Classification consists of assessment by welfare and either a prison psychologist or psychiatrist, where the prisoner is asked to disclose very personal information. Non-compliance with these conditions means not moving up the classification ladder. The greatest challenge for prisoners, as expressed by those inside, is ‘trying to avoid the inevitable madness we are all heading to under this current regime in the HRMU’. [56] Haney notes:
Although in my experience, virtually everyone in these units suffers, prisoners with pre-existing mental illnesses are at a greater risk of having this suffering deepen into something more permanent and disabling. Those at greatest risk include… those whose contact with reality is already tenuous. [57]
The Management Plan states that its principles are ‘derived from internationally recognised best practice in corrections … taking into account empirical research which has demonstrated that appropriate intervention … can produce meaningful positive changes’.[58] However, in a meta-analysis of the literature, Haney found that ‘there is not a single published study of solitary or supermax-like confinement … that failed to result in negative psychological effects’.[59]
In April 2003 Simpson sent a letter to his mother from inside the HRMU:
They took all my property. I’m in a cell with nothing. They are trying to blackmail me by saying, ‘see the psych and take the medication he wants you to take and we give you a radio and TV etc’ … I will talk to psychs just not jail psychs. I will not take any medication as what I am experiencing is due to the fact certain Agencies mainly ASIO are TORTURING me and all other Inmates with ‘REMOTE MIND CONTROL’. Everyone knows this is no secret.[60]
Two months later Commissioner Woodham wrote to Simpson’s mother: ‘I can advise that Scott’s placement at the HRMU is considered to be beneficial to him and his future management’.[61] Soon Simpson was given a TV ‘to help with his voices’, although this was later removed. With the exception of two months, Simpson spent his entire time in the HRMU in Pod 7, on the strictest regime. Commissioner Woodham described the conditions of Pod 7 to the NSW Upper House Inquiry:
They do not get anything, not a thing … Everything they gain you can just unplug it and you can take it away from them. What we have found is that that process is working very well. When they get the maximum privileges, which, to us, would not be much — they might have an electric jug or a television — they do not want to lose them.[62]
Contrary to the regime in New South Wales, the WA Inspector of Custodial Services’ review cited evidence that, ‘severe punishment or restrictions on prisoners have also not been associated with meaningful reductions in prisoners’ disruptive behaviour’.[63] Rather, sensory deprivation and isolation have been found to impact negatively upon, ‘physical and mental health and increase problematic behaviours such as aggression, acting out, insomnia, hopelessness, de-motivation, self-harm, and altered perceptions of reality’.[64] Accordingly, the review reasoned:
[w]ithin the confines of their detention, high maximum-security prisoners should be allowed to enjoy a relatively relaxed regime by way of compensation for their necessarily severe custodial situation. Special efforts therefore should be made to mitigate the impact of the high maximum-security requirements …[65]
According to his mother, Simpson’s world was defined by ‘closeness with his family, human touch and closeness with nature. What is so obvious is that in the last years, months, days and minutes of his life; Scott was increasingly and then totally stripped of these things’.[66]
After almost 12 months in the HRMU, Simpson was found not guilty of murder by reason of mental illness.[67] By that stage he had spent over two years in solitary confinement. After the verdict he was placed in segregation in Long Bay’s Unit 12, where 23-hour a day lockdown conditions continued unchanged, despite his forensic patient status.[68] He died in the dark on 7 June 2004, a noose made from bed sheets wrapped tightly around his neck. He was 36 and left behind a child. His treatment constituted part of what the Sydney Morning Herald's Linda Doherty described as the ‘new age attitude’ of the HRMU that is ‘light years away from the sensory deprivation of Katingal’.[69]
The WA Inspector of Custodial Services’ review began by expounding the ‘supermax’ concept as ‘an Americanism that conjures up the notion of 23-hour a day lock-up in bare and repressive conditions with shackled movements within the unit or the main prison’.[70] It continued: ‘the Review rejects that concept of a high maximum-security unit’, before concluding that the intent of extreme high-security confinement must be ‘to manage the risk of a future event rather than punish for a past event’.[71] In contrast, the HRMU marks a system based on, ‘the narrow premise that the only appropriate response to misbehaviour is increased punishment’.[72] The NSW regime is belied by the literature on the effects of both prolonged solitary confinement and sensory deprivation.
While the HRMU does detain some of the highest profile prisoners in NSW, there is no stereotypical HRMU prisoner. The rationale for placement of some prisoners currently detained in the HRMU is questionable, particularly when prisoners are transferred into the HRMU post-sentence. The lack of coherency or consistency in the assessment and placement of prisoners goes directly to the absence of any independent external review of the Unit.
The HRMU’s other role, as a warehouse for prisoners too mentally ill for ‘mainstream correctional centres or psychiatric/clinical settings’, presents serious human rights issues.[73] As established by the UNHCR, the failure to take the necessary steps to ameliorate a prisoner’s mental condition, once that condition is known, can constitute torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.[74] Of further concern, the ‘in principle’ agreement between all states and jurisdictions to streamline the interstate transfer of high-risk prisoners and terror suspects, transforms the questions surrounding the NSW regime into a national issue.[75] The HRMU, or Harm-U as its prisoners refer to it, is largely unaccountable, unregulated and inadequately justified.
[*] NEAL FUNNELL is studying law at the University
of New South Wales.*
email: neal.funnell@bigpond.com
*This paper is a revised version of a submission made on behalf of Justice Action to the NSW Upper House Inquiry into the Operations and Management of The Department of Corrective Services (GPSC No 3).
[1] New South Wales, Royal Commission into New South Wales Prisons (‘Nagle’), Report (1978) 188.
[2] Ibid, 238.
[3] See David Brown, ‘The Nagle Royal Commission 25 Years On’, (2004) 29(3) Alternative Law Journal 139.
[4] Ron Woodham (then) Senior Assistant Commissioner, ‘Focus on Goulburn as Premier opens HRMU’ (September 2001) DCS newsletter.
[5] Bob Carr <http://goonawarra.ac3.com.au/uhtbin/hyperion-image/pr20010605000> at 3 May 2006.
[6] Email from Rachel Knowles, DCS (10 September 2004).
[7] Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Regulation 2001 cll 25 and 277. Note the Commissioner does not require ‘the Committee’ to make a recommendation before a designation can be made.
[8] John Salway, Area Manager of the HRMU, during examination by James J in R v Georgiou, 70217 of 2001 (30 October 2003); R v Harrison and Georgiou [2003] NSWSC 1240.
[9] NSW Parliament, General Purpose Standing Committee No 3, ‘Inquiry into the Operations and Management of the Department of Corrective Services’. <http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/7E5E11BDE947AF2BCA2570F9001E4239> at 3 May 2006.
[10] R v Way [2004] NSWCCA 131. More significantly to HRMU prisoners was the court’s insistence in Way that any such reduction in sentence was contingent upon adducing ‘precise evidence’ of the conditions of confinement: a rare commodity in the HRMU.
[11] R v Mostyn [2004] NSWCCA 97.
[12] General Purpose Standing Committee No 3, above n 9.
[13] R v Stephen Andrew Gordon [2004] NSWCCA 45.
[14] R v Bassam Hamzy [2004] NSWCCA 243.
[15] R v Georgiou 70317 of 2001 (30 October 2003).
[16] Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Act 1999 ss 53 & 56A.
[17] See Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Regulation 2001 cll 25(2)(a) and 25(2)(b) respectively.
[18] John Salway, R v Georgiou 70317 of 2001 (30 October 2003).
[19] See Crimes (Administration of Sentence) Regulation 2001 cl 24.
[20] Regrettably, counsel for Georgiou informed James J on 19 December 2003 that they were abandoning the segregation issue before Wilson could be cross-examined over his ‘immunity’. It has been suggested that an arrangement was made between the Crown and Defence Counsel whereby the Crown would not pursue a life sentence if Georgiou dropped the segregation issue.
[21] Stephen Gibbs, ‘Fear, Loathing and Politics’, Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 26–27 July 2003, 3.
[22] NSW Department of Corrective Services, ‘HRMU Management Plan’ (2005) 9 (‘HRMU Plan’). Plan can be accessed by emailing gpscno3@parliament.nsw.gov.au.
[23] Individual prisoner details taken from prisoners’ Letter of complaint, signed by 19 prisoners (19 November 2003).
[24] Jonathon Pearlman, ‘Woman May Be Put in Super Max’, Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 4 April 2006, 5.
[25] Office of The Inspector of Custodial Services (OICS), Directed Review of the Management of Offenders in Custody, Report No 30 (November 2005) ix.
[26] HRMU Plan, above n 22, 12–17.
[27] Linda Doherty, ‘The Walls Go Up to Keep Antisocial Psychopaths Down in the Nation’s New Super Max Jail’, Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney) 14 May 2001, 4.
[28] Nagle, above n 1, 131.
[29] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1977) 74. Foucault cites the ‘fundamental law’ as conceived by the reformers in the 18th century that ‘punishment must have “humanity” as its measure’.
[30] Doherty, above n 27, 4.
[31] NSW, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Council, 23 November 2004, ‘Questions on Notice’, (John Hatzistergos, Minister for Justice).
[32] <http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_comp34.htm> at 3 May 2006.
[33] Although with the added disclaimer: ‘a lot of prisons in America do not, if we do not’. General Purpose Standing Committee No 3, above n 9.
[34] The Corrections Health Service argues that since the HRMU is not considered a ‘public’ building, the legislative framework governing health standards does not apply: Letter from Dr Richard Matthews, CEO Corrections Health Service, to Justice Action, 2 April 2003.
[35] <http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/7E5E11BDE947AF2BCA2570F9001E4239> at 3 May 2006.
[36] Letter, above n 23.
[37] Mark Phillip Wilson, affidavit, R v Georgiou.
[38] Linda Doherty, ‘High-security Prison to House the Very Worst’, Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 2–3 June 2001, 6.
[39] The Hon John Hatzistergos, above n 31.
[40] Nagle, above n 1, 227.
[41] HRMU Management Plan, above n 22, 7.
[42] Ibid, 22.
[43] Brian Kelly, then Commander South West, DCS in ICAC, ‘Report on the Investigation into the Introduction of Contraband into the High Risk Management Unit at Goulburn Correctional Centre’ (February 2004), 10.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Doherty, above n 27, 4.
[46] HRMU Plan, above n 22, 9.
[47] Craig Haney, ‘Mental Health Issues in Long-term Solitary and ‘Supermax’, Confinement’ (2003) 49 Crime and Delinquency 143.
[48] Ibid, 141.
[49] HRMU Plan, above n 22, 8.
[50] The Hon John Hatzistergos, above n 31.
[51] Nagle, above n 1, 227.
[52] OICS, above n 25, 146.
[53] R v Scott Ashley Simpson [2004] NSWSC 233.
[54] Serious Offenders Review Council, ‘Psychiatric Report’ (7 January 2003).
[55] Doherty, above n 38, 4.
[56] Letter, above n 23.
[57] Haney, above n 47, 142.
[58] HRMU Plan, above n 22, 7, 18.
[59] Haney, above n 47, 132.
[60] Letter from Scott Simpson, HRMU to Justice Action, 9 April 2003.
[61] Letter from Ron Woodham to Terri Simpson, 23 June 2003.
[62] General Purpose Standing Committee No 3, above n 9.
[63] H Bidna, ‘Effects of Increased Security on Prison Violence’ (1975) Journal of Criminal Justice 3 33–46; P Gendreau, C Goggin and F Cullen, ‘The Effect of Prison Sentences on Recidivism’; Ottawa: Public Works Government Services, Report to the Corrections Research and Development and Aboriginal Policy Branch (1999); OICS, Directed Review of the Management Of Offenders In Custody, above n 25, 137.
[64] Haney, above n 47, 124–56; P Slade, ‘Sensory Deprivation and Clinical Psychiatry’ (1984) British Journal of Hospital Medicine 256–60 as cited in OICS, above n 25, 137.
[65] OICS, above n 25, 143.
[66] Supplementary Witness Statement of Terri Anne Simpson; Coronial Inquest into Death of Scott Ashley Simpson.
[67] R v Simpson [2004] NSWSC 233.
[68] Supplementary Witness Statement of Terri Anne Simpson; Coronial Inquest into Death of Scott Ashley Simpson.
[69] Doherty, above n 27, 4.
[70] OICS, above n 25, xxiii.
[71] Ibid, 139.
[72] Haney, above n 47, 129.
[73] HRMU Management Plan, 9.
[74] Communication No 900/1999: Australia, 13/11/2002, CCPR/C/76/D/900/1999. (Jurisprudence) 8.4, as per International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art 7.
[75] See Commissioner Woodham’s comments, General Purpose Standing Committee No 3, above n 9.
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