Unit Corrections in Criminology: A Prison Facility Report Analysis

This report, prepared by a consultant for the Victorian Government, provides an in-depth analysis of Australian prison facilities. It explores the purposes and aims of modern prisons, including retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation, emphasizing the importance of public safety and offender reintegration. The report outlines relevant Australian guidelines for prison design, highlighting the architectural considerations and the need for flexibility. Furthermore, it discusses approaches and methods for offender management, risk assessment, and security, including the use of static and dynamic risk factors and the application of the Risk, Needs, Responsivity model. The report concludes that building a new prison facility is a wise decision given the increasing crime rates, while also emphasizing the importance of considering factors related to prison aims, design guidelines, and offender management to ensure the protection of human rights within the prison system. The consultant's recommendations are provided based on the current trends and guidelines.

Running head: UNIT CORRECTIONS IN CRIMINOLOGY AND JUSTICE
PRISON REPORT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Executive Summary
Throughout Australia, a punishment occurs when a person has been convicted of violating the
law by the Australian system of criminal justice. For providing punishment both jails and
community corrections, such as conditional release, trial or community service have been used
by Australia. The death penalty has been repealed from the Australian criminal justice system
and corporeal punishment has also not been used. Thus, the prison has great importance in the
Australian criminal justice system and the Australian government must improve the prison
facility because wrongdoers also have the right to life. This paper sheds light on the advice given
by a consultant regarding prison report.

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Introduction
Australian states and territories bear substantial social roles and competencies, including
regulatory authority for criminal justice administration. Australia does not have a single system
of criminal justice. Therefore, States, territories and other correctional or recovery facilities are
subject to separate and autonomous police forces, courts, jails and juvenile institutions. Prisons
are run in Australia by the agencies of the State Correctional Services for low, medium, extreme
and high-custody of convicted state and federal inmates, as well as for inmates on remand.
Prison can also be termed as a correctional facility, remand, detention or correctional centre or
jail under which inmates are imprisoned physically and different rights are refused under state
control. Prisons are generally used within a criminal justice system: people accused of crimes
may be confined before trial; defendants may be condemned to a particular period of detention
for charging or convicted of crimes at court. Prison can also be defined in basic terms as a
building in which people are lawfully imprisoned as a punishment for an offence (Carlton 2018).
The Victorian Government interacts with me and asks me to compile a report for the government
regarding a new prison facility. I, being a Consultant, mainly focus on the purpose and aims of
modern-day prisons, relevant Australian guidelines for prison design and approaches and
methods for offender management, risk and security.
Discussion
Prisons are usually used to keep the offenders. Many researchers, criminologists are of
the view prison has great importance in the life of the offenders as well as people at large.
Prisons help people to live life peacefully. The security of human life, freedom and property by a
properly working criminal justice system is one of the most critical functions of government.

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Keeping people free from abuse provides them confidence in living, working and raising their
families is the objective of the prisons. Imprisonment is considered to be one of the key measures
of safeguarding society. Dangerous and anti-social offenders need to be left alone to avoid
further damage. It is regarded as one of the special features of prisons. Nevertheless, this does
not mean that public security can only be assured by imprisonment or even provided as
incarceration increases. For other cases, where the wrongdoer becomes violent often and the
society has little risk, the interests of justice could be better served by an alternate penance
(Forsyth et al. 2018).
The expenses of criminal justice are rising dramatically in Australia. Authorities in
Australia spent more than $15 billion on criminal justice alone in 2014-2015. Increased jail
expenses have been linked with a subsequent fire. Australia spends almost $4 billion annually to
build and run detention facilities. It amounts to $ 300 per inmate per day or $ 110,000 a year. It
raises the annual imprisonment of non-violent prisoners to about $1.8 billion. Thus, before
establishing a new prison facility the following issues need to be discussed elaborately (The Use
of Prisons in Australia: Reform Directions, 2020).
Purposes and aims of modern day prisons
There are four primary purposes of prisons, such as retribution, incapacitation, deterrence
and rehabilitation. Payback for offences against society means retribution. Removal of the
liberties from offenders is a way to make them owe their crimes to society. Incapacitation
involves eliminating offenders from society to avoid hurting innocent people. The evasion of a
potential crime is known as deterrence. Prisons are established to warn people before committing
crimes and to deter people from violating the law by the threat of going to jail. Rehabilitation
requires the provision of education classes in jail, the teaching of employment skills and

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psychotherapy with a counsellor or social worker, which can lead to the transition of prisoners to
law-abiding people. Over the years, the four main goals of the prisons were not emphasized
fairly. As a consequence, the structure, configuration and procedures of the prisons vary from
one prison to another.
In Australia, the aim of the prison is threefold. First of all, public safety–jail safeguards
the public from the riskiest and violent criminals. Secondly, deterrence–jail deprives the
freedoms of criminals and other privileges that the majority of society enjoys and serves as
dissuasive. And thirdly, reintegration–prisoners may replicate on and take accountability for their
wrongdoings as well as organize them for a law-abiding life when unconfined (Grant and Jewkes
2015).
Relevant Australian guidelines for prison design
Before establishing a new prison facility in Australia, it is important to provide relevant
guidelines for prison design. The Guidelines aim to identify the heterogeneity of environmental
and climatic variables that impact decision-making on the design of prisons in different
jurisdictions. Consequently, they are not intended to restrict the creation and implementation of
innovative and creative design approaches for new prisons. The guidelines are primarily focused
on the experience of extensive prison structure projects across Australasia in the 1980s and
established through the review of prevailing correctional amenities, the contribution in a working
group of Australasian corrections and creation authorities, and the guidance on Australian, US
and Canadian standards.
In Australia, the architecture of prisons differs considerably. The radial style prisons must
imitate the hub and wheel spokes. The cells, dining space and other services must be situated at

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the control centre. Control centre guards will monitor all activities inside the prison building. A
particular style is used by some extreme safety jails comprising of a long corridor intersected by
short passageways containing the cells and other premises. At the time of moving one place to
another, prisoners must use the central corridor. This arrangement permits close monitoring of
guards. The vertical variant of the hall concept is a high-rise concept. Inmates travel by lift from
one floor to another. Youth institutions and exposed jails also have a group of constructions
bounded by a central plaza. Nowadays, after several movements of the human rights commission
regarding the rights of the prisoners, the prison buildings often include a library, a church, a
dining room or tutorial room (Casey, Day and Reynolds 2016).
Approaches and methods for offender management, risk and security
Once admittance into jail or after completing a Community-based order, adult
wrongdoers are tested for their risk of re-committing crime. The variables demonstrated to
maximize the likelihood of an offender form the basis of the risk evaluation methods of the
Department. Tools to measure best practice risk provide an evaluation of static risk factors as
well as dynamic risk factors.
Static risk factors are those factors which are not altered over time (for instance, age, first
conviction date) and which thus fail to recognize intervention goals. On the other hand,
potentially changeable dynamic risk factors include intermediation goals. These factors are often
known as criminogenic requirements.
Based on the type of offenders, the Department uses a variety of risk management
methods. The assessment methodologies of DCS are reliable with the Risk, Needs, Responsivity
model of Wrongdoer Recovery.

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The model includes a variety of common prevention criteria by which the correct
allocation of services can be determined before enrolment in treatment programs. In this model,
Risk principles adapt service rates to the probability of reoffending of the prisoner. Need
principles to include evaluation and care of causes which are directly linked to the probability of
reoffending by an inmate. Responsibility principles need to be adapted to the offender's learning
purpose, expertise and abilities. The assessment methods used by the Department describe the
factors which may lead to the conduct of offences, such as the use of alcohol and other drugs,
poor annoyance management, dysfunctional thinking and perceptive expertise (Lippert et al.
2016).
After considering the outcomes of the probability and requirement evaluations, a case
plan is designed for each prisoner or convict. In this method, the Department uses a robust
Offender Management strategy. The evaluation is conducted by trained professionals in the
department.
South Australian Courts have the authority to release a suspected wrongdoer based on
Supervised Bail or Intensive Bail Supervision before the following court appearance. In that
time, a Community Corrections Officer may assist them to fulfil their conditions of Bail.
Moreover, South Australian courts can convict adult wrongdoers with Community
penalties or other orders which may include:
 Home-based Detention;
 Suspended Probation Bonds;
 Community Service; and
 Supervised Bonds.

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The department tracks criminals through the case management system of Community
Correctional Centres during the duration of their community-based punishment. The community-
based monitoring system has also been provided by the department for Parole prisoners, home-
based detention release orders and licenses. A variety of Community Correctional Centres and
other public outreach programs are operated across the state (Wood et al. 2019).
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, as the rate of crimes is
increasing day by day in all over the world, thus it is a wise decision by the Australian
government to build a new prison facility. However, before planning in this regard is also
important to consider certain factors in relation to the aims and purposes of contemporary day
prison, to discuss relevant Australian guidelines regarding the design of prison and significant
approaches and methods for offender management, risk and security. These factors have a great
impact on building a new prison facility. As per the Human rights law, the wrongdoers have also
the right to live their life with security which is given by the prison facilities (Naylor 2015).

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Reference
Carlton, B., 2018. Penal reform, anti-carceral feminist campaigns and the politics of change in
women’s prisons, Victoria, Australia. Punishment & Society, 20(3), pp.283-307.
Casey, S., Day, A. and Reynolds, J., 2016. The influence of incarceration length and protection
status on perceptions of prison social climate. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 43(2), pp.285-296.
Forsyth, S.J., Carroll, M., Lennox, N. and Kinner, S.A., 2018. Incidence and risk factors for
mortality after release from prison in Australia: a prospective cohort study. Addiction, 113(5),
pp.937-945.
Grant, E. and Jewkes, Y., 2015. Finally fit for purpose: The evolution of Australian prison
architecture. The Prison Journal, 95(2), pp.223-243.
IPA - The Voice For Freedom. 2020. The Use Of Prisons In Australia: Reform Directions.
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Lippert, R.K., Walby, K., Warren, I. and Palmer, D. eds., 2016. National Security, Surveillance
and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective. Springer.
Naylor, B., 2015. Researching human rights in prisons.
Wood, C., Ivec, M., Job, J. and Braithwaite, V., 2019. Applications of reponsive regulatory
theory in Australia and overseas.