Recommendation 1
Develop procedures for the use of self-harm alerts on the offender database.
Recommendation 2
Expedite the delivery of mental health training for peer support prisoners. If this training cannot be rolled out before the end of 2022, provide peer support prisoners with interim mental health first aid training.
Recommendation 3
Increase the range of employment opportunities available for protection prisoners and investigate adaptive approaches that can be implemented in periods of protection population growth to ensure employment equity does not deteriorate as numbers increase.
Recommendation 4
Urgently review the placement options of protection prisoners at Hakea Prison who are sentenced and have incomplete treatment needs.
Recommendation 5
Investigate opportunities to improve access to criminogenic treatment programs for protection prisoners, and other offenders more broadly, including:
- Identifying programs that may be suitable for cohorts that are smaller in number
- Investigating the use of modularised and open-ended programs
- Identifying for trial potential modularised and open-ended programs
- Investigating the re-establishment of sex offender treatment programs at Casuarina Prison
- Investigating the availability of voluntary programs (criminogenic or non-criminogenic) for remand prisoners and those serving sentences less than six months.
Recommendation 6
Improve data input and extractability in the offender database to enable greater oversight of prisoner cohorts and the delivery of services.
Recommendation 7
The Department to consider exempting Serco of their contractual requirement to complete fortnightly reviews of protection alerts at Acacia Prison.
Recommendation 8
Establish an agreed process, timeline, and reporting mechanism with Acacia, Casuarina, and Hakea prisons to review all existing protection alerts using COPP 4.10. Identifying priority groups of prisoners to be reviewed first and set deadlines for their completion.
Recommendation 9
Conduct a 12-month post-implementation review of COPP 4.10 and its effectiveness in reducing the population of the protection prisoners cohort.
Recommendation 10
Develop a protection module on the offender database and digitise paper-based protection-related documents.