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Sunday March 21, 2010

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Hinch Blog: Conjugal rights sham

Posted by: Derryn Hinch | 13 August, 2009 - 5:35 PM
There was an outrageous, but typical, story that went to air on the Rumour File this morning.  Reportedly a prisoner was allowed to sleep in even though he had a jail order requesting his presence at court. He told the prison officer ‘it's too cold, I don't want to go to court, I want to stay in bed today' ...  so he did!

Everybody else associated with the case turned up but it had to be adjourned.

Now, the Corrections Department won’t confirm or deny the story because, as usual, they hide behind that ‘we don’t comment on individual cases’ defense which covers a multitude of sins and gets the department off the hook whenever embarrassing questions are asked.

And apparently there are two categories involving prisoners and court orders. Mandatory orders and ‘by request’. We don’t know which category this prisoner came under. But you can be assured of one thing:  If you or I failed to appear in court there’d be hell to pay.

I’m due in both Supreme and Magistrate’s Court later this year. And you can bet if I pull a cockamamie stunt and decline respect the court and refuse to stand up (as happened last week) I’d be charged with contempt.

Prisoners’ rights, and their obligations, are in the news again with the ACT government announcing recently that it will begin a program of ‘private family visits’, conjugal rights, for couples, including same sex couples, who have been together for six months.

In Victoria already has such a program although no other states do.  Coincidentally there’s an article in the latest issue of Spectator Australia on conjugal rights in jail and it’s worth debating.

When you commit a crime, and are sentenced to jail, your punishment is deprivation of freedom. Sure, rehabilitation is part of it but the loss of personal freedom, the loss of liberty is the punishment.

You are no longer permitted to do things available in the outside world. Can’t go to the pub, or the footy, or stay out late, or go home and have sex.

Sorry, sunshine, that’s part of your punishment. And if a married prisoner can argue that he should be able to enforce his conjugal rights (which aren’t legally enforceable at home) and have sexual visits from his wife – why shouldn’t a single man be allowed to phone a friend? Or hire a hooker.

Prison is prison. It shouldn’t to be a dungeon where prisoners are shackled and fed bread and water. But it also shouldn’t be Club Med.

Blog comments Your Say

  • Derryn, I totally agree with you about so many inadequacies in THIS government and many before it, and probably the standard of bureaucracy in general. One example: DHS has long been ruled by the 'men haters'. They ran Child Protection and did everything in their power to discourage male participation, so they really have no-one else but themselves to blame for an inability to recruit staff. I spent years in the 'system' trying to 'normalize' adolescent males, particularly trying to demonstrate to them the futility of a 'life of crime'. The problem is - YOU never hear about the successes, just the failures. DHS encompasses a huge area of the population, as in Child Care, Adolescence, Intellectual Disability, Psychiatry, Geriatrics etc. It covers a huge range of people and it is by its very nature extremely intensive and demanding on available resources. There are no quick and easy fixes, particularly when in some cases it involves multiple disabilities. Corrections are basically the end of the road. I am 100% supportive of appropriate sentencing, but at the same time you have to be realistic. You can't lock people up and throw away the key. There has to be light at the end of the tunnel. Someone has to manage this percentage of the population, and you use whatever options are available, including Conjugal Rights if necessary, to achieve a balance of managing prisoners and hopefully long-term, achieving some form of positive outcome. Prisons ARE a true reflection of system failures. By this stage YOUR immediate priority becomes just getting through the day, with the least amount of drama and you use whatever options are available to achieve that goal. Decisions have already been made - it's too late to turn back the clock~!

    Lenny Friday 14 August, 2009 - 4:21 PM

  • Derryn, I totally understand your feelings relating to 'conjugal rights', but on this issue I have to agree with Corrections. It's two issues - long-term control and trying to maintain significant relationships outside of prison. You can lock em up & throw away the key, but the problem is someone actually has to deal with the daily problems it creates over the next 1/5/10 years, whatever. Prisons survive only through a system of punishment/reward. Prisoners are far more manageable when they are encouraged to maintain external relationships. You can treat a prisoner like an animal (as in old-school Coburg College), but at the end of their sentence, that's exactly what you get - an ANIMAL with 5/10/15 years of built-up anger/frustration, ready to inflict it on the community the moment they are released~! That's not smart management, that's DUMB~! A 'civilized' approach is (long-term) far better for everyone. The purpose of prison is to try to "break the cycle of offending", NOT encourage it. As far as the jail order (depending on whether his/her appearance was optional or not), unless there are justified medical grounds, he/she gets transported to court - END OF STORY~!

    Lenny Friday 14 August, 2009 - 9:48 AM

  • I don't see why the spouse needs to be punished as well. If a husband is jailed for 5 years, but the wife would like to start a family, why shouldn't she be able to do that? I think this could see the breakdown of marriages which would only make it harder for prisoners to integrate back into the community after release.

    Mel Friday 14 August, 2009 - 8:55 AM

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