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Parliamentary Questions


Question On Notice No. 2411 asked in the Legislative Council on 20 August 2019 by Hon Alison Xamon

Question Directed to the: Minister for Environment representing the Minister for Corrective Services
Parliament: 40 Session: 1


Question

I refer to the Minister’s media statement of 8 August 2019 about the under-reporting of prison assaults, and I ask:
(a) when was the internal audit undertaken;
(b) what reporting time period did the internal audit consider;
(c) will the Minister please advise what specific new quality assurance processes have been put in place to address:
(i) under-reporting; and
(ii) recording inaccuracies; and
(d) which reporting time period will first reflect the more accurate records?

Answered on 24 September 2019

(a)    8 July 2019.

(b)   1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018.

(c)    Under-reporting and recording inaccuracies are addressed through a number of measures including:

  • The ‘other’ category was re-introduced. It had been removed in an earlier update to the Total Offender Management System (TOMS). As a result of its removal officers could not record assaults where there was no physical injury.
  • Regular review of all incidents categorised as assault, to ensure correct categorisation.
  • Quarterly internal reporting to Department of Justice Executive on serious assaults with additional review and scrutiny of the assault data.
  • An exception reporting process to identify assault incidents that do not have the assault details recorded (with facility-level review).
  • A system enhancement made in July 2018 to improve the process used to capture and categorise incidents. This enhancement has increased the completeness of assault incidents recorded (in particular non-critical assaults).

(d)   Work was completed to identify and amend misclassified serious assaults from the 2017-2018 financial year. As a result, the rate of serious assault Key Performance Indicator will be restated for 2017-2018 as part of the 2018-2019 Annual Report process.