Foreword | Corrections statistics in Australia indicate a clear trend towards increased numbers of older prisoners and the growth of this inmate group is paralleled in prisons in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Older prisoner populations present a number of challenges for governments, correctional administrators, healthcare providers and community agencies.
Reducing the rate of self-inflicted deaths in prison has long been a priority for correctional agencies across Australia and internationally. The rate of self-inflicted deaths in the prison population greatly exceeds that of self-inflicted deaths in the community; prisoners represent a particularly vulnerable and high-risk group for suicide. This paper updates Dalton’s (1999) national overview of self-inflicted deaths, which analysed data from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s (AIC) National Deaths in Custody Program (NDICP) for the period 1980–1998.
Foreword | The poor health of prisoners during imprisonment is well documented, but there have been few, if any studies into the longer term health prospects for prisoners after their release into the community. This research is the first to use linked administrative data to track the continuing health problems of and use of health services by prisoners in Western Australia before and after their imprisonment.
Foreword | Although in some ways communities appear to be increasingly more risk aversive and punitive in their attitudes toward offenders, the development and proliferation of a range of rehabilitation programs that aim to address the problems that lead to offending represents an important component of contemporary criminal justice policy in Australia.
Foreword | One way that Australian correctional authorities can safeguard the community is by incapacitating offenders and keeping them away from potential victims. The community can also be protected in the longer term by minimising the likelihood of ex-prisoners reoffending after they are released. One strategy for reducing the risk of recidivism is the provision of treatment, services and support to prisoners during their incarceration and after their release. This approach is gaining prominence in Australia and internationally.
Foreword | Prisoners experience high rates of drug dependence, health problems and premature mortality. Without intervention, they often come into further contact with the criminal justice system, creating further health risk. Opioid dependence is common among prisoners, yet treatment with opioid substitution therapy (OST) may reduce or prevent morbidity, mortality and offending.
In Australia and overseas there exists a paucity of research on deaths in custody where women are the primary focus of study; most of the literature in this area treats women as a subset of the primary focus - men. It has been suggested that this lack of information about women dying in custody is due to the relatively small number of female deaths when compared with the number of male deaths. Indeed, Scraton and Chadwick (1995, p. 89) comment that:
Foreword | Most prisoners are highly likely to re-offend once released into the community and as a consequence, have a high rate of return to prison. This is a costly cycle: in 2004-05 $1.7 billion was spent on 120 custodial facilities housing a daily average of 24,092 offenders. Given increasing imprisonment rates these costs will continue to escalate unless we actively seek to prevent re-offending among prisoners post-release.
Foreword | The National Deaths in Custody Program contains a dataset spanning 25 years with details of every death occurring in prison custody, police custody and custody-related operations, and in juvenile detention facilities across Australia. This report summarises the trends in these deaths between 1990 and 2004. Compared with the period 1980-1989 in which the majority of deaths in custody occurred in police custody, prison custody deaths have accounted for the overall majority of deaths since 1990.