inquiry into the management of offenders …. in order to avoid misunderstanding and possible...

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INQUIRY INTO THE MANAGEMENTOF OFFENDERS IN CUSTODY

THE HON DENNIS LESLIE MAHONEY AO QC, Presiding

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT PERTH ON THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 2005, AT 10.29 AM

MR PETER QUINLAN, Counsel assisting

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MAHONEY, MR: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the second dayof the public sittings of this inquiry into the managementof offenders in custody. Before the sittings proceed Iwish to record and draw attention to the following matters:on the first day of the public sittings of the inquiry Iindicated the inquiry tender to examine in public sittingssome of the events which had preceded and I think I mayinfer gave rise to the inquiry.

I then indicated that this would be done not toattribute praise or blame to those concerned but for thepurpose of examining what those events showed as to thedefects, if any, in what is done in respect of themanagement of offenders. Today and during the followingdays counsel assisting the inquiries, Mr Peter Quinlan,will present information relating to Mr Paul David Cross,leading to his escape from custody on 11 March 2005 andsubsequently his rearrest.

This information has been collected by counselassisting with the assistance of Inspector Ellis andSergeants Gary Saunders and John Wibberley. Mr Quinlanwill outline this information and refer to the issues whichprima facie - I say prima facie - it appears to raise forconsideration. In order to avoid misunderstanding andpossible misconstruction of what is to be done by us I wishto draw attention to two matters which I regard as ofimportance.

First, in dealing with this matter statements will bemade as to, amongst other things, what is said to be theprocedures laid down for dealing with particular aspects ofthe management of offenders; in other words, what happensin gaols and elsewhere. The actions of those concernedwith this matter will be considered and the consequenceswhich followed from them will be referred to. What is tobe said will be based upon the information which has beenavailable or made available to those insisting thisinquiry.

If it should be suggested that any of thisinformation is inaccurate or requires clarification orqualification an opportunity will be afforded to any personwho may wish to correct or qualify it. Steps have beentaken to draw to the attention of those who in the mainwould appear to be involved that the material relating toMr Cross and what happened in relation to him will bepresented in these sittings and that it will be open tosuch persons to present material to the inquiry and/or toappear and assist in the sittings of the inquiry. Istress, should such persons wish to do so they may speak tothe executive director of the inquiry, Mr Peter Byrne, sothat appropriate arrangements can be made.

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I draw attention to what was said in the first publicsittings of the inquiry; that any person may seek to appearat the sittings of the inquiry, and I repeat that anyperson who desires to do so should speak with the executivedirector of the inquiry, Mr Peter Byrne. The proceedingsof this inquiry are of course public in the relevant senseand are open for discussion.

Second, the purpose of dealing with the informationrelating to Mr Cross is essentially to investigate what arethe defects, if any, in what is done in respect of themanagement of offenders. The information may disclose thatthings have been done which in an ideal world would nothave been done; that they are what might be described asunwished for events. If this should occur, then infairness to all concerned it should be borne in mind thatno system for the management of offenders is perfect.

In any system events will occur which were the worlddifferent would not have occurred and therefore if there isa tendency to blame there should be, I suggest, no rush tojudgment at this stage.

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Unwished for events may occur for various reasons.They may occur because of the inherent nature of any systemfor the management of offenders. That is, any prisonsystem. Any such system involves, as the information willmake clear, the making of assessments and the formation ofopinions which, despite the best care being taken, will bewrong in a certain percentage of cases. Secondly, they mayoccur because the system itself has been and has to beadministered by individuals and with one or two exceptions- if I may partially joke, with one or two exceptions, noindividuals are perfect. Mistakes are inherent in theadministration of any system of administration.

Third, unwished for events may occur because theindividuals concerned in the administration of the systemhave been culpable in the sense that they have used, in theexecution of it, less care than they should have used. Ifan unwished for event has occurred it will be fair, indeedproper, to consider whether it has occurred because of thelimitations inherent in any system for the management ofoffenders or of indeed any system of administration, ratherthan by reason of the misconduct of the persons concerned.

At the commencement of this inquiry I referred to thepossibility of damage being done and done wrongly topersons who may be concerned and my desire to do what isnecessary to prevent that occurring. It will be thefunction of my final report to weigh the whole of theevidence in relation to these matters and to draw suchconclusions as, in the light of the whole of the evidence,should be drawn. In the meantime, in fairness to thoseconcerned and whose names may occur, I ask that you haveregard to what I have said.

The present sittings will extend today from 10.30until approximately 1 o'clock. It may be necessary to havea short adjournment or it may not, but I will now askcounsel assisting the inquiry, Mr Peter Quinlan, to openthe sittings of the inquiry and to indicate in some detailwhat is proposed in relation to this matter. Mr Quinlan?

QUINLAN, MR: If it please you, sir. As you haveindicated, sir, this is the beginning of the publicsittings of this inquiry into the management of offendersin custody and will look particularly at the case of PaulDavid Cross, who escaped from Karnet Prison Farm on11 March this year. That particular incident, however,provides a context in which to analyse the general featuresof case management which are applied throughout the WesternAustralian prison system. It's a case management systemwhich has become known as the AIPR system or the assessmentand integrated prisons regime system.

The broad outline of this hearing and the openingthat I will take the inquiry through at length will follow

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this general pattern: firstly, to identify what the natureof the classifications are within the prison system, thethree classifications which are currently applied ofminimum, medium and maximum security and the relationshipof those classifications to the infrastructure whichsupports the prison system. The second broad issue toconsider is the history of the management of prisonersbetween those different classifications and the rules whichhave historically applied in relation to how a prisonergets from one classification to another.

Thirdly, to consider the nature of the change to thenew classification system. That's a classification systemwhich is broadly reflected in a director-general's rulemade under section 35 of the Prisons Act, director-general's rule 14. It will be necessary to go through insome detail what that system is, at least in theory, andwhat that director-general's rule requires in relation tothe classification and management of offenders in custody.

Having done that, the next point will be to gothrough Paul David Cross's offending history and his prisonhistory prior to this most recent incarceration, which wasin 1997, to provide something of a picture of thisparticular prisoner as he came into the system mostrecently, then to consider the convictions for which he iscurrently serving terms of imprisonment. That period oftime neatly dovetails with the introduction of the newsystem, which was introduced at around the time 1999 to theyear 2000, and it will be necessary to go through in somedetail how that system was introduced, the problems whichwere encountered along the way and the various tensionswhich developed in relation to the system.

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Finally, what happened in relation to Mr Cross ingetting onto that system and whether he did get onto thatsystem and the factors leading up to his transfer to KarnetPrison Farm, from which he ultimately escaped. There aresome important preliminary points to make. The first isthat these issues are the issues that appear on theavailable material that has been provided to the inquiry.The available inferences are necessarily provisional.

This is an inquiry and we are conscious that as theinquiry proceeds material will come forward which mayrequire explanation or clarification and those affectedwill have the opportunity to do so. Indeed, communicationhas been made with the director-general of the Departmentof Justice indicating that while persons have been summonedto give evidence in relation to the issues that I haveidentified, the inquiry's conscious of the fact that theremay well be persons that we have not become aware of andthat those persons will need to be brought forward in orderto provide any clarification they see necessary.Nevertheless, witnesses have come forward to enable someprovisional inferences to be drawn. It's in the nature ofan inquiry such as this that people become naturallyconcerned as to the effect that the inquiry will have onthem and the inferences that may be drawn about theirconduct.

Can I say in relation to a number of the witnesseswho have provided information and evidence to the inquirywhich will be given in open session, a number of thosewitnesses have shown considerable fortitude and faith inthe process in being free and frank with the inquiry'sinvestigators as to the things which have gone wrong andthe areas where the department may have been lacking andthose persons may have accepted, with hindsight, thatthings could have been done better. Witnesses who comeforward to do so and who have come forward already shouldbe commended for doing so and should suffer no adverseconsequences for doing so and for doing so in this publicforum.

If I can move then, before going to the broad issuesthat I propose to outline, to say something thematic aboutthe kinds of issues which have been thrown up by theinvestigations that have been conducted thus far. As wasmade clear at the opening of this inquiry on 15 April thisyear, the management of offenders is a matter of particularpublic importance, concerning as it does the safety of thecommunity, but is also a matter of great complexity.

Part of the difficulty which arises in relation tothe management of offenders in custody and the managementof the justice system comes from the combination of twothings: a system will produce errors from time to time; nosystem can be expected to be perfect. But in addition to

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that, when errors do occur there is great public disquietabout it and it's tempting when that occurs for policymakers and administrators to want to be seen to be actingand acting quickly. That carries with it the risk ofacting simply for the sake of being seen to do something.

This would appear to be what is meant when peoplehave said to the inquiry throughout the course ofinvestigations thus far that the Department of Justice canbe reactive in its attitude. When things go wrong, therisk is that decisions are made with are not thoughtthrough or not properly assessed and analysed or notproperly resourced and followed through.

There's also a risk that when change is introduced itcan be introduced too quickly and without adequateconsultation. Good administration requires that there be aplan, a structured plan, and that if things go wrong at anearly stage the administrators hold their ground and testtheir mettle and not jump to some other proposal in orderto be seen to be doing something.

As will be seen there appear, at least on the face ofit, to be occasions in relation to the AIPR system wherethat error may have occurred and there may have been otherinstances which the inquiry will look to, where decisionshave been made against the backdrop of great public concernwhich when viewed soberly and against the evidence, may notultimately be the best policy or in the public interest.

One of the issues which may fall into this categoryand which will be the subject of further investigation, isthe recent decision to build fences around parts of theminimum security facilities such as Karnet Prison Farm andWooroloo Prison.


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One of the other themes that runs through theconcerns raised with the inquiry are tensions that existwithin the Department of Justice and tensions which may attimes amount to hostilities within the department. Thesetensions are in many respects philosophical, representing adifference in view as to how prisoners should be assessedand managed, but those tensions can inevitably devolve ontothe persons operating within the system.

In the Department of Justice there would appear to betensions between different kinds of groups, but aparticular tension which has become evident is between whatmight be described on the one hand as operational peopleand what might be described on the other hand as headoffice people. That tension is in part philosophical.It's between what might be described as an operational,know-how, subjective approach to assessment and managementversus and empirical, more scientific or objectiveapproach.

Those tensions are real within the Department ofJustice and they affect the functioning of the system andit can mean that people working within the system do nothave sufficient confidence or trust in it to be able tooperate that system properly. Why those tensions are thereand how they are to be managed must form part of the focusof this inquiry.

Some preliminary observations, however, can be made.Firstly, any change to the system of managing offenders,particularly when it is major change, must be adequatelyexplained and properly articulated. Secondly, peoplewithin the system must be adequately trained and resourcedto cope with that change. The third point to make is thatany change in approach, particularly where it is a changewhich affects the culture of the way in which things aredone, must be supported at a high level within theorganisation.

Finally, the people responsible for running a newsystem should not be responsible for implementing thechange and selling it to the organisation. Direction andleadership has to come from high in the organisation. Theconcerns that have been raised in relation to the AIPRsystem are that this has not been done, that it's not beensufficiently articulated, that it's not been sufficientlyevaluated and that it has not been sufficiently resourced.

These are not just points which we make now as partof this inquiry. These are concerns which have been raisedwithin the department itself in the past. They're notsomething which is simply borne with the benefit ofhindsight.

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With those preliminary points can I move then to theissues that I identified for the opening - the system andthe history of classification within the prison system. AsI indicated at the outset, and that which is probably wellunderstood, is that within the prison system in WesternAustralia there is a system of classification of securitywhich is a system based on a threefold security rating ofmaximum security, minimum security and medium security.This reflects both a classification of prisoners and offacilities themselves or individual prisons themselves.

Obviously the highest security is maximum securityand those are prisoners for whom high conditions ofsecurity are necessary and for whom escape must be madevery difficult. Persons who fall into that category willinevitably be assigned to maximum security facilitieswithin the organisation such as Casuarina Prison.

Medium security, which is the next security ratingdown, is for prisoners who cannot be trusted in openconditions. While those prisoners can't be trusted in anopen prison, they don't present as having the resources orwill to make a determined escape attempt from a secureprison so they're defined as presenting a low to moderaterisk of escape or a moderate risk to the safety of thepublic in the event of an escape. Prisoner of that kindmay be housed in a medium security facility, an example ofwhich may be Acacia Prison or Bunbury Regional Prison inthe South-West.

The third category, and the category which has causedthe most controversy, is that of minimum security and thatis for prisoners who can reasonably be trusted in openconditions. There's a significant difference between themovement from the classification maximum to medium and themovement from the classification medium to minimum and thesignificant difference relates to the nature of thefacility itself.

A medium security prison is nevertheless a secureprison. A minimum security prison by its very design is anopen prison and that is the category, for example, intowhich Karnet Prison Farm and Wooroloo Prison Farm fall, sothat the system of assessment and classification will beparticularly important when coming to the decision to movefrom medium to minimum.


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MAHONEY, MR: Am I correct in thinking, Mr Quinlan, thatin maximum security the prisoner is either confined to themaximum security area which has a wall and fences and so onand is not allowed out of that except in the company of twoor three warders, whereas in the medium security he will bein a similar area but with a less degree of personalsurveillance or attendance by officers.

QUINLAN, MR: Certainly in relation to the maximum andmedium facilities they are both secure facilities in thesense that the perimeter control is a similar one with thewalls and razor wire and matters of that kind. Thesupervision required in a medium security facility is less.In terms of leaving the prison - and we will come to thisin relation to later investigations in the matter in thisinquiry - there are a number of ways in which under thePrisons Act and under the Sentence Administration Act thata prisoner may leave the walls of a prison for a particularperiod of time. Some of those involve direct supervisionby prison officers, some of those do not, and we will see,particularly in relation to other areas, where approvalshave been given for certain kinds of release of that kind.

The difference with a minimum security facility isthat by its very nature a prisoner is able to escape fromit if they have the will to do so. Karnet Prison Farm, forexample, has a fence which is, in a sense, designed to keepthe livestock in, it being a working farm, rather thanbeing a security issue for prisoners. So it is a farmfence in relation to much of the prison. So it is designedfor prisoners who can be trusted by reason of theirassessment and classification to remain within that areaand to not leave. It relies on the internal resources ofthe prisoner in the management of the prison while they'rein the prison.

MAHONEY, MR: So that the assessment and classificationinvolves, in the end, an assessment or estimate by thosemaking them as to whether the prisoner warrants being keptin one or other of these degrees of security and whetherthey could be trusted accordingly.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes, and it has been a different processover the time. Can I turn to that? Prior to the year 2000the relevant rule which applied in relation toclassification of prisoners was rule 2B, director-general'srule 2B which is shown on the overhead, which - if we canturn to page 5 of that rule - identifies the assessment ofsecurity ratings. This is the former rule which showedmaximum, medium and minimum security under rule 3.1 andwhat existed in relation to that rule was a series ofassessment criteria which were broadly set out in clause3.2, including the level of risk, the nature of theoffence, the length of the sentence, outstanding remands,criminal history, et cetera, those matters which are shown.


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However, the principles which applied in relation toa sentence plan for a prisoner which were set out inparagraphs 3.3 broadly used two different variables. Onewas the length of the sentence and one was the nature ofthe offending. So as can be seen in rule 3.3.1 there's atable given for violent offenders and in 3.3.2 a tablegiven for non-violent offenders, but the generalproposition, for example, in relation to offenders, and ascan be seen from that chart, is for violent offendersserving in excess of 30 months was a third, a third, athird. That's referred to at times by persons within thesystem as the old approach. So a third of the sentence inmaximum, a third of the sentence in medium and a third ofthe sentence in minimum.

One can see that, for example, in the table inrelation to 30 to 50-month sentences for violent offenders.That was not - and it should be stressed as the rulesstressed - a specific commitment to prisoners but was aguide which was to be used in using that system. That rule- for example, if we go to page 7 of the rule - showed onescape attempts - assessments were to take into accountescape attempts in particular ways and there wereparticular rules which applied in relation to whether aprisoner could be eligible for a rating below mediumsecurity if they had escaped.


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One can see, for example, in clause 3.4.2.1 that aprisoner shall not, except in special circumstances, beeligible for a security rating below medium if he or shehas escaped either more than once during the currentsentence or during any previous sentence and committed aserious offence. Without going into those in great detail,they continue in relation to other kinds of escapes andalso in relation to drug use and matters of that kind.

They were, however, a largely subjective approach tothe assessment of prisoners inasmuch as decision-making wasdevolved onto certain persons to make decisions about howthat would occur and depending upon the nature of theperson doing the task, those decisions or assessments maybe more or less appropriate.

Now, that rule 2B generally evolved or in large partevolved into what is now rule 13 of the director-general'srules. Can I say at this point in the process that thereare two rules currently in operation which deal withassessment classification in placement of prisoners indifferent ways. One is director-general's rule 13, towhich we have turned, and one is the rule which I referredto earlier, director-general's rule 14.

There, it must be said, is some degree of confusionwithin the organisation as to the ways in which those rulesinteract. By reference to that rule, if I can turn, forexample, to page 2 of the rule, under the heading 1,Context, it provides that:

The rule -

this is rule 13 -

has application to all prisoners who are not subjectto case management. The case management of prisonersis the subject of rule 14.

So the idea is and was that if prisoners are thesubject of case management they fall under rule 14,otherwise rule 13 would be applicable. When one comes torule 14, however, in large part prisoners ought to besubject to case management by reference to the requirementsof that rule. The processes generally, however, weresimilar to those which applied under rule 2B, so that if wecan turn to page 6 of the rule, at the bottom of that pagethere is clause 7 dealing with assessment of securityratings. Again, clause 7.1:

Each prisoner shall be assigned one of the followingthree security ratings -

and over the page one sees again maximum, medium andminimum security and the kinds of assessment criteria which

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were evident in rule 2B. Similarly, the charts, which canbe seen on page 8, if we could just reduce that a little,are of a similar nature to those which appeared in rule 2Band one can see again 30 to 50 months for violentoffenders, a third, a third, a third, in the variousclassifications.

MAHONEY, MR: The interest of this is that Mr Cross, atthe time of his escape, was in what classification?

QUINLAN, MR: At the time of his escape he was classifiedas a minimum security prisoner, but I will come to thebasis of that occurring and which rule that occurred undera little later. One aspect of that rule, for the sake ofclarity, if I can identify, on page 18 of the rule there'sa reference one can see at the bottom of that screen anassessment document referred to as an individual managementplan report. It's a report which comes out of a unitconference and has a certain approval, the designatedsuperintendent for prisoner serving effective sentences upto and including three years and the director sentencemanagement for all other offenders, and there are certainrequirements in relation to the creation of such a report.

It's important that I mention that now in relation torule 13 because individual management plans form a featureof rule 13, but they are different from what I will come toas an individual management plan under rule 14; what isreferred to throughout the system as an IMP, which eachprisoner who is serving an effective sentence of greaterthan six months will receive. So that for a time therethere were individual management plans which were createdunder rule 13 and individual management plans, IMPs, underrule 14. There was considerable overlap within the systemas to which prisoners were under which system.


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That's background. Can I come to the current rule intheory, which is rule 14, document 10, and say somethingabout the theory of this rule, and this is in essence wherewe come to the system which is currently in operation, whatI've referred to as the AIPR system. It has a peculiarinteraction with the other rule. If one goes to page 2,the purpose states:

The rule provides clearly defined procedures for casemanagement of prisoners within the Western Australianprison system, both public and private. The task ofeffectively managing this process is theresponsibility of the sentence management directorateof the offender management division. Theseprocedures are to be applied by reference to allrelevant director-general's rules, policies, localand standard operating procedures. This rule iscomplementary to rule 13 and should be read in thatcontext. Where this rule is silent on a particularmatter, the provisions of rule 13 shall apply.

That causes some difficulty given that rule 13 says,"This rule applies to persons who are other than personsbeing case managed under rule 14," and it's not entirelyclear what the proper interaction between the two of themis, but the theory of the rule is that each prisoner willbe individually assessed under the rule by reference tocertain instruments and a number of them will beindividually case managed throughout their time within theprison system.

For every prisoner that comes into the system, thetheory of the rule is that a management and placementchecklist is prepared. If I can ask that we go to page 4of the rule and clause 8, the clause provides:

All prisoners received at the Hakea assessment centrewill have a management and placement checklistcompleted -

which is referred to colloquially as a MAP:

The MAP checklist is a criteria-based risk/needschecklist to determine a prisoner's initial securityrating, placement approval and classification reviewdates.

Clause 8.2:

The MAP checklist will be completed within 72 hoursof the prisoner's receipt.

Can I say in relation to that it refers to the Hakeaassessment centre because, as we will see, Hakea is thereception and receival prison for male prisoners in the

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metropolitan area. A similar function is carried out atregional prisons which also receive prisoners.

The MAP checklist is a checklist which appears on acomputer program, which is also the AIPR program andultimately where that acronym comes from, and is completedby assessment officers within the organisation and includesvarious detail in relation to the prisoner. If I can turnto an example of the MAP checklist, which is document 13,as can be seen this is a computer printout which shows theentries that the assessment officer is required to enter interms of the current offence details, et cetera, and ofparticular significance in relation to that is that as partof this MAP process a prisoner is given an initial securityrating which is referred to as the ISR.

One thing we will see throughout this inquiry - thatone thing the department is incredibly good at is firstlycreating committees and also new acronyms. One of theacronyms we will come across is the ISR which appears onpage 4 of the MAP checklist under heading 14. This is ascoring instrument. There's another scoring instrumentwhich we will come to which is the classification reviewscore. What the scoring instrument does is ask variousquestions of the assessment officer and the answers tothose questions produce particular scores which in turnproduce a total score and depending upon what the score isthere will be at least a prima facie assignment of a ratingof maximum, medium or minimum.

As can be seen under heading 14, assessment officerscan recommend an override of that particular score. If youcan just go back to - identify what at least in the initialsecurity rating those scores are. For security reasons Iwon't identify what the actual scoring which has been givenis, but one can see from the checklist the kind ofquestions which are asked.

Firstly, what is the seriousness of the offence, andthere are various training documents which identifyoffences by their category. Then there's a question as towhat is the serious offence history and it refers to priorconvictions. Then question 3 refers to what the history ofescape or attempted escapes are and one can see threeoptions there: none or more than five years ago, more thantwo years and less than five years, or two years or lessago.


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So one can see, for example, that in relation toescape attempts in terms of the scoring instruments, thoseare the available options and in clause 4 what offenceswere committed at large. Those first four questionsthemselves have a particular importance because if theprisoner scores 11 or higher in the first four scores,regardless of what they score on the rest it will be rateda maximum security, but one then goes on to the next set ofquestions - question 5 deals with substance use, question 6deals with further charges, question 7 deals with theeffect of length of the sentence, question 8 deals withstability factors in relation to the offender in terms ofemployment and their living arrangements.

Finally, one then produces - page 6 - the initialsecurity rating, which will be a number, firstly a numbergiven for items 1 to 4 and then a number given for items 1to 8. It will produce a suggested security rating whichunless it is the subject of a professional override will bethe security rating for that prisoner at the beginning oftheir sentence. The initial security rating, if we canturn back to page 7 of the director-general's rule - - -

MAHONEY, MR: That means then that prima facie a person'sclassification which presently is sent to - is determinedin the first instance simply by a computer based upon whatsuggested to be objective answers to questions.

QUINLAN, MR: Not determined by the computer in the sensethat the information which is entered is entered by theassessment officer. This follows health assessments thatcome through, but certainly in relation to the applicationof that tool unlike the position which applied under rule2B the intention of the system is to produce an objectiverating based on a variety of factors which were borne out,as we will see, from research done as to the influence thatthose factors will have on the potential for escape, whichwas part of the introduction of that process.

Certainly, there is always the human element in termsof the override capacity but in the first instance thatinitial security rating score will guide that decision.Now, in relation to the initial security rating one can seeon page 7, at the top, the items that are to be scored andwhat it states in 10.2.2 is:

All of the items are to be scored as accurately aspossible. It is important to ensure that theinformation used to complete the scale is reliableand where possible verified.

That's incredibly important for the application ofthe system that a person is properly trained and instructedas to where they're going to get the information from toenter into that system. Clause 10.2.3 provides the initial

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score weights different factors than those considered inthe classification review score, which we will come to, andone can see the custody rating score described as anobjective tool that defines the security rating and thatchart shows, as I indicated, on items 4 if there's 11 ormore points maximum security and then 14 or more pointsmaximum security, 7 to 13 points medium security, six orfewer points minimum security.

Then one finds immediately below that overrideprovisions and an override capability may be invokedrecommending increasing or decreasing the security rating,however override should be sparingly applied and that theremust be sufficient written reasons to support the override.These reasons should be clearly stated in the report.

MAHONEY, MR: This initial classification by the computerdetermines what may be a very important matter for theprisoner himself, namely, it may commit him to a maximumsecurity prison with the problems that that involves orimportant from the public point of view in that he mayultimately be classified to a minimum security provisionwhere he can have greater access to the outside world thanotherwise.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: It's a vitally important step in theclassification.

QUINLAN, MR: It is. It won't necessarily determine whicharea or which facility the prisoner will be placed inbecause the management and the placement checklist willalso need to take into account other matters that areconcerned with placement.


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There may be a particular reason, for protectionpurposes or whatever, that a prisoner can't go to aparticular facility and I should say that it is notnecessarily the case that there is a complete congruitybetween the classification of a prisoner and where they arehoused, if you like. There are minimum security prisonersor prisoners who have been classified minimum who are inmaximum security prisons and medium security prisons.

The opposite does not apply. One doesn't findmaximum security prisoners in medium security prisons, butthere is in a sense a waiting list if you like for minimumsecurity prisoners who have been classified that way, to beput in a minimum security facility.

MAHONEY, MR: So that the result of that is thisclassification does not in fact determine where they willbe put in all cases.

QUINLAN, MR: It won't necessarily, because there arealways issues of bed space and other matters of that kind,but it will provide the justification for the securitysystem. Now, that initial security rating and the MAPcheck list should occur within 72 hours of the arrival inthe prison system. If the prisoner's effective sentence isless than six months, that is in effect the management toolthat is used for the prison. So if one goes down to 9.1 itprovides, in 9.1.1:

All prisoners serving an effective sentence of sixmonths or more must have a management and placementcheck list and an individual management plan, IMP -

that's the instrument I referred to earlier -

completed.

If you're less than six months you have a MAP, youare placed in the prison according to the management andplacement check list and you don't move on to an individualmanagement plan. The rest, that is all prisoners servingan effective sentence of six months or more, must have amanagement and placement check list and an IMP.

Now, an IMP is identified in clause 9 to be given toa prisoner and it should occur within 28 days of theprisoner arriving. The IMP is designed to map out, if youlike, the prisoner's time and to manage the prisoner's timewithin the prison system. If we can go to an example of anindividual management plan, which is document 15, this isan example, a not completed example, of an individualmanagement plan which includes the information which isagain entered into the computer by the assessment officer.

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One can see the first part deals with placement andhas boxes for identifying where the plan for theirplacement is and their security rating, what the offendingbehaviour has been, in clause 2.4, and what special needsmay be necessary in relation to the prisoner. Going overthe page, this is the place where health issues andrehabilitation and reintegration issues are identified andlooking on that plan, in clause 4, what intervention needsthe prisoner may have.

So, for example, the prisoner may require protection,may require a cognitive skills course, education andvocational training, sex offending treatment, violentoffending treatment, substance abuse treatment or treatmentin relation to domestic violence. That's where the needsfor those kinds of interventions are identified and enteredinto the comments section.

MAHONEY, MR: These documents then are available as partof the transcript of the proceedings to anybody who wishesto examine them.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: Yes.

QUINLAN, MR: Other than where I will indicate that adocument has security issues, which won't be identified.The idea behind the individual management plan is that itplans the management of the prisoner from the outset, sothat it identifies which courses or programs the offenderneeds and makes provision for it at the time that theindividual management plan is set. That's a different waythan the way in which previous rule 2B applied. So thatonce an individual management plan is completed it willhave within it what is expected to occur throughout thisprisoner's time within the prison. So if we go to the nextpage of the individual management plan, one can seeplacements in the boxes there with what are intended to bethe security ratings for particular dates, what facilitythey will be in and what course they may need to do.


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A prisoner may need a substance abuse course or aviolent offenders treatment program and at the time themanagement plan is prepared they will be booked for that sothat they can progress through their sentence and achievewhatever outcomes are necessary for them to be eligible,for example, for parole. This document also identifieswhat the earliest eligible dates are for parole, for homeleave, for work and re-entry release and matters of thatkind.

The idea is that every prisoner gets a plan and knowswhere they're going throughout the system. Casemanagement, if you like, is the way in which a prisoner isprogressed through their plan and the way in which the planis reviewed and modified as time goes on. The way thatthat's expected to occur, for example, is that allprisoners with an individual management plan are supposedto have a case officer. If we go back to the rule inpage 11, clause 12.1.2 provides:

All prisoners with an IMP are to have a case officerallocated.

That case officer is to be responsible for reviewingthe plan and making contact with the offender so that thatplan can be managed throughout the term. The intent of therule is that unlike under rule 2(b) where reviews had to beinitiated by particular conduct or the prisoner, theintention of case management is that IMPs or involvementmanagement plans are subject to periodic review.

If we can go to page 13, clause 12.5, we can see inthat box an identification of the review schedule, sodepending upon what the effective sentence is, the reviewswill either be every 12 months or every six months toreview how is the prisoner progressing through their plan?Have they done the programs as scheduled? Are therechanges that need to be done to the plan?

One of the things which occurs at the time of thereview, or is intended to occur at the time of the review,is a classification review in terms of the classificationof a prisoner. For example, if we go to documentnumber 12, this is a similar document to the initialsecurity rating that we identified and this produces whatis referred to as a CRS, a classification review score.It's similar to the initial security rating but it hasadditional components and one can see that one of thecomponents is a history of institutional violence, which isquestion 4. That doesn't appear in the initial securityrating but it appears in the classification review score.

One can see from the heading, and this is perhapsanother area where the training and the competence of theparticular officer will be important - is being able to

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identify whether there's been serious incidents againststaff, visitors or others and the identification of whetherthat's occurred in the previous five years, because thequestion itself asks to state the most serious incidentagainst staff, visitors or other offenders in the previousfive years and one then gets a score based on thatparticular item.

If one then turns to the next page, other issueswhich are then included which aren't in the initialsecurity rating are disciplinary convictions which appearon question 8 and questions about the severity ofdisciplinary convictions. Likewise, towards the end,because this is a security review there will need to bereports as to industrial or education performance andprogram performance, and again one can see depending uponwhat is shown a different score will be given for thosequestions.

One has concepts such as above average worker,average worker, unsatisfactory, refuses to work, so it's anobjective tool but there is necessarily a subjectiveelement in terms of the input of information that goes into it and a need for consistency across the board as towhat is regarded as successful completion of programs orwhat is regarded as above average worker or average workerand matters of that kind because all of them will affectthe score.


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If we go to the last page of that document, as withthe initial security rating it produces a score and theremay be a recommendation by the assessment officer for anoverride which depending upon the nature of the fence willbe determined either at a superintendent level or by themanager of sentence management. That in turn will affectthe movement of a prisoner throughout the system andchanges to their IMP. So that recommendation, for example,in an IMP would form part of the IMP review to change theindividual management plan to move the offender to adifferent facility. As we will see, in the history inrelation to Mr Cross that's indeed what happened withMr Cross.

MAHONEY, MR: I take it you're referring to this indetail, firstly, because it will be relevant in discussinggenerally the management of offenders in this state andthen, secondly, because in particular in the case ofMr Cross what has happened in the way in which the systemhas been operated or manipulated will be relevant inunderstanding what happened in this case?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes, it will be. To go through that is toshow, firstly, what the system is but it also shows thatthat system which is designed on an objective criteriainputs by persons and the assessment and gathering ofinformation by assessment officers shows that the need fortraining and resourcing of that system is palpable. It isa system which requires persons to have sufficient skillsto be able to do so. It's not just a matter of punchingbuttons to produce a particular result.

The other thing that he demonstrates is thatdepending upon the user - and this isn't a situation whichwould appear to apply in relation to Mr Cross but it maybecome evident in other cases that we look at - it isentirely possible with that system to manipulate theresult. One can change a particular entry in order toachieve a particular outcome if that is what was wanted tobe done. That again highlights the need for anunderstanding of the system, training in relation to thesystem and a consistency across the board in terms of howthe system is used.

This system is used now across the board. In themetropolitan area the first occasion this will occur willbe at Hakea Prison because it is the remand and receivalprison, but as prisoners move out into the prison system,move out into either other metropolitan prisons or regionalprisons, the management that's required bydirector-general's rule 14 has to continue and the reviewswhich occur have to be done at the site where the prisoneris.

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That's the system in theory. The other aspect whichI haven't referred to in great detail is that anotherelement of that system is the requirement for caseconferences and those case conferences are the occasionsduring which the changes to the individual management planare discussed with a prisoner. Again, the intention isthat a prisoner will have input into their individualmanagement plan, will get a copy of it in order that theyknow what is to happen during their time of imprisonment.That's the system according to the documents, the system intheory, if you like.

MAHONEY, MR: There is, I think, a provision for appeal bythe prisoner, is there?

QUINLAN, MR: There is, and there are various levels ofauthority in relation to who makes decisions and matters ofthat kind that form part of director-general's rule 14.

MAHONEY, MR: So in theory the prisoner may appeal againstany particular finding and it's a part of the assessment ofthe process as to whether that appeal section actuallyworks?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. That's not something which has everoccurred in relation to Mr Cross but it is something whichhas occurred in relation to other matters which will be thesubject of hearings or the inquiry. Can I turn then -that's the system in theory - to Paul David Cross? Thistakes us back somewhat. A case study has been prepared ofMr Cross's criminal history and it has in fact beenprepared diagrammatically on the chart which can be seen onthe wall.

If I can just go through effectively what Mr Cross'shistory was to provide the background as to who he was whenhe most recently came into the system.

MAHONEY, MR: That chart is an exhibit in the proceedings?

QUINLAN, MR: It will be, and perhaps I can tender it. Itwill be exhibit 2.

MAHONEY, MR: Yes. So that chart is an exhibit part ofthe transcript of the proceedings. It will be left whereit is so that at an appropriate time people may inspect itif they wish to.

QUINLAN, MR: Paul David Cross was born in Victoria in1959. He's currently a maximum security sentenced prisonerat Casuarina Prison.


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He first began - as the chart shows, was firstconvicted of an offence in 1967 for larceny of a bicycle.In 1972 he was convicted of seven counts of housebreakingand stealing from a dwelling and at that time didn'treceive any term of detention or imprisonment for thosecharges. He was convicted the next year, in 1973, of afurther five counts of larceny and one count ofhousebreaking and stealing.

Sometime after that he travelled to Queensland. InSeptember 1975 he was convicted of traffic offences,unlawful use of motor vehicle, and was fined for thoseoffences. In November of that year he was convicted of twocounts of stealing and one count of unlawful use of a motorvehicle and for that offence he was imprisoned for onemonth and was first imprisoned at that time.

He returned to Victoria. In September 1976 he wasconvicted of robbery, two counts of burglary, theft of amotor car with intent to commit a felony, theft of a motorcar and going equipped for theft. For those offences hewas sentenced to three years' custody at Malmsbury YouthTraining Centre.

Sometime before May 1977 he escaped from the trainingcentre and came to Western Australia. That's the firstrecorded escape of Mr Cross. He travelled to Geraldton andin May 1977 he was first convicted of an offence in WesternAustralia. He was convicted of break, enter and steal withintent, three counts of break, enter and steal, possessionof cannabis, possession of housebreaking implements andunlawful possession. He was imprisoned at GeraldtonRegional Prison from May 1977 to October 1977.

At the completion of those terms of imprisonment hewas remanded to the custody of Victorian detectives, wasextradited to Melbourne to answer the charges of escape,theft of the motor car and the two counts of burglary. Onconviction of those charges he was imprisoned for 15 monthsat Pentridge Prison in Victoria. He was released to paroleon 22 November 1978, with a parole expiry date inSeptember 1980.

He breached that parole by travelling to WesternAustralia. Arriving in Western Australia he committed astealing offence in September 1979 and on 29 February 1980he committed an armed hold-up of the Bank of New SouthWales in West Perth. On 3 March 1980 he was arrested andremanded in custody, charged with stealing with violencewhile armed. That's his first armed robbery charge. On14 July 1980 he was sentenced to a parole term of sevenyears with a minimum of three years' imprisonment for theoffences of stealing and robbery whilst armed.

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He was housed as a maximum security prisoner atFremantle Prison where he worked in the metal shop.According to the judge's sentencing remarks, the stealingoffence, referred to him having stolen money and equipmentfrom a friend and in relation to the armed robbery heentered the Bank of New South Wales armed with a replicapistol. In describing the offence he stated that heapproached the teller, handed her a note on a withdrawalslip which read, "Put all the money in the bag."

While he was in prison on that occasion he wascharged and convicted with four prison offences, on17 June 1980, on 7 July 1980, on 11 July 1980 and on30 April 1981. They were essentially prison offences ofobeying lawful orders, using indecent language orcommitting an act subversive of the order of the prison byadopting a threatening and aggressive manner. In relationto each of those prison offences he received confinement ina punishment cell.

On 21 May 1981, in the company of another sentencedprisoner, he escaped from Fremantle Prison by climbing overthe roof and the wall. That was his second recordedescape. He remained at large until 25 May 1981, when hewas recaptured, charged with stealing and receiving andescape legal custody. He was imprisoned for two months onthe stealing charge and received 18 months' imprisonmentcumulative for the escape, which was later reduced to sixmonths on appeal.

Now, during that time, once he returned into custodyhe was convicted of, during 1982 and early 1983, threefurther prison offences, the first being in January 1982for disobeying the rules of the prison by refusing toattend a muster, in 31 August 1982 for behaving in athreatening manner towards an officer and in 1983, inFebruary, for using indecent language to an officer. In1983, however, early 1983, he received a good work reportand the prison officer at the time reported:

During the past two rosters and previous rosters Ikept a close watch on prisoner Cross. During theperiod I note he has changed his general attitudefrom a surly, sour individual to a pleasant,congenial, industrious worker. His good humour andconsistently good work record warrants myrecommendation. I therefore wish this to be notedfor future reference.


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Three months later he was transferred to the WestPerth work release centre to participate in a work releaseprogram. While he was in the custody and care of theprisons department at the West Perth work release centre hecommitted a further four armed robberies on financialinstitutions. That was his second to fifth armedrobberies. He remained unidentified as the offender atthat time and was released on parole on 15 August 1983.

MAHONEY, MR: So that while he was allowed out of prisonbut still within his sentence, he committed those offences?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes, while on work release.

MAHONEY, MR: But they were not known at the time.

QUINLAN, MR: No. He was later charged and convicted ofthem. 11 days after he was released on parole he committeda further armed hold-up and fled the state and travelled toVictoria. That was his sixth armed robbery. DuringSeptember and October in 1983 in Victoria he committedanother six armed robberies, his seventh to 12th armedrobberies. The Western Australian Parole Board cancelledhis parole on 25 November 1983 with him owing 1568 days inbreach, which was the balance of his initial term.

Before he was identified for any of those offences inVictoria he fled to England in early 1984. On arrival inEngland he continued offending and was arrested and chargedwith four armed robberies and possession of a firearm withintent. For those offences he was sentenced to animprisonment of 12 years in England. Those were his 13thto 16th armed robberies. He served nine years of thatsentence and at the completion of that in 1994 he wasextradited to Victoria where he was convicted of the sixcounts of armed robbery committed in 1983.

On 16 June 1994 he was sentenced to three years'imprisonment for the six counts of armed robbery. Theywere concurrent on each count. On 7 February 1995,pursuant to the provisions of the Interstate Transfer ofPrisoners Act, he was transferred to Western Australia andserved his Victorian sentence at Albany Regional Prison.

In January 1996 he was convicted and sentenced inPerth on the five counts of armed robbery committed by himin 1983 while on work release, though some 13 years afterthose offences were committed. He was sentenced to a termof imprisonment of three years and six months to be servedconcurrently with existing terms and eligible for parole.In passing sentence on Cross, the presiding judge appliedthe totality principle and that led, in the judge's words,to great reduction in the sentence which would otherwisehave been imposed.

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While in that term of imprisonment the only record ofprison offences is that he was convicted of traffickingmoney at visiting sessions and being in possession of aprohibited drug, namely cannabis. He was charged inrelation to that in December 1996 and received a loss ofremission for 10 days and 14 days respectively for thosetwo offences.

He was released on parole on 17 April 1997 and thateffectively brings us up-to-date to his most recentconvictions. Two weeks after he was released on parole hecommitted the first of the present series of armed robberyoffences for which he's currently in prison. Between 2 May1997 and 5 June 1997 he stole two firearms, a motor vehicleand committed three armed robberies on financialinstitutions. They were his 17th to 19th armed robberyconvictions.

If we can go to document 79, which is the judge'ssentencing comments during the course of his sentencing forthose convictions for which he's still serving his term ofimprisonment. The sentencing judge on that occasion washis Honour the chief justice and the nature of the offencesfor which he's currently serving terms of imprisonment canbe seen on page 2 of the transcript of the sentencing, thesecond full paragraph:

The first offence in point of time was the firstoffence; namely, between 17 April and 2 May atEast Perth you stole a pointer 12-gauge semiautomaticshotgun and a Lithgo made 22-calibre bolt actionrifle. During the period mentioned you were walkingthrough blocks of flats near Hill Street. Youlocated a storage shed near some flats which had anopen door. You reached inside, opened the lockeddoor. As a result of the search you located the twofirearms in a bag. You took them and some ammunitionand took them to your home in Rivervale. You latercut the barrel and the stock off each of the firearmsand used them in the commission of the armed robberyoffences.


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His Honour then went on, this is still on page 28:

The next offence in point of time was that which isthe subject of count 1 on the indictment; namely,that on 2 May 1997 you stole from -

and I won't identify the individual -

with threats of actual violence, namely money theproperty of the Home Building Society. At the timeyou were armed with a dangerous weapon, namely, afirearm. On the afternoon of 2 May 1997 you enteredthe building society wearing a dust mask over yourface as a disguise. You approached the teller. Youproduced a sawn-off shotgun and demanded the femaleteller place money in a plastic bag which youproduced. A male customer in the bank also placed a$20 note on the counter which the teller placed inthe bag.

During the incident you pointed the firearm atseveral people in the premises. A male customer wasordered by you to lie on the ground. You left thebank and drove off in a Holden Commodore sedan whichyou had parked at the rear of the premises.

The next paragraph identifies the subject count 4,stealing with threats of actual violence on 20 May 1997 andthe next paragraph repeats the facts of that:

On that occasion you were in possession of a22 calibre rifle which had been cut down. Youapproached a female teller and indicated that youwere armed. You showed the teller the butt of thefirearm tucked into the top of your trousers. Youhanded the teller a plastic bag and told her to fillit with cash. She complied and placed cash amountingto $8210 into the bag.

The victim impact statements of the two female bankofficers indicated that they were also terrified byyou and have suffered as a result of the commissionof the offence.

Down the bottom of that page:

Using the duplicate key you drove the vehicle fromthe yard -

and over the page, the final armed robbery account on thatoccasion:

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On that occasion you entered the bank and approachedthe teller. You indicated to her that you were armedand told her to put (sic) a plastic bag which youhanded to her with cash. The teller complied andplaced cash in the bag totalling $3600. No firearmwas sighted during this occasion.

They were the nature of the offences. If one thengoes to page 11 of the sentencing remarks, they have somesignificance for the management of Mr Cross during thissentence. The second-last paragraph on that page,his Honour the chief justice said:

There was nothing in the materials put before meregarding your psychological or psychiatric state.That is the reason why I sought a psychologicalreport and a psychiatric report on you in the hopethat it might assist me in making the prognosisrequired by section 98. The psychological reportconcludes that you are motivated to rehabilitateyourself. You undertook psychological counsellingwhile in prison in the United Kingdom.

There is available to you in the prison system anintensive program at Casuarina Prison referred to inthat report which, as the author of the reportstates, could well help you "overcome some of thepersonality-based problems" which seem to "fuel" yourinability to survive outside prison.

You have not yet had the opportunity to participatein this program. The author of the pre-sentencereport considers that "it would not be justified togive up on you before this option has been explored".As against that report the psychiatric reportconcludes that you are, "Likely to reoffend in futurein view of the number of possible risk factors suchas illicit substance abuse and perhaps dependence,extensive history of offending behaviour with hislack of ability to address problems such as angercontrol, alcohol and drug problems as well as hisimpulsivity." You are said to suffer from anantisocial subtype personality disorder.

You have expressed a wish to undergo angermanagement, alcohol and drug assessment and arehabilitation program as well as psychotherapy andcounselling in respect of your childhood issue. Theauthor of this report says that your motivation toundergo these problems is doubtful. Having regard tothe different conclusion on motivation in thepsychological report I consider that I should giveyou the benefit of the doubt.


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Consequently I'm not prepared to make an order thatyou be imprisoned indefinitely following the serviceof fixed terms of imprisonment which I have imposed.I recommend, however, that you should not be releasedon parole until you have successfully completed theintensive programs referred to in the psychologicalreport as well as an alcohol and drug assessment andrehabilitation program.

So that at the time of sentencing there was a clearneed, in 1997, for Mr Cross to undergo an aggression orviolent offenders treatment program and also a substanceabuse program.

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there for a moment, perhaps youcould assist me. The chief justice was referring to thesentence for the particular offences, the quantum of whichI think you've referred to and given reference to. He thenrefers to indefinite imprisonment. To what was thatreferring?

QUINLAN, MR: There was an application made by the crownthat there be an order that the prisoner serve indefiniteimprisonment after the completion of his finite terms.

MAHONEY, MR: There is statutory provision for that, isthere?

QUINLAN, MR: There is statutory provision for that andindeed some of the cases which have excited publiccontroversy recently have involved prisoners who have beensubject to such orders that they not be released other thanon the approval of the governor, effectively, so they'reindeterminate terms. Those prisoners - and we will come tothat in relation to other case studies - are prisoners thathave statutory review dates for review by the Parole Boardand recommendation to the minister but who do not havefinite terms.


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As can be seen, his Honour the chief justice, givingMr Cross the benefit of the doubt, imposed finite terms ofimprisonment in relation to these offences, indicating thatin his view parole on those terms should not be given untilthe completion of those relevant courses.

MAHONEY, MR: So that we have in prisons and presumably insome of the maximum security sections, people who havefixed terms, no doubt long terms, and people who aresubjected not to a term of imprisonment but to indefiniteimprisonment.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes, precisely. All of those prisoners,however, other than those serving effective terms less thansix months, will be managed under an individual managementplan and by the case management process.

MAHONEY, MR: But while they are subject to indefiniteimprisonment then can they be recommended for parole?

QUINLAN, MR: They fall within statutory review dates thatare set by the Sentence Administration Act. Under thosestatutory review dates the Parole Board may recommend tothe minister as to whether or not they should be thesubject of a release. The ultimate decision is made by thegovernor on the recommendation of the minister, I think isthe provision, but at any rate it is not made by the ParoleBoard in relation to those particular prisoners.

MAHONEY, MR: So that provides some background againstwhich what will appear in later sittings happened inrelation to a number of prisoners.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: Yes.

QUINLAN, MR: At that time, 1997, when Mr Cross issentenced, he would not be schedule for the courses or theprograms that he needs at the beginning of the sentence orthe beginning of an individual management plan, as mightnow be the case with director-general's rule 14. At thattime he would effectively be waitlisted for programs. Hewas indeed assessed upon arrival under the old regimes.This is document 113, which has an assessment of Mr Crossand if we go to page 6 of that assessment it can be saidthat it is an assessment under rule 2B. The additionalinformation in paragraph 16 sets out, in the secondparagraph:

Cross has a long history of armed robbery offences,both in Western Australia and in the United Kingdom,for which he was also imprisoned. Due to the violentnature of these offences it is recommended Cross be

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assessed for participation in an intensivealternatives to violence unit program.

That of course is the recommendation, the substanceof the recommendation by his Honour the chief justice. Wewill see the programs for alternatives to violence take ondifferent names at different times but generally that isthe program at that time that he would be have beenrecommended for. In terms of the security rating there wasan indication that he remain at maximum security inaccordance with the then director-general's rule 2B andthat he be placed at Casuarina, in view of the above.

Over the page, page 8, one finds the originalsentence plan and a setting out of him remaining at maximumsecurity. The serious and violent nature of offence isnoted and, paragraph 6:

In view of nature of offence, prisoner referred toalternatives to violence unit for placement onwaitlist for intensive treatment program. Copy ofdecision slip to alternatives to violence unit.

He was reviewed and ultimately moved to AlbanyRegional Prison, another maximum security prison at thetime, and we have reviewed in 2001 - - -

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there, the alternative toviolence program presumably then is a program to try topersuade or motivate people not to use the violence theyhave previously used.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: Do I understand that he didn't get into thatprogram?

QUINLAN, MR: At that time he was waitlisted for theprogram. We will see that the relevant program has changedits name and indeed, coming to this individual managementplan or it's described as, one can see, a majormodification to individual management plan, can I say thisis an individual management plan within the meaning ofdirector-general's rule 13. This is not an IMP within themeaning of director-general's rule 14. If we go to page 5of that plan, under paragraph 15 there's a reference toPrograms:

Cross has not participated in any prison basedoffender programs to date, offending behaviourissues, substance abuse and anger management.

The two issues in effect that the chief justicereferred to in 1997 when he was sentenced:


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Referrals: Cross has been referred for assessment inboth the substance abuse resource unit and skillstraining for aggression control programs due to berun at Albany Regional Prison. Comments: due to theviolent nature of the offences committed by Cross itis recommended that he participate in the aboveprograms.


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This is a report that's prepared in April 2001 and onpage 7 of the document one can see the recommendations.There was a recommendation that he be reduced to mediumsecurity in line with the original sentence plan anddirector-general's rule 2B. So under director-general'srule 2B he has spent now three years plus at maximumsecurity and a recommended reduction to medium security;that he remain at Albany Regional Prison and that,paragraph 4, "He be assessed for possible inclusion in botha substance use resource unit and skills training foraggression control programs."

He didn't' do those programs at Albany Prison. Whatnext occurred was that he applied to go to Bunbury. If youcan go to page 9 of that document. He applied for Bunbury:

As my visits find it hard to visit Albany. I've beenwith my de facto for a lot of years and it would helpus stay together.

The next page is the official form to apply to go toBunbury. This was made in September 2001. One can see23 September 2001 he applies and that is approved at thebottom on 25 September by the assistant superintendentoffender development and a decision slip is generated,which is the next page, which has him being transferred toBunbury Prison. So transferred to Bunbury Regional Prisonwhich is a medium security prison. So at this stage inSeptember 2001 he's transferred to Bunbury and Bunbury isthen the focus of the later treatment of him.

This is where the narrative unfortunately gets alittle complicated because at around the time just prior tothe time that Mr Cross was moved to Bunbury we're gettingto the introduction of the new AIPR or case managementsystem and director-general's rule 14. So leaving Mr Crossthere in Bunbury for a while, if I can then move to anidentification of this system. I say something firstly ingeneral terms about the genesis of the new system. In1999, as I indicated earlier, a research study was carriedout by two employees of the department, a Ms Doyle andMs Tang, in relation to the factors contributing to escape.

So a review was done of persons who had escaped, thefactors relevant to that escape and the contributingfactors in order to determine what predictive model mightbe developed in order to create a better process forpredicting the potential for escape.

MAHONEY, MR: This would be important, I suppose, becausein the end the selection of the degree of security reallydepends upon the accuracy of a prediction made by somebodythat a person is or is not likely to attempt to escape.

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QUINLAN, MR: It is and what essentially prompted thisreview was a large number of escapes and a desire to see ifthings could be done better and if a better predictioncould be achieved using a greater range of inputs than theinputs that had been used as part of the director-general'srule 2B.

MAHONEY, MR: It's proper to emphasise that if you'regoing to have different levels of security, in the end thesecurity classification accepted will depend upon some formof prediction by somebody.

QUINLAN, MR: Absolutely. That's the nature of theprocess; that it is designed to predict as far as possiblethe potential for escape.

MAHONEY, MR: And whether that prediction is made by thecomputer or the computer modified by somebody else or bysomebody else is really the question of what system youadopt to make these predictions.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. At around the time that that wasoccurring another program was being undertaken within thedepartment of what was then the ministry which ratherunfortunately is referred to as the integrated prisonregime program or IPR. I say rather unfortunately becausethat bears a striking similarity to the AIPR system whichis a related but different concept.


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The integrated prisons regime process was dealingwith a range of different factors and developments for theimprovement of prisons. One of those issues was thedevelopment of a skills program. One of them was what'sbeen referred to as the reinvigoration of unit managementof day-to-day management of prisoners on units. One ofthem was the development of the concept of case managementand individual management plans, and other projects as partof the integrated prisons regime. There was also anenhanced incentives and privileges regime being developed.

At around the same time a new assessment centre wasbeing established at Hakea Prison, so that Hakea Prison wasbeing created by the amalgamation of what was Canning ValePrison and the C.W. Campbell Remand Centre into HakeaPrison which was to be, and which has become, a remand andreceival prison. All of these things were going on at onetime and at first they were separate projects but, as oneperson has put it, they were seen to be interrelated andcame to be interrelated in their implementation. At thistime the ministry already had the TOM system, the totaloffender management system, the computer system upon whichsome of these tools were built to interact.

MAHONEY, MR: That was a system into which the police andperhaps other authorities funnelled information in relationto particular offenders and then that was available toauthorised persons in relation to those offenders?

QUINLAN, MR: It wasn't so much, as I understand thesystem, an information-sharing tool with the police as thedatabase for all information held by the department inrelation to a particular prisoner, and what became the AIPRcomputer system with the tools that I have taken you towere ultimately integrated or formed part of that overallcomputer system.

Ms Doyle and Ms Tang developed out of their researchthe scoring tools which ultimately come to be reflected inthe initial security rating and the classification reviewscore that I've referred to. There were some changes, Iunderstand, from the original tool to the final instrument,but a tool of that nature was developed. It was trialledat Bandyup Prison and proposed for a trial more generallyas part of the assessment system.

So that around this time all of these differentprojects are occurring and come to be drawn together, in asense. For example, the establishment of the assessmentcentre at Hakea Prison is commenced. A Mr Denis Bandy wasthe manager of assessments there and remains the manager ofassessments at Hakea Prison. A Mr Brian Ellis was theproject manager in the year 2000 for establishing theassessment centre.

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These changes were all overseen by a steeringcommittee, one of the many committees within thedepartment, known as the IPR steering committee. In thecontext of that committee, case management developed andcase management was a very significant change in the way inwhich prisoners were to be managed. As I've alreadyindicated, it involved individual plans, one-on-one contactwith case officers, periodic reviews that were required bythe system. It was not a plan to be introduced hastily orhalf-heartedly, so before introducing the plan it wasproposed to pilot this process.

MAHONEY, MR: Something like that is obviously necessary,isn't it, because if you don't adopt the warehousingprinciple of simply putting prisoners in gaol, locking themup and leaving them there until the end of the sentence,you've got to have some system whereby you regulate whathappens to them during the course of their imprisonment,how they move from one section to another and so on?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes, and I don't think there's any - well,case management as a system and as an approach to themanagement of offenders is a practice which has a solidfoundation in worldwide practice and approach.

MAHONEY, MR: It's one of the methods that is now in voguefor doing that kind of thing.


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QUINLAN, MR: Yes. The important thing to recognise aboutwhat was occurring in 2000 is that it was new for WesternAustralia, the kind of case management that was proposed.Because it was new there was to be a pilot and the pilotbeing what it sounds, there's a process whereby the plan,the case management technique, can be tested, evaluated,for its effectiveness.

Now, in relation to that if I could turn, forexample, to document 152, these are minutes of the steeringcommittee for IPR and the assessment process. If we go topage 2 of those minutes, and these are minutes of18 May 2000, under New Business one can see:

Evaluation of assessment process: a outline proposalwas tabled for consideration. Brian Ellis indicatedthe proposal sought to address. Did the assessmentprocess work as planned? Are the new style plansbetter than the old? Are the new plans consistentwith the four key outcome targets of offendermanagement division? The costings varied accordingto an internal external management of the evaluationand internal management would require a $10,000budget to achieve the initial evaluationrequirements. Further evaluation requirements areindicated in the proposal. These will need to bedeveloped.

At this point a particularly sensible process to whatis a new system and if we can turn to that evaluationproposal, document 153, to set the scene for what isinvolved in this. It is referred to as Evaluation Proposalof the Assessment Pilot, although what can be seen is thatthat encompasses the notion of individual management plansand case management. The background states:

The new assessment centre will ultimately be judgedon its ability to contribute to the overall aims ofthe ministry.

When we get to Evaluation, under heading 2:

The assessment process is a large, complex and newprogram and effective evaluation will need to examineall facets of the program and the way in which theyinteract. There are four components to theevaluation of the assessment process. The componentsin the broad evaluation questions associated withthem are: process of putting together all checklists, did the assessment process work as planned,comparison of IPMs with old system of sentence plans,are the new style of plans better than the old, (3)are the plans consistent with the four key outcometargets.


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Now, this is related to the pilot because over thepage on page 2, one can see under heading 3:

The pilot assessment process will continue to operateuntil it is appropriate for full implementationacross the jurisdiction -

a clear and sensible indication that a pilot be commencedand then evaluated before full implementation:

In the first six months check lists will be generatedon approximately 250 offenders, up to 10 per week.The evaluation should commence early in the pilotprogram some six to eight weeks with the aim ofproviding progress reports during the pilot and afinal report at the pilot completion. It is expectedthat continual quality improvements will beimplemented throughout the pilot independent of theevaluation findings. The key questions for theevaluation are: was information accessible to thosewho needed it? If not, what were the problems?

Now, that's an important key to evaluation because,as I have indicated, the completion of check lists and the

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preparation of plans will be heavily dependent upon wherethe information is and how it is accessible:

Were check lists produced in the required time? Whatproblems, if any, were experienced? Thirdly, in whatways were IMP's documents more or less helpful thansentence plans in comparison with the old system and,fourthly, how useful were the check lists?

What should be noted about that proposal forevaluation is that it is both an evaluation of the systemas a whole - that is, are the check lists being produced inthe required time across the board, what proportion ofcheck lists are being produced within the required time,et cetera - but also, down to the useful nature of theindividual documents or tools themselves, so that there issome evaluation and assessment of appropriateness of thosetools.

Now, the pilot began at Hakea Prison and began inlate 2000. This was the - we have just brought updocument 180, the case management guidelines for the pilot.If we turn to page 3 of the document, it defines the natureof the project as part of a pilot and defines casemanagement as:

The process by which offenders within WesternAustralia are assisted to achieve the goalsidentified in their individual management plan.


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In one particular passage on it if I can refer to iton page 10, which we will see will be an important element,is the identification of a case management coordinator whohas an important role, as can be seen, in responsibilityfor overall monitoring and quality of case managementprocedures, the allocation of case officers, giving dueconsideration to an even distribution, advising orientationstaff of case officer allocation, arranging coverage of IMPreviews during case officer leave, monitoring case officerwork, acting as a resource and coach to case officers asrequired, monitoring and quality assessing primary contactreports, regular contact reports, IMP case reviews andother reports, ensuring reports are on schedule, liaisingwith assistant superintendents, attending case conferencesand ensuring case officers comply with through-careprocedures.

MAHONEY, MR: The system then involved at its core thatyou would have one officer given three prisoners to manageand then he would manage their programs from time to timeand there would be a coordinator above the particular caseofficers to see that the system was working properly.They're the two elements involved in it.

QUINLAN, MR: And a third element of assessment officers.So there are assessment officers, case managementcoordinator - but that individual prisoner officers wouldneed to be trained as case officers as part of that system.If we can go to document - - -

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there for a moment, that meantthat if there were 300 prisoners you would have to have 100officers to make this case system work?

QUINLAN, MR: Depending upon the numbers that the officerswere being given but certainly the numbers of prisonerswould dictate the number of case officers.

MAHONEY, MR: This document suggested a maximum of three Ithink.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: And that seems to be the understanding. Sothat was an essential part of the system?

QUINLAN, MR: It was. In the context of the evaluation,if I can refer to document 191, a request for tender wasput out for the evaluation of the integrated prison regime.Turning to page 3 of that document there is a comprehensivedescription under the introduction of the evaluation of theintegrated prison regime for prisoner services. Forexample, we can see at the bottom of that heading:

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The role of prisoner officers is central to IPR.They share the daily lives of the prisoners. Theirinteraction with prisoners ultimately define thequality and consistency of the regime. For thisreason there is a substantial focus on the roles andskills of prison officers in the key individualprojects which make up -

and, as I said earlier, the IPR regime was broader thansimply case management but one can see the third dot point:

A pilot of case management, the aim of casemanagement, is the provision of integrated andcoordinated services that assist offenders to addresstheir offending behaviour and prepare for asuccessful return to the community. It is aninteractive process with assigned officersresponsible for encouraging offenders to meetrequirements of their individual management plan. Asix-month pilot will commence in December involvingoffenders assessed through the new assessment centre.

That assessment centre we can see is the first dotpoint:

The establishment of a pilot assessment centre,sentenced offenders undergo comprehensiveassessments.

Those are the assessments that take place under theMAP, or the management and placement checklist, whichinclude the scoring instruments as their primary feature.So at the end of 2000 there is a large change proposed toboth assessment and case management. Those two things canbe distinguished. One is an individual process using atool and the other is a more dynamic process, but they areobviously related. Assessment happens at the beginning ofcase management and review of classification occursthroughout the process of case management and both werebeing piloted. They were untested ultimately other thanthe original testing but the pilot was intending to testit, evaluate it, as to whether or not it would be rolledout across the prison system.

In 2001 Acacia Prison opened. It had to be filled.Another committee was in existence, the Acacia fillsteering committee. Part of the requirement for theprivate prison at Acacia was that prisoners going to Acaciawould have management plans.


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MAHONEY, MR: Acacia was a privately managed prison and itwas set up in Western Australia for the first time?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. It's not clear whether it was acontractual requirement, but certainly a requirement forthe fill of Acacia was that prisoners would have anassessment and a plan. This tool, the assessment tool, wasopened up and used for the fill of Acacia in the first halfof 2001, so that at this stage the pilot has not ended andthe process and the tools have not been yet evaluated inaccordance with the kinds of evaluation proposals I haveearlier identified or the proposals for the tender for acontractor to evaluate these proposals.

At around the time that the fill of Acacia begins,Mr Ellis, who I earlier identified was the project managerfor the assessment centre at Hakea Prison, became a managerof strategic development and ultimately responsible for theday-to-day running and implementation of this casemanagement pilot and had a project officer, Ms Leske,immediately below him, he being her line manager, so thatonce we get to May, around May, this tool is now being usedfor Acacia Prison as well, or for the fill of AcaciaPrison.

At around this time internal audit reports wereproduced in relation to these issues arising under IPR.The first of these we can refer to is an internal auditreport of April 2001 in relation to the assessment process.If we can turn to page 3 of that report - - -

MAHONEY, MR: This was carried out by whom?

QUINLAN, MR: By the internal audit branch of the Ministryof Justice, although it may have been - and we may have toask witnesses about this, but the document has KPMG underit. Whether or not KPMG were providing services to theMinistry of Justice may need to be - - -

MAHONEY, MR: KPMG is one of the large accounting firms?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes, but at any rate the document itself isidentified as an internal audit branch report. Page 3provides an executive summary and the overview sets out:

The assessment process aims to provide theidentification of prisoner-specific risks and needs.It does this by providing a comprehensive prisonerassessment with the main output being an individualmanagement plan, IMP, for each prisoner. Theassessment pilot commenced with one assessment teamin October 2000. One key performance measure of thepilot was to complete 10 IMPs per week. Due tovarious reasons this has not been achieved. With theAcacia Prison as requiring IMPs a further assessment


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team was appointed in January and two more in March. Theseteams were dedicated solely to having sufficient assessedprisoners to complete the Acacia fill. Based on ourtesting it appears that if trends continue there will besufficient assessed prisoners to complete the Acacia fill.With four teams performing the assessments the process haseffectively rolled into full implementation.

If we go then to page 8, in the second column underPerformance Measurement the audit branch states:

Performance measurement is essential in determininghow well the team is or is not achieving theirobjectives. At present there is no formalperformance reporting to director operationalservices. We understand that this is because theevaluation of the IPR will develop performancemeasures. However the assessment process has nowbeen underway six months and it will be at leastanother six months until any performance measures areprepared as part of the evaluation. Interimperformance measures over the assessment process withregular reporting to management would assist inensuring objectives are met.

Then going to page 10, the audit branch identifies:

IPR evaluation requires finalisation. In November2000 a request for tender was issued for theevaluation of the integrated prison regime -

and we have seen that:

The brief was for an experienced consultant todesign, manage and conduct an evaluation of the IPRinitiative for prison services. An evaluation panelwas generated and preferred tender selected. Weunderstand that management are reconsidering whetherthe proposed method of performing the evaluation, ieby a consultant, remains the most appropriate method.With the IPR being such a major change strategy forthe ministry and effective evaluation is essential toreview whether outcomes are being achieved. Therecommendation then is should the evaluation not beperformed it is essential that an alternativeevaluation framework be implemented.


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Over the page we can see under R4, the last box inthat chart in the action plan:

Should the evaluation not be performed it's essentialthat an alternative evaluation framework beimplemented. The IPR evaluation is currently underreview. It is not possible to proceed with thecurrent tender process and an alternative evaluationwith a reduced scope will be considered in the nearfuture.

A comment is then made by the director of operationservices on the next page, page 12:

The current output for the assessment process is notas high as anticipated and both the manager strategicdevelopment and the manager assessment areconsidering ways of improving the process,particularly in relation to time limits. Managementreporting through the electronic system is also beinginvestigated. Unfortunately with the need to fillAcacia it has not been possible to take fulladvantage of a pilot process to develop and enhancethe processes involved.

So at that stage in April 2001 the pilot is notfinished, an evaluation is not occurred and performanceindicators for the evaluation had yet to be identified orsettled. The next audit report occurs a month later. Thisis an internal audit branch report of May 2001 specific tocase management and associated issues integrated prisonregime. On page 4 of that report under Emerging Issues,the second paragraph:

The model of case management currently being pilotedis different to prisoner management models applied inministry prisons in the past. Therefore it isimportant that the project facilitates changemanagement within prisons. This change includes agreater focus on prisoner and staff interaction andcommunication and qualitative outcomes for theprisoner being case managed. This also complimentsthe objectors of unit management -

- identifying the kinds of issues that I noted earlier interms of the need for proper training and implementation ofthis system. On page 6 under the first heading IPR ProjectManagement:

During our review we noted that there was not anup-to-date comprehensive action plan for the IPRproject and evaluation processes and measures for theproject had not been developed. Original IPR keymilestones and time frames are contained in theproject charter prepared in January 2000. However,

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for a number of reasons not detailed in this reportthere have been changes to many of the time frames.

If one then looks in the second column of that pageunder the heading IPR Evaluation there's a reference backto the last assessment report that I referred to:

In our assessment process report of April 2001 wealso noted that the IPR evaluation process, whichwill include assessment of case management, was stillto be developed. With the IPR being such a majorchange strategy for the ministry, an effectiveevaluation is essential to assess whether outcomesare being achieved.

Turning then to page 12 of that report, again thebottom matter:

The IPR evaluation process and resourcing needs to befinalised and relevant milestones incorporated intothe action plan.

The management comment was agreed that there has beensomething of a development since the April report:

Ministry of Justice was required to decline alloffers in relation to the recent tender. As such wewill have to develop a further tender document with areduced scope and a consideration of internal supportbeing utilised. This will recognise availableinternal and financial resources to ensure anappropriate tender with a reduced scope.

Then if one finally turns to page 14 of that report:

In view of the requirement to fill Acacia the numberof prisoners quarantined for the public system issignificantly reduced and as such it has not beenpossible to get the throughput of prisoners to theidentified prisons to effectively pilot the casemanagement procedures. In addition, it would appearthere have been a greater number of prisoners placedat minimum security than was first anticipated and assuch further training will need to be undertaken inboth Wooroloo and Karnet prisons.

And significantly:

The evaluation of the IPR initiatives is required tobe progressed but this will not be possible untilthere is identification of available resources.


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MAHONEY, MR: Wooroloo and Karnet are the two or two ofthe minimum security prisons?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. So there we have at the beginning ofJune 2001 a pilot still in progress. No evaluation hasbeen done of the pilot.


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The audit reports have identified the need for properevaluation for such a major change but that neitherresources nor the evaluation criteria for the pilot havebeen identified.

MAHONEY, MR: I understand the evaluation process to comeat least to this, that they've got to find out whether infact it works.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. The next event which occurs, document184, on 16 June 2001 a prisoner by the name of Simon Crimpescaped from Karnet Prison Farm.

MAHONEY, MR: That is, he escaped from the minimumsecurity prison.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. 16 June - sorry, that report appears -Crimp had escaped on 14 June, the Thursday before, so thisis Saturday morning's front page headline on 16 June 2001,Mr Crimp having escaped on the Thursday at 8.30 as can beseen in that report, in the third full column. Sorry, inthe bottom of the first column. Obviously that is a momentof particular public attention in relation to the systemand one of those moments I referred to earlier where it isnecessary where things are in a development stage to testthe mettle as it were and not jump too early. That's theSaturday's paper.

By the Monday a decision had been made to roll outthe system for the assessment process to minimum across theprison jurisdiction. What we have here is a memorandum tothe attorney-general which is undated but must have beenaround the time of the 18th as we will see in terms ofother dates which appear. That memorandum identifies theescape. I should say this document also identifies otherprisoners so it may be a document which, while I will referto particular parts of it, would not be a document which isfreely identified.

If I can refer to page 8 this is a memorandum to theattorney-general from the executive director of offendermanagement. At the bottom of page 8 there is anidentification of the new assessment process, anidentification that there is a new receival and assessmentcentre at Hakea Prison piloting a more comprehensiveassessment process based upon assessing of prisoners' risksand needs. The development of a new classification andrating tool was undertaken in January 1999 and developed asa component of this new assessment process.

The assessment will be the basis for formulatingindividual management plans for newly sentenced prisoners.This process will eventually be implemented throughout thestate. The pilot commenced in November 2000 and is beingutilised for new receivals of sentenced prisoners into

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Hakea and in order to place prisoners at Acacia Prison.Then there is a discussion of the findings of the reportand an identification midway through that page under theparagraph beginning:

As a means of addressing these issues the newclassification procedures currently being pilotedincorporate an objective scoring system tool referredto as the custody rating scale. It is used byassessment officers upon reception during thepreparation of individual management plans andsubsequent reviews.

Then it discusses the initial security rating and theclassification review rating. Over the page it goes on tospeak of the classification system in more detail and whatis intended by it and on page 11 of that report at the verytop there is a recommendation that:

The Ministry of Justice examine avenues to expeditethe expansion of the new assessment system to allprisoners.

Document 19, I indicated that the media report aboutthe escape was on the Saturday. On 19 June 2001, theTuesday following, an announcement was made that there wasa new - an announcement made by the attorney-general andminister for justice that there was a new prisonerassessment system.


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The announcement was that:

A new assessment system to guide prisoner movementfrom maximum through to minimum security prisons willbe fast-tracked in response to the recent escapesfrom Karnet minimum security prison. JusticeMinister Jim McGinty, who met with Justice Ministryofficials last night -

that will be the Monday -

said, "The existing system for determining changes toa prisoner's security rating was based primarily ontime served. This will now be replaced by anassessment system based on the risk factorsassociated with each prisoner. I'm advised by theministry that had this new system been in operationlast week at least two of the three men who escapedfrom Karnet labelled as dangerous by police would nothave been in a minimum security facility at thistime."

MAHONEY, MR: Do we have that advice?

QUINLAN, MR: That, I think, may have formed part of theoriginal briefing note. I will check that:

Mr McGinty said that risk based assessments had beentrialed at Bandyup and Hakea Prisons and he had nowinstructed the ministry to implement the new systemacross the board. I expect it to be operating withinweeks for assessing prisoners who have been convictedof murder and other major violent crimes and thenprogressively rolled out to all prisoners.

So that from May 2001 the department has gone from apilot that has not been evaluated, where evaluationparameters have not been identified and in the crucible ofthe public controversy surrounding the escape on 14 June adecision has now been made to roll out at least in part,that is the assessment aspect, across the prison system.

At that time the manager of sentence management, whowas the end user of the system, was Ms Doyle. Mr Ellis wasthe manager strategic development responsible for trackingcase management and Ms Leske was his project officer.Between the 14th, when Mr Crimp escaped, and the decisionto roll out the system, Ms Doyle was not asked as to thefeasibility of rolling out the system across the board,Mr Ellis was not asked as to the feasibility of the systembeing rolled out across the board, Ms Leske found out aboutthe decision from a news bulletin on the television, thisbeing a system which was, at least officially, still inpilot.

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Obviously, it would be necessary for training to bedone to roll out this system to other prisons, so proposalswere put up for training. What we have here is amemorandum from the executive director offender managementand the general manager prison services to thedirector-general for the proposal for implementation of therevised assessment tool for prisoner security rating andplacement. The background, we can see the nature of thedecision:

As agreed with the attorney-general on 18 June 2001,the roll out of the new assessment system is to beput into effect immediately. Training: tworepresentatives from each facility across the statewill be trained. The ASPM and reception officer areregarded as ideal trainees. Costs: the cost oftraining is anticipated to be $14,000, $12,500 ofwhich is airfares and hotel costs for the out-of-townparticipants.

So in relation to what was regarded in the internalaudit reports as a major change to the process ofassessment, when the decision was made to roll out theassessment system to be put into effect immediately, savefor airfare and hotel costs, the proposals identifiedimmediately after were a total of $1500 contribution tothat training, with training being provided to existingstaff and existing persons within the system rather thanthe identification of a new dedicated position, such ascase management coordinators or assessment officers. Thatthen continued throughout 2001.

Meanwhile, Mr Cross is at Bunbury and has not yetbeen booked into any program and has not been booked ontothe AIPR assessment system.

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there, to satisfy my curiosity,what ultimately happened to Mr Crimp and his fellowescapees? Do we know, if you know everything off the topof your head, Mr Quinlan.

QUINLAN, MR: That's a good question and I don't know offthe top of my head.

MAHONEY, MR: Perhaps we can find out as a matter ofinterest.

QUINLAN, MR: Perhaps we can find out over the luncheonbreak and I can ask that we break now because I'm going tomove on to another topic, it being now quarter to 1.00.

MAHONEY, MR: Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have outlineda good deal of the background material and it's hoped thatduring the afternoon we will be then applying what has beensaid to the case of Mr Cross and possibly to other people


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as well. So we will adjourn until 2 o'clock and it'sproposed to sit this afternoon until 4 o'clock. Yes, wewill adjourn now.

(Luncheon adjournment)


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MAHONEY, MR: Yes, Mr Quinlan?

QUINLAN, MR: If it please you, sir. Tying up some looseends from before the luncheon adjournment, one of theissues that I raised or one of the documents that I tookthe inquiry to was an internal audit report which madereference on the bottom of it to KPMG. In terms of therelationship between the two, if I can quote from theDepartment of Justice's annual report for the years 2001 to2002, the internal audit report branch is described asfollowing:

The internal audit branch provides audit advice andconducts internal audits as outlined in the auditplan. The branch works in cooperation with the riskmanagement and audit committee made up of seniormanagement of the department and a representativefrom the office of the auditor-general. The internalaudit branch reports directly to thedirector-general.

Then there's reference in there to, "Major achievementsduring 2001, 2002 included," and one of them is:

Continuing the introduction of progressive auditconcepts and practices assisted by a co-sourcingarrangement with accounting firm KPMG -

so it would appear at least that KPMG have beensubcontracted to provide some work in relation to the auditbranch.

MAHONEY, MR: Those documents in principle go directly toor have access to the director-general himself?

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. According to the corporate structurethe audit branch reports directly to the director-general.In relation to that, finishing off 2001 as it were, one ofthe audit reports which I didn't refer to - if I can go todocument 190, this is a further internal audit branchreport of November 2001 status report dealing with casemanagement and associated issues, integrated prisonerregime.

On page 3 you will recall, sir, that the May 2001report had a recommendation for the evaluation process andresourcing being finalised and relevant milestonesincorporated into the action plan, and the managementcomment - the status that was reported as at November 2001,which appears in the last column:

An alternative evaluation framework has not yet beenimplemented. This is due to lack of funding.Status, outstanding.

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The other issue left over from the morning which youinquired into, sir, was the recapture of Simon Crimp andthe other persons who escaped from Karnet Prison Farm atthe same time as him.

MAHONEY, MR: I thought barristers knew everything,Mr Quinlan. That's why I asked.

QUINLAN, MR: They usually do.

MAHONEY, MR: I'm surprised that you didn't have the datesright at your fingertips.

QUINLAN, MR: The escape date, as you will recall, sir,was 14 June. The recapture date, according to the materialon the TOM system which we were able to have accessed overthe luncheon adjournment - states that the recapture datewas 22 June 2001, which by my reckoning is the Fridayfollowing the escape.

MAHONEY, MR: So that ironically this whole thing aroseout of people who escaped and were recaptured within amatter of a couple of days.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. The announcement of the roll-out wasthe 19th, which was the Tuesday. It would take us to theFriday, being the recapture of them. Each of those personsare still sentenced prisoners within the system.

MAHONEY, MR: You were going then to - - -

QUINLAN, MR: 2002.

MAHONEY, MR: - - - move on to Mr Cross.

QUINLAN, MR: 2002, staying again with the roll-out of thenew system. Prisoners gradually began to come on to thenew rule, director-general's rule 14, which was at thisstage still referred to as an interim rule and had not yetbeen finalised and the pilot having not formally ended butde facto begun to be rolled out, as it were.

There were no new dedicated positions identified orfunded within the department at the time. Effectively thedifferent roles which were contemplated by the system weretaken up in different ways at different points of thesystem and concerns about that were articulated during2002.

Can I refer to document 171? This is a memorandumdated 2 September 2002 from Brian Ellis, who you willrecall was the manager strategic development having thecarriage of case management, and it's a memorandum to thechairperson of the IPR steering committee. That reports inthe first paragraph:


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I participated in a workshop with operational staff,CSC representatives and TOM business group staff on22 August 2002 to determine the current status ofAIPR development and future directions andrequirements. Significant concerns have been raisedon the status of the AIPR development. The level ofcommitment and endorsement for AIPR and, mostimportantly, the lack of direct resources allocatedto effectively continue the development andimplementation of the system. An audit of thecurrent status of AIPR was compiled with problemsidentified in action plans under development toimprove the chronic state of AIPR management.Crucial issues discussed fell into three categories:integration, business process and application issues.


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Over the page of page 2 there's an issue identifiedin terms of ownership, there being no project plan with anidentified project owner and project manager, and there's adiscussion of the commitment to that. At the bottom ofthat page there's a paragraph that begins:

The absence of a formal steering committee with adesignated project leader continues to relegate AIPRto a minor role in the division and the departmentwhere the direct potential for a high risk factor inthe implementation of the business processes we hadbeen pursuing, the AIPR steering committee needs todetermine whether it will be the formal steeringcommittee for AIPR development and implementation.

Over the page under the heading Resources Mr Ellisstates:

I have already indicated the substantial type ofcommitments I have been making to AIPR development,albeit as the de facto project leader -

and then he identifies what a project leader should have.In the last paragraph on the screen there there's areference to the staff that have been working in the area:

Although there's operational staff representimportant subject matter experts, SMEs -

another acronym -

the additional workload involved in participating incontributing to the AIPR system has been verysignificant. I commend the level of commitment andpreparedness of operational staff to engage in thisprocess, however I believe this cannot continuewithout the formalising and injection of supportresources.

The next page, again commitment to articulatedvision:

At the commencement of AIPR database development inearly 2000 the director-general had articulated avision for an interacted web base system that couldbe built upon modules. Since then significantstructural changes in the department have resulted inprison services as the primary users of the systembeing left to manage. Within prison services theoperational services and sentence managementdirectorate appear to have confirmed commitment tothe development of AIPR database. Other directoratesenior management have little knowledge of the systemand may have difficulty understanding its intrinsicvalue. Until the recent roll out to all prisonfacilities there was limited acknowledgment of the


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potential impact for the operating environment in prisonseither. I consider the lack of profile of AIPR with seniormanagement other than this directorate has contributedsignificantly to the difficulties and acceptance inoperational functioning in the field.

That hearkens back to the point I made at the outsetin relation to the need for significant change to bemanaged and articulated at a higher level. Over the pagein this memorandum under the heading Training and Morale itbegins:

The AIPR database is clearly more user friendly thanmany elements of TOMS, however there are considerableconcerns about the capacity and preparedness ofprison staff to operate and function on a daily basiswith any reasonably articulate computer database. Anumber of staff have been trained in elements ofAIPR, however their capacity to access hardware anddevelop a reasonable level of proficiency in usingAIPR is highly questionable at most sites. Feedbackis consistently highlighting insufficient trainingand extreme difficulties in maintaining a familiaritywith the system give the potential access and timeavailable to develop proficiency.

The next paragraph:

The feedback from case officers is that they do nothave time within their rostered duties in units toperform the contact requirements. This isexacerbated by the need for reporting through theAIPR system. Many case officers were initiallyvolunteered and they are being criticised by fellowofficers for the amount of time they're spending oncase management requirements. Other officers are notsupportive of the initiative and workload issuescreate considerable animosity. This is coupled withthe ad hoc arrangements for case managementcoordinators and the results that AIPR does not havea strong focus in the prison facilities.

That last comment in relation to case managementcoordinators is a recognition of the fact that up untilthat time there had not been a designated position of casemanagement coordinator in the sites but rather had beenarranged on an ad hoc basis from prison to prison. Thenthere are typical quotes from the feedback there:

There is some resentment that a small group ofofficers are required to do extra work for noapparent reward. We are past the pilot stage. Youare not dealing with volunteers so how is theworkload to be balanced?


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The third quote:

Lack of training and lack of time allocated to staffto complete work.

Finally, on the final page of that memo, on page 6, arecognition - you don't appear to have page 6 so I willread it:

This feedback raises considerable concern on a numberof fronts. It highlights that ad hoc training ofsmall groups in large facilities is not achieving theaim of seeding the processes and that in manyinstances there is minimal support from front linemanagement and peers if they have not been directlyinvolved in the training.

This is coupled with the acknowledgment that moraleand cooperation in the workplace is very low atpresent and as such resistance to change and newprocess is accentuated. We need to develop with TSSa more sustained approach to training, targetingsignificant numbers at all sites. In conjunction weneed to re-emphasise and advertise that casemanagement is a requirement of the role of a prisonerofficer.

The issue of workload constraints and competing dutyrequirements also needs to be considered and adetermination as to the factual basis made. If itcan be demonstrated that workloads prevent caseofficers from performing case management requirementswe clearly need to review the situation andcompromise some of our goals.

Now, so that that is understood in a quantitativesense - before I turn to that, document 172, which isanother report on AIPR of late 2002, refers to the casemanagement pilot. This is a milestones report for thearea. Case management pilot reports:

The pilot had been abandoned because businessrequirements have overridden the requirement. Thereare substantial problems in the organisationalstructures at facilities to implement and maintainthe case management requirements. Resources are notin line with the operational requirements.Requirements to ensure Acacia fill and pressures onHakea assessment to deliver initial assessments hasresulted in over 1000 prisoners now being subject toAIPR processes. As a result the pilot phase has beenusurped by the need to roll out across state forimmediate workload responses. Timetable for roll outis under construction with intent that all regionalfacilities will be implementing assessment and casemanagement process for the 2002, 2003 financial year.


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On document 173 in relation to the expansion thereport, and this is August 2002:

Business requirements have resulted in casemanagement being implemented without the benefits ofan appropriate pilot or trial and evaluation of theoutcomes.

As I indicated it is necessary to try and put that incontext and to identify quantitatively what that means.That can be seen from reviews which were done, not formalevaluations as such, but reviews which were done byMs Leske, document 179, in October 2002. This is a reportto the director of regional prisons, prison operations. Itis dated 18 October 2002 from Ms Leske which is a statusreport regarding the introduction and progression of casemanagement processes at regional prison sites.

Effectively what was done was that a snapshot wastaken of each screen to examine the status of casemanagement outputs at each regional site. This wasquantitative only. It didn't look at an evaluation of thetools or anything of that kind but simply looked atnumbers. Page 2 of that document is Albany RegionalPrison, which was a pilot site. This is a reasonablypromising picture at this stage:

As one of the original pilot sites Albany firstcommenced training staff in December 2000. It shouldbe noted that Albany has been proactive in thetraining of its staff generating requests fortraining to take place, conducting seven trainingsessions.

Then in the number of IMPs:

So the prisoners with individual management plans,26, five unallocated, one overdue for review. Thenumber of case officers at this site currentlyexceeds the number of IMPs.

There is a reference then to case management contactshowing that they had taken place for 14 prisoners.Turning to the next page, Broome Regional Prison, thesecond paragraph:

One staff member has completed officer trainingdelivered to industrial staff at the training academyin February 2002. The officer is not currentlylisted on the cases screen as a case officer.

There were two IMPs at that site, neither of whichhad been allocated and the comment is:

No capacity to service IMP review dates as


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demonstrated by the IMP review due May 2002, that remainsoutstanding. No case management contacts have beendocumented at this site.

The next page, Bunbury Regional Prison:

This was a pilot site. 14 staff have received a fullprogram of case officer training.

I should comment here that the training which wasbeing undertaken at the time was not an additional fundedtraining but in a sense an ad hoc training being conductedby the project officer and others who were having to usethe system.


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The number of IMPs, 46, 12 unallocated, 23 overdue.The number of IMPs at this site exceeds the number oftrained case officers. There are significant numbers ofoverdue IMP reviews amongst both the allocated andunallocated cases. 22 of the 34 cases show a casemanagement contact. Eastern Goldfields: number of IMPs,11, seven unallocated, one overdue for review. It shouldbe noted that the seven unallocated offenders are recenttransfers to this site so may not be representative. Ofthe four allocated prisoners listed on the screen, only onedocumented a case management contact.

Greenough Regional Prison: more case officers willneed to be trained as the IMPs increases at this site.Number of IMPs, 32, 29 unallocated, eight overdue forreview. Only three cases are currently allocated, despitea pool of unallocated staff and prisoners at this site.Unless allocations are made the number of overdue reviewswill increase. Only one of the three allocated casesdocuments a case management contact report.

Roebourne: 12 staff were trained as part of theregional training roll out. Number of IMPs, seven. Noneof the seven IMPs have been allocated to a case officer atthis site, impacting on the ability to manage review datesand address those that are overdue. No case managementcontacts have been documented at this site.

On to the regional prisons, the first is Bandyup, thewomen's prison in Perth. Number of case officers trained,one. Case management training is yet to be extended tothis site. Number of IMPs, zero. The lack of prisonerswith approved IMPs at this site is reflected by zero casesbeing found in the AIPR cases screened. No case managementcontacts have been documented at this site.

Casuarina: one of the original pilot sites. As oneof the original pilot sites, it first commenced trainingand had 69 trained staff. Only 60 were listed as caseofficers on the cases screen. Number of IMPs, 227, 134unallocated, 69 overdue for review. Case managementcontacts: the number of case management contacts conductedat this site has increased with time and increasesallocation of case officers.

The next, Hakea. It says "regional" but Hakea is nota regional prison, but in any event, number of caseofficers trained, zero. Case management training is yet tobe extended to this site. Number of IMPs, 81, 81unallocated. Case management contacts: as no staff havebeen trained or tasked as case officers, case managementcontacts are not documented for this site.

MAHONEY, MR: What does all this show?

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QUINLAN, MR: All of this shows is that the roll out ofthe system is not occurring. It is not occurring to thelevel that ought to be expected and the kinds of processesthat would be expected and covered by case managementcoordinators and the kind of positions which had been longcalled for were being missed. Karnet Prison, which was apilot site, states:

Due to the progression of pilot IMPs, Karnet wasadded to the case management pilot sites. Despitefirst gaining access to case officer training inDecember 2001, Karnet has provided seven staff toparticipate in case officer training. Number ofIMPs, 90, 89 unallocated. As only one IMP has beenallocated a case officer at this site, it is doubtfulthat the scheduled IMP review dates will be serviced.Case management contacts: due to the lack of caseofficers, case management contacts are not beingdocumented.

Finally, Wooroloo Prison site: number of caseofficers trained, 43. It has almost completed trainingstaff. Number of IMPs, 87, seven unallocated. A largeproportion of the IMPs at this site have been allocated toa case officer. The majority of the allocated IMPs areaccompanied by a last contact entry, many of whichrepresent a contact in the last quarter.

A varied picture across the system, but certainly onewhich does not present a system that is being particularlywell rolled out and a picture which justifies the commentsmade by Mr Ellis in his memorandum to the steeringcommittee in September 2002.

So during 2002 that's the picture in the roll out.Meanwhile, Mr Cross is still at Bunbury. There is nothingon his offender in custody file. He is not on the newsystem, he has not been booked to do any courses at thatpoint. The next document I won't asked to be put up. It'sthe only record we have of Mr Cross anywhere in the systemfor 2002 and it's from the information analysis section,which is referred to in the system as Intel.

I haven't put it up because it may contain sensitivesecurity information, but at any rate it was a report inDecember 2002, being reported by the assistantsuperintendent at Bunbury Regional Prison and theinformation that had been provided related to drugtrafficking within the prison.


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This, I should stress, was simply an allegationprovided and information provided and didn't result in anyconviction or charge but the information was given thatcannabis in tennis balls is being thrown over the easternfence alongside the living units of the prison. The ballsare being thrown in behind G unit of self care. G unit isprotected from the cameras by the other buildings.Prisoner Cross is one of the prisoners collecting the drugby going out the back of G unit through the rear door. Atowel or similar is left hanging over the metal on thewindows as a signal to whoever is hiding in the bushwaiting to throw over the drug. Then there were referencesto other prisoners who are said or alleged to be involvedin those matters.

We move to 2003. The system is growing and expandingbut difficulties are beginning to emerge even more clearly.In January 2003 Mr Ellis proposes to the director ofoperational services and sentence management that actionplans be prepared for the case management component of theIPR program. If we can refer to document 21, thatmemorandum of 31 January 2003 states in the secondparagraph:

The implementation of case management has beenfragmented by difficulties in commitment to theprocesses within management structures, limitedtraining capacity and constant concerns for the levelof resources and moral of staff within prisonfacilities. The constant focus on the budgetreduction strategy has resulted in detrimentalconsequences to a range of IPR initiatives. Thematter has been highlighted as a constant risk factorin the case management project reporting.

The final paragraph on that page:

The steering committee report of 12 Decemberhighlighted prison management structures were notconsistent with the new business processes requiredin assessment and case management. The role of casemanagement coordinator, essential to theeffectiveness of case management, is not a designatedposition. Assistant superintendents have notundertaken the role. The appointment of CMCs hasbeen ad hoc across the state with the role beingundertaken by senior officers, often in addition totheir daily tasks under the roster.

Case management was not being conducted with theregularity required or with the satisfactory qualityand muster management concerns, with minimalreference to sentence management needs, has remaineda primary focus. Some prisons appear to bemaintaining the document outputs required with casemanagement,


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however they are failing to implement all businessprocesses, particularly that of enhancing interactionbetween the case officer and the prisoner.

What is proposed there is that visits be carried outto prisons in communication with prisons in order todevelop action plans and that suggestion was taken up andaction plans were in due course developed.

If I can turn to document 22, after six months thereis a status report made and the distribution of thismemorandum, we can see, is to the executive director of theprisons division, the general manager, prisons division,the director of operational services and sentencemanagement, the director rural and regional prisons and themanager of the training branch, the executive director ofthe prisons division being a senior level and reportingdirectly, under the hierarchical structure, to thedirector-general and it does not paint a glowing picture ofthe status of case management at that time.

It begins by recognising the essential element of theproject, or as an essential element of the integratedprison regime project. It then goes on to discuss theimplementation and at page 2, in the third full paragraph,in terms of implementation:

Significant risks to the implementation of casemanagement were identified in the latter part of2001. Hakea assessment centre was producingsubstantial numbers of IMPs for prisoners in thepublic prison system. There were very limitednumbers of case officers at pilot sites trained andprepared to manage these IMPs with prisonersthroughout the case management process. Furthermorethere was limited control as to the placement ofprisoners with IMPs because of the competingrequirements of muster management.

The case management pilot was essentially abandonedin early 2002. It had been overtaken by compellingbusiness requirements to fill Acacia Prison withassessed prisoners. In addition, prisoners with IMPswere being accommodated at all prisons throughout thestate in line with budget provisions on mustermanagement.


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Over the page, dealing with training:

Although a number of staff were trained as casemanagement coordinators, there has been littlecontinuity in those staff retaining the role withinindividual prison sites. The CMC role has not beenformally recognised in the prison administrationstructures resulting in ad hoc arrangements. A lackof continuity has manifested in many of the currentproblems associated with assessment and casemanagement.

Despite providing brief training to 20 per cent ofthe available prison officer population in thesystem, there appears to have been significantdifficulties in staff maintaining any proficiency inthe systems. Progression of case management isstalled due to a number of systemic factors.Critical factors required to support case managementhave not been forthcoming.

A successful change management process requiresongoing endorsement, commitment and ownership by keystakeholders, particularly superintendents, a teamapproach amongst key players with a willingness tonegotiate about priorities, adequate levels ofresources for the development and implementationgiven the scope and logistics of the project,acceptance of prison staff at all levels in owningthe project and the process of change by tailoringneeds.

Then at the end of that memo on page 4 it's noted:

A site-specific action plan has been developed foreach of the prisons included in the consultationprocess -

and included in those action plans, if we can go to page 5,for example, this is Albany Regional Prison,"Recommendation: one additional FTE," that's full-timeequivalent employee, "required to formally create casemanagement coordinated position." Obviously a criticalposition to the proper functioning of the system. Page 11,Bunbury Regional Prison, "Recommends: one additional FTErequired to formally create case management coordinatedposition." Casuarina Prison, page 13, "One additional FTEcase management coordinator," and so it went through inrelation to the other prisons.

That memorandum states in clear terms that the systemneeds a greater commitment. Following that memorandumthere was not an adoption of those action plans. The

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instruction given was that what was to be done was to bedone within existing resources and there wouldn't be achange.

A status report was given, document 23, to theexecutive director of prisons and the director ofoperational services and sentence management. That wasgiven on 19 June. Those points were made again in relationto the case management coordinator position, and on page 4of that memorandum the outcome:

The site-specific action plan was developed for eachof the prisons included in the consultation process.The plans were initially constructed following theinterviews and workshops. Each site's plan has beenfurther developed in consultation with the prisonadministration. The IPR steering committee hasconsidered the action plans and determined to moveforward through workshops with superintendents andmanagers groups. A workshop is scheduled for 27 June2003.

At around this time the union, the WA Prison OfficersUnion, expressed concern about the effects that AIPR washaving on staffing. We can see document 192, a letterwritten in September 2003 to the director-general from theunion, attention to Mr Connelly, who was the director ofregional prisons at the time:

It has come to my attention that the current staffingagreement, known as the 1147 agreement, does notinclude any allowance for the requirements of AIPR.This is a matter of very considerable concern as theservice is already extremely stretched and staff arebeing asked to carry out AIPR -

and an urgent meeting was asked for. Towards the end of2003 the objective was for all prisoners to now be on thenew system, now be on case management and AIPR anddirector-general's rule 14. In the course of that allprisons were asked to identify whether they haddifficulties in getting prisoners on to the system. Theonly prison to identify a problem in getting existingprisoners converted to director-general's rule 14 forprisoner management processes was Albany Regional Prison.Document 26 again is a document concerning an action planfor assessment and case management and identifies the factthat:

Albany Regional Prison has been identified as thefacility with the greatest number of existingprisoners needing to be converted todirector-general's rule 14 for prisoner managementprocesses. This is considered to be a priority inthe implementation of case management across theprison system.


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Albany responded and in October received additionalassistance in conversion to director-general's rule 14. Itwas the only prison who identified that concern. BunburyRegional Prison at the time did not. Meanwhile, in 2003Mr Cross was still at Bunbury. He was not put on to thenew system. There is nothing on his offender in custodyfile for that year. He was not booked to do any of thecourses, either a substance abuse course or a violentoffenders treatment course.


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The only reference that the inquiry has been able tofind in relation to Mr Cross at this time is a singlereference in the TOMS system, which is document 101, thaton 19 September the reporting officer reported that duringa cell search of Mr Cross' cell they removed onescrewdriver, a quantity of screws and two speakers withbroken security seals, and we will hear from the prisonofficers what the import of that might be when they'recalled to give evidence.

2004: in 2004 Ms Alma Kenworthy from the sentencemanagement branch was asked to go to Bunbury RegionalPrison to conduct an audit of their case managementrequirements and the conversion onto director-general'srule 14. Part of that is shown on document 132 in whichshe produced a muster list of all of the prisoners inBunbury Regional Prison at the time including, going to thesecond page, Mr Cross who, the notation is, "has nothing".He was not the AIPR system and was identified as not beingso. Ms Kenworthy identified those prisoners. There weresix prisoners who had not been converted onto the AIPRsystem and they included Paul David Cross.

At the same time in January 2004 the union had takenthe department to the WA Industrial Relations Commission,document 182, over its concerns in relation to the AIPRsystem and the schedule of their complaint to theIndustrial Relations Commission was that AIPR was excludedfrom an original agreement in relation to staffing and thecomplaint was that by December 2003 little, if any,additional prisoner officers staffing had been provided toprisons to deal with the extra workload by the introductionof AIPR. Then it went on:

The WAPOU wrote to the department on 16 September -

that's the letter I took you to, sir -

seeking urgent discussions to resolve the staffingneeds of the department in relation to theintroduction of AIPR.

They wrote again on 1 December identifying that it:

was unaware of any evaluation that had taken place ofthe staffing needs for the implementation of AIPR.Further, that pending such a response the departmentshould reinstate the previous process of sentenceplanning. The department offered a meeting on22 December. At the meeting the department gave noresponse. The union requested the department toidentify staffing needs it believed were required forthe introduction of AIPR to allow appropriatenegotiations. To date the employer has failed torespond to this request.

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What that resulted in ultimately following theidentification of those concerns - going on to page 2 ofthat document, on 19 January there was a meeting before theWA Industrial Relations Commission and the departmentadvised - this is correspondence from the associate to thesenior commissioner of the Industrial Relations Commissionin the second full paragraph:

The department advised the commission that itconsidered the meeting had been positive. Thedepartment was committed to a collaborative andintegrated process of discussing and implementing theoutcome of any evaluation of the issue. Thedepartment considered that the three months for itsreview was appropriate.

So at around that time a review was proposed of casemanagement and indeed a review did take place in 2004.There was further correspondence with the IndustrialRelations Commission but suffice it to say that a reviewended and was completed by October 2004. If we can just goto some aspects of it. It's in document 28. It wasprepared - the project manager of this review was Ms Leskewho had earlier been a project officer in case managementitself. Going to page 15 of that document that includedthe summary that we have now seen in the past and familiarwith - you can see on the middle of that:

By late 2001 significant problems associated with theimplementation of case management began to emerge.While Hakea was producing significant numbers of IMPsthere were limited numbers of case officers.

Then again the statement that has been made before:

During early 2002 the pilot period effectively cameto a close.

The next paragraph:

It should be noted the pilot was never formallyevaluated.

A number of recommendations were made in relation tothat report which I will come to.


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We are now in October 2004. Four years have passedsince the commencement of the pilot. It has been at leasta year, probably 18 months , since AIPR was to be appliedacross the board. It has been nine months sinceMs Kenworthy identified Cross as needing to the be on theAIPR system. Cross is still not on the AIPR system. Hehas not been entered or booked for any program, let alonehaving done one.

There is not one document on the offender in custodyfile in relation to Mr Cross for the entire period that hehas been in Bunbury up until that point. Since September2001 to October 2004 there is no reference to him at all.As far as the inquiry has been able to determine, the onlyreference is the entry in the TOM system that I referred toin relation to the search of Cross's cell.

The inference can properly be drawn, I would submitat this stage, that Mr Cross had effectively been lost inthe system, but in October 2004 Cross came again to theattention of prison authorities. It would appear - - -

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there, he was in Bunbury but atwhat level?

QUINLAN, MR: He was a medium security prisoner inBunbury.

MAHONEY, MR: Yes.

QUINLAN, MR: Because he hadn't been converted onto theAIPR system, he was not booked for programs and would haveno priority in relation to any programs. It would appearhe came to the attention of the authorities again byidentifying himself and told an officer at Bunbury, OfficerPierre, he wanted to go to Karnet to do a meat traineeship.

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there, should he not have had asix-monthly review of some kind?

QUINLAN, MR: If he had been on the AIPR system he wouldhave initially been having 12-monthly reviews, but I thinkbecause of the proximity of his earliest eligibility datehe would have been having six-monthly reviews.

MAHONEY, MR: If he was not put on the AIPR, then underthe earlier rule 13 to which you have referred shouldn't hehave had some kind of review?

QUINLAN, MR: No. Under the earlier rule I think I'mcorrect in saying that unless the review were initiated orrequired by the sentence plan, he wouldn't have. That waspart of the problem of the earlier rule, that there wouldbe large stretches of time where there wouldn't be reviewof progress through a plan, that it may be a number of

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years before an individual management plan under that rulewould be considered again.

MAHONEY, MR: Under that rule a person could be in gaoland nobody know he was there, in effect, for an indefiniteperiod?

QUINLAN, MR: Well, for very long periods at a time. Thatwas what case management and AIPR was designed to resolve,but he didn't have a case officer, he didn't have a plan,he wasn't booked in to any programs, but he says that hewants to go to Karnet to do a meat traineeship so he has toget put on to the system and to do that, finally, Mr Pierrehas to put him on the system. The first thing to do to puthim on the system is to do a classification review.

MAHONEY, MR: Just pausing there, and let me pursue it abit further, why wasn't he put on the system? What hadhappened? Should there have been some automatic process toput him on the system in Bunbury?

QUINLAN, MR: No process would be automatic. It would bethe responsibility, effectively, of the prison and the casemanagement coordinator for that to occur. I understandthat the explanation that officers involved give is thatthere was a large amount of work, not enough resources,prisoners who were already in the system were notprioritised, new entrants in the prison would be givenpriority in terms of that, and prisoners who were existingprisoners within the system and needed to be converted hadto wait until the resources or the persons were able to doso.

MAHONEY, MR: Does that mean that there were a number ofprisoners or there may have been a number of prisoners whowere awaiting classification and nothing was done aboutthem?

QUINLAN, MR: There were a number who were awaitingconversion to director-general's rule 14. They had beenclassified under the old rule but had not been reviewedunder - - -

MAHONEY, MR: Do we have any approximation of how manythere were?


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QUINLAN, MR: I think the indication that was a result ofMs Leske's visit - I will just check that I'm correct aboutthis - was that there were six identified in January 2004.

MAHONEY, MR: At the one prison?

QUINLAN, MR: At Bunbury. Of course, if you waited longenough a person might simply be released without one everhaving been done, but the indication following the visit -I'm just checking that I have got that correct.Ms Kenworthy identified a total of six prisoners at Bunburywho were not on the AIPR system, which meant that they didnot show up on the offender review schedule and had notbeen identified as being on the system at all.

MAHONEY, MR: Bunbury has approximately how manyprisoners? What's the order of it? About 130, is it, oris it different?

QUINLAN, MR: I think it can have up to 200. I would haveto find out the exact numbers that were there at the timeof that visit and that information will be available andcertainly we can ask Ms Kenworthy about that when she givesevidence, but the classification review was carried out toget Mr Cross onto the system, by Mr Pierre, which isdocument 115. You will recall that I took the inquiry to ablank version of a classification review. This is theclassification review with the information in relation toMr Cross filled in. The first question:

Seriousness of the offence: high.

What history is there of escape attempts: none ormore than five years ago.

There's a comment that Cross escaped from FremantlePrison in 1981 and was at large for four days and that theVictorian criminal history sheet displays an escapehistory, but as a result of the scoring mechanism the scorethat he's given is that for none or more than five yearsago. Because of that the next question is not applicablebecause there were no listed offences committed while atlarge.

A history of institutional violence, no previousinstitutional violence in the last five years and obviouslynone in the last 12 months. Serious offence history washigh. The effective sentence left to serve was one yearbut less than three years. That's because the earliesteligibility date for parole was 18 April 2006. The answerwas none or low in relation to further charges pending.There were no disciplinary convictions and there were nodisciplinary convictions in the last 12 months, so both 8and 9 weren't recognised. Question 10 in relation tofamily relationships was said to be good and in relation to

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his position as an industrial worker, that he was an aboveaverage worker:

Cross is employed as the unit cleaner in the unit heresides in self-care. The unit staff report thatCross completes his tasks with no supervision, to agood standard. Program performance: waitlisted forprograms. Cross has been booked for inclusion on aviolent offenders treatment program at AlbanyRegional Prison in the second quarter of 2005.

That is a booking which was made at the time thatthis was prepared. Over the page, the score that thatproduces was a score of seven and a score of seven wouldordinarily result in a security rating of medium. So onthe figures that were produced by that classificationreview, the security rating would be medium. Had heundertaken the violent offenders treatment program, it'slikely that that score would have been lower, which wouldhave put him in the minimum category. The comment whichwas made was:

Override to minimum in view of excellent prisonconduct and work reports. Mature-aged prisoner.Demonstrated settled behaviour and prior successfulminimum placement.

It has got:

20/6/1997 escape history noted.

The reference to 1997 is somewhat unusual given thatthat was a prior minimum placement which precededMr Cross's parole in 1997 which was breached by thecommission of the three armed robberies that he committedin the following two months.


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Nevertheless the comment was to override to minimumin view of the excellent prison conduct and the conclusionwas to reduce to minimum to remain at Bunbury RegionalPrison at the prisoner's request and that there was abooking for the violent offenders treatment program noted.The next thing that would need to be done would be thepreparation of an individual management plan. As can beseen from that first document that I took the inquiry to,the classification review, that was performed on 6 October2004. In fact it is time dated, it is timed as well ashaving been done at 20 past 2 in the afternoon.

The next document which was prepared shortlythereafter was an individual management planrecommendation. That's document 116. You can see this isan initial individual management plan because he has notpreviously been on the system. The security rating whichis written under 2.2 is minimum, although at that timethere had not been any approval of a reduction ofMr Cross's security to minimum. The comments which appearthere are in paragraph 4.2:

Cross is placed in self-care, an earned privilegedposition. The unit staff report that Cross is aquiet individual who maintains a good standard ofcell and personal hygiene and is not considered amanagement concern. Cross is employed as a unitcleaner. The unit staff report he completes his taskto a high standard with no supervision using his owninitiative to complete what is required.

It should be noted at this stage that there is nodocumentation available. There is certainly none on theoffender in custody file in relation to any of the mattersthat are referred to in this report. An identification ofwho the unit staff are that are provided that report is notthere and the evidence is that Mr Pierre made telephonecalls to the unit staff to ask whether or not Cross was awell-behaved prisoner.

Under paragraph 4, the rehabilitation andreintegration needs, 4.1 stated:

Cross is currently booked for inclusion in theviolent offenders treatment program in Albany in thesecond quarter of 2004 subject to mediation, victimmediation unit guidelines upon release. Cross iskeen to eventually transfer to Karnet to participatein a meat industry traineeship.

Over the page on page 3 of that document we can seethe plan or the recommendations. The recommendation fromthe assessment officer to reduce to minimum and theplacements which are then there identified. At that pointit is including Albany but not yet to Karnet until October

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2005 and then ultimately to consider the eligibility forrelease on 18 April 2006.

One would ordinarily expect that or at least it wouldappear appropriate that a prisoner who has been identifiedas somebody who should be doing a violent offenderstreatment program would be doing that program as early aspossible in their sentence but at the very least would bedoing it before proceeding to minimum security and alsodoing it before proceeding to minimum security under a meatindustry traineeship.

In that regard what that means is in effect that hewould become an abattoir worker at Karnet. Karnet PrisonFarm having an abattoir as part of its operations whichproduces meat for the prison system and training in thatregard which then develops to the potential for off-sitework at a meat works in Pinjarra. At any rate, what thenoccurs is a case conference. The case conference occurs on12 October 2004. It is document 117.

In that case conference - it may be appropriate, sir,there are other prisoners' names in relation to some ofthese documents and given that other prisoners would nothave notice of these matters it's perhaps appropriate atthis stage that I make a submission that one of the powersthat are given to a special inquiry under section 13(4) ofthe Public Sector Management Act are that the specialinquiry can give directions concerning the procedure thatare to be complied with by any person participating in thespecial inquiry. My submission would be that a directionshould be given that the names of any other prisoners thatappear in some of these documents not be published as partof - - -


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MAHONEY, MR: These are prisoners which have no concernwith the present matter?

QUINLAN, MR: No. They happen to appear on otherdocuments.

MAHONEY, MR: Do I have power to make that direction?

QUINLAN, MR: I would submit that you do, sir, undersection 13(4). That gives a general power to givedirections concerning any procedure that's not directlydealt with by the act and that would be broad enough toenable at least prisoners who have no relevance at all tothese procedures not to be referred to.

MAHONEY, MR: Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to indicatethat that direction is given and that means simply that ifyou are looking at these records of the inquiry, which areavailable of course, please do not deal with the names ofthe people who are not involved in this present matter.That's a formal direction given under the legislation whichhas effect. I can't see any reason why anybody would wantto refer to those names, but I give that direction.

If you have any doubt about the matter or any problemarises in relation to it would you first speak to theexecutive director Mr Byrne and the matter can be clearedup if necessary, but the order that I make at the moment isthat no reference be made to those names in terms of theparticular legislation. However, I emphasise if there'sany problem arising, then please make inquiries about it.Yes, Mr Quinlan?

QUINLAN, MR: Thank you, sir. Document 117 is a caseconference minute. It was in fact a case conferencecomputer document in the AIPR system but this appears to bea manually generated one. All it has in relation toMr Cross is the result. That case conference on 12 Octoberrecords the recommendation of reduction to minimum securityin line with CRS, that's classification review score,override, transfer to Karnet at prisoner's request toparticipate in meat industry traineeship, booking forviolent offenders treatment program in Albany, notedprisoner is advised of right of appeal.

Somewhere in this process - it's not entirely clearwhen but in order for there to be a transfer to KarnetPrison Farm Karnet Prison Farm has to be contacted. Theassistant superintendent of prison management or what's nowcalled the operations manager of Karnet Prison Farm, is aMr Bond. Mr Bond was consulted by the assistantsuperintendent prison management or the operations managerof Bunbury Prison in relation to that transfer. Mr Bond'sevidence will be that he advised the operations manager atBunbury that he did not consider Cross was appropriate to

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be transferred to Karnet until such time as he had done aviolent offenders treatment program and that Cross shouldbe transferred to Albany Prison in the first instance andMr Bond says that his expectation was that his view wouldbe communicated to the manager of sentence management whoultimately would have to approve that particular placement,or at least that override.

MAHONEY, MR: It being clear that if he was transferred toKarnet Karnet has only minimum security people?

QUINLAN, MR: That's correct. It's a minimum securityprison. It doesn't cater for medium or maximum security.After the case conference on 12 October - it's after thatthat there is a request for a transfer to Karnet byMr Cross. He wrote a letter, or he signed a letter, whichis incorrectly dated but is likely to have been producedafter - and I will say why in a moment - there are twodocuments. The first is document 120 which is a referenceto the chairman case conference.

As you can see it's incorrectly dated 14 October2003. That is certainly not when any request was made.The purpose of the letter is:

To request a full transfer to Karnet Prison as soonas possible for the following reasons: I havecompleted seven years in maximum and medium. I wishto participate in the meat industry traineeship fromKarnet in order to enhance my opportunities forgainful employment, facilitate obtaining my driver'slicence and fork lift licence, facilitate visits withmy family who all live in the metropolitan area. Ibelieve I need to experience the minimum securityenvironment after the length of time I have been inprison to bridge the gap back into society. I attachthe appropriate C164 for your consideration and Ilook forward to your response.


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That gives some indication of the timing of thisdocument because the appropriate C164 is document 121 andas can be seen from that document it's signed by Mr Crossand the date of the document is 26 October 2004, andapplies for a transfer to Karnet, so 26 October 2004 theformal application for review for transfer to Karnet ismade by Mr Cross. Going to the bottom of that page, thenext day, on 27 October 2004, it was signed by theoperations manager, Mr Pattenden, and while it's under theheading, "Reasons for not proceeding," it in fact has,"Application to proceed," and there's a sentence there:

Sentence planner, could you please do a new IMPreflecting Karnet, et cetera, as discussed.

MAHONEY, MR: What does that mean?

QUINLAN, MR: That means that it's necessary to do an IMPthat reflects a placement in Karnet Prison Farm.

MAHONEY, MR: I'm not sure of the significance of that.Does that mean that unless such an IMP was made, hewouldn't have a chance of getting to Karnet?

QUINLAN, MR: He can't go to Karnet unless he is thesubject of an individual management plan to Karnet, but inaddition he can't go to Karnet unless his security isminimum and that can only happen if a proposal for thereduction of his security classification from medium tominimum is approved by the manager of sentence management.

MAHONEY, MR: At the moment his assessment had beenmedium.

QUINLAN, MR: Medium. A recommended management plan wasprepared on 28 October 2004, which is document 119, so thisis the following day. The 26th, the formal application isput in. The 27th, an instruction is given by theoperations manager to the sentence planner. The 28th, thisdocument is prepared, bearing in mind that there wouldalready appear to have been an individual management planwith certain information prepared on 6 October. There'scertain differences in relation to this management plan.The obvious one is that the placement in paragraph 2.3 hasa placement for Karnet:

Remain minimum security in line with currentclassification review score dated 6 October. AtCross' request facilitate meat industry traineeship.

Otherwise the information in relation to offenderbehaviour is the same. Going down to intervention needs,on 4.1:

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Cross is currently booked for inclusion in theviolent offenders treatment program in Albany -

and then there's a note:

The recommendation for this course has been takenfrom the original sentence plan as Cross has not beenupdated to the AIPR system.

That original sentence plan was back in 1997. It'sworth noting that there's no proposal for a substance abusecourse in relation to Cross, which was the other programthat the chief justice identified in his originalsentencing remarks and which were referred to in themodification of the individual management plan in 2001.

Going to the third page of that document, one seesthe difference in the placements proposed which is now aplacement in minimum at Karnet, back to Albany, which iscertainly a - Albany is somewhat ambiguous, but a secureprison, at least medium security - back to Albany for theviolent offenders treatment program, and upon completionback to Karnet.

This is largely a plan which is borne of the factthat he hasn't done this violent offenders treatmentprogram before. He can't do it at Karnet but the requestis for him to go to Karnet in the meantime, presumablystart the meat trainee course, go back to Albany to do theviolent offenders treatment program high intensity, andthen go back to Karnet later on.


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So that new IMP was prepared. During the course ofthis telephone calls had actually been put through toMs Doyle, who was the manager of sentence management, inrelation to the appropriateness of this course and how thestaff at Bunbury considered that Cross was an appropriatecandidate for doing this and undertaking this traineeshipand that that had been approved and that it would be anappropriate change to his regime. So it went to sentencemanagement for approval.

MAHONEY, MR: Just before you go to that, this program forviolent offenders management, had he ever requested to goto that?

QUINLAN, MR: There's no record of that on the file fromBunbury. There's no record at all for what happened to himat Bunbury but you will recall, sir, that at the time ofhis original sentence in 1997 the chief justice's commentfollowing the pre-sentence report was that Cross indicateda desire to do what was the equivalent course at that time.

MAHONEY, MR: Nothing had happened from 1997 onward.

QUINLAN, MR: No.

MAHONEY, MR: Then it came up again for the first timewhen he requested that he be transferred to the minimumsecurity prison.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. It was referred - - -

MAHONEY, MR: It was said, "You can't get here unless youhave done that course" and therefore he was put on the listfor the course.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. It's probably more he was identifiedas needing to participate in the equivalent course, and Icall it that because it wasn't called the violent offenderstreatment program, but he was referred to as being referredfor assessment for that course in 2001, when there was amodification to his plan in Albany. The most significantreason that he would have had to have done that course isnot so that he can go to Karnet, but without doing thatcourse he would not be considered favourably for parole,particularly given that the sentencing judge at the timehad indicated that he should not be considered for paroleuntil he had addressed that aspect of the offendingbehaviour and the violent offences.

So that is probably - we can inquire of witnesses asto this, but that is probably the prime motivating factorfor that course needing to be done. But certainly onewould presume that in an ideal world one would do such acourse before participating in a minimum securitytraineeship.

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MAHONEY, MR: How long was that course anticipated totake?

QUINLAN, MR: The intensive course, that's a good questionand I'm not entirely sure but I think it was a six monthcourse at Albany, but we will ask about that.

MAHONEY, MR: Yes, thank you.

QUINLAN, MR: Now, it went to Ms Doyle for approval.Ms Doyle was not told anything about whether Karnet hadsaid they didn't want Cross at the prison and on4 November, the recommended individual management plan madeby Officer Pierre on 28 October 2004 was approved byMs Doyle and that appears at document 122. So if we go topage 3 of the document - there are only two pages, so wehave lost the second page, but the endorsement one can see,that it then eventually goes back to - we can go back tothat - Cross and he has signed it on the second page:

Does the prisoner understand and agree with theindividual management plan?

Now, he then went to Karnet and was transferred toKarnet Prison Farm. The transfer advice, which is indocument 116, page 5 - this is the transfer advice, BunburyRegional Prison, 17 November 2004, which was the transferdate, which approves the transfer to Karnet Prison Farm andan approved security rating of minimum.


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Perhaps worth noting is that under Active Alerts onthat document the remarks include an alert type of escapeand the remarks are, "Escaped from Fremantle Prison 1981."We knew that. Then there's another person's name in areport from January 1996 and then there's a statement:

Information received from Casuarina Prison in 1998suggests that prisoner Cross may be a potentialescape risk.

That reference appears, it would appear, for thefirst time in this transfer advice and didn't appear inMr Pierre's original proposed individual management planand the provenance of that particular information is notclear, but it would appear that it comes from an alert thatis on the TOMS system. It has found its way into thatdocument without having found its way into Mr Pierre'sdocument.

There would of course have been other prisoners whowere classified as minimum at the time but who were not inminimum security facilities but were awaiting transfer tominimum security facilities, but it would appear thatMr Cross, from not having been on the system for years wastransferred within a month and a half of first beingidentified and put on the system.

So he went to Karnet, started the traineeship andrather without warning escaped on 11 March 2005. As wehave indicated earlier, there's no great magic to howsomebody escapes from Karnet Prison Farm, because thenature of the facility itself is that from a physical pointof view there isn't a particular difficulty in being ableto do that and it would appear in relation to Cross that heleft the prison after an informal muster sometime in thenight and jumped the fence, as it were.

He was recaptured on 21 March 2005, some 10 dayslater. The circumstances of how he was found and therecapture can be seen in relation to the statements ofmaterial facts in relation to offences that he pleadedguilty to sometime later. They're in document 147. Thisis the statement of material facts. The first page is theescape from legal custody:

On Saturday 11 March 2005 the defendant was asentenced prisoner at Karnet Prison Farm, KingsburyDrive, Serpentine. Sometime between 8 pm and 10 pmthat evening a check of all prisoners was conducted,during which the defendant was found to be missing.Inquiries conducted by police resulted in thedefendant being located on Sunday, 20 March 2005 inPinjarra.

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He was, at the time, also charged with another twomatters as a result of a burglary offence, thecircumstances of which can be seen on page 3 of thatdocument.

MAHONEY, MR: He not merely escaped but he then set aboutcommitting offences.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. As we can see on that:

Between 4 pm on 8 March and 6.30 pm on Sunday,20 March, he attended a farm residence owned by thecomplainant. No person was at home. He gained entrythrough a bedroom window. He went to the masterbedroom. He removed an Alcoa brand watch, a goldnecklace and radio tuner. He located a secure guncabinet in a spare bedroom. Using an angle grinderand a jemmy bar obtained from the complainant's shedhe forced entry into the gun cabinet with the anglegrinder. Several firearms were contained. Heremoved a Liege brand double-barrelled 12-gaugeshotgun owned by the complainant. He also emptied agreen tool-bag and took it with him. At 6.30 pmpolice located him in North Pinjarra in possession ofthe green tool-bag containing the shotgun. He ranfrom police and was apprehended some distance away.

On the next page, page 4, one of the other offenderswith which he was charged was altering a firearm and he wasin possession of that double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun:

Using a hacksaw blade or similar, the accused cut theend of the barrels off the firearm, leaving26 centimetres of the barrels remaining. He also cutthe wooden stock off the butt, leaving ahandgrip-style shape.

That's perhaps the more serious of the charges withwhich he was then charged.

MAHONEY, MR: How long was he in Karnet before he escaped?

QUINLAN, MR: He had been there since 17 November 2004 andescaped on 11 March 2005. The report that was given inrelation to his - perhaps if I can refer to document 31.


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This is the report to the minister of justice fromthe ministry, or a copy of it. On page 3 of that report wecan see the summary in relation to Mr Cross, halfway downthe page:

In relation to Mr Paul David Cross, who escaped fromKarnet, the classification review completed on6 October 2004 using the department's scoring tooldetermined the score to be seven, which generallywould be rated as medium security, however the ratingwas overridden to minimum security because ofMr Cross's excellent prison conduct and work reportsat Bunbury Prison. He had successfully completed1133 days at the prison.

You can see in the second paragraph:

He had, prior to the escape, successfully completed114 days at Karnet Prison Farm before the escape andsince his recapture has been in Casuarina Prison.

It is worth asking then, what has happened since?One thing that has happened since within the ministry - thedepartment is that a new committee has been formed and thatcommittee is known as the prisoner assessment reviewcommittee, which appears in document 41. This is thecommittee that has as its purpose the implementation ofaspects of the review into ACM, and if I can go to thesecond page, the committee, prisoner assessment reviewcommittee, was established in April of this year. Thereview hadn't been completed in October 2004.

The inaugural meeting of the committee was proposedfor late April 2005, so it is worth noting that thiscommittee was established after this inquiry wasestablished and its proposal to first meet was after thefirst public sitting of this inquiry. The core members ofthe committee are identified further down the page: theexecutive director of prisons, the general manager publicprisons, the director of offender services and sentencemanagement, the director security, the executive officer,the general manager, the director of rural and regionalprisons, the director of women's custodial services and, byinvitation, the superintendent operations, public prisons,director health services, principal clinical psychologist.

It is worth noting that those core members andinvitation members do not appear to include persons whoseday-to-day duties include the operation of the AIPR casemanagement system. It doesn't include, for example, themanager of assessments at Hakea Prison. It doesn't appearto include what might be described as operational people.

That committee first met on 28 April this year,document 39, and one can see that that was a well-attended

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meeting of the first meeting and there were a number ofprojects identified as part of it including theconsideration of terms of reference and monitoring andcompliance.

The second meeting of the committee, which isdocument 40, occurred last week on 31 May 2005 and thebusiness that was dealt with at that meeting was theamalgamation of director-general's rules 13 and 14, so someconsiderable period of time after the director-general'srules in relation to assessment and case management it'sstill the case that this process has not been completed andwe have even got, in the first reporting there, that afteryears of trying to get designated case managementcoordinators there is now a proposal to change the name ofthat title to coordinator of sentence management.

That committee may well be considering the kinds ofrecommendations contained in the review of assessment andcase management in the prison system.


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Can I refer to that finally, that document, which isdocument 28. The recommendations which appear on pages 6 -there's a certain irony to some of these recommendations.The second recommendation you can see, sir, is,"Coordinator ACM position":

A dedicated coordinator, assessment and casemanagement position, should be identified at eachprison to provide overall coordination of assessmentand case management, to drive and improve the qualityof standards and processes and provide ongoingsupport for staff.

That of course is the recommendation and the proposalthat was there from the very beginning at the outset of thepilot and which was identified on a number of occasionsover the past years. Likewise, in recommendation 3:

Each prison to review their assessment and casemanagement workload and determine the need for adedicated assessment officer position to undertakeassessments for newly received prisoners and/orcomplete re-entry tasks such as parole reports, homeleave applications and re-entry release orders.

That too relates to matters which have long beenrequired for case management. Recommendation 4:

Prison services executive to allocate a trainingbudget for assessment and case management -

a recommendation that no doubt those involved in theprocess would have been waiting for for some time.Recommendation 5 and recommendation 6 are somewhat related:

That there be a new model for the assessment and casemanagement of prisoners to be adopted which targetsand gives priority to high risk prisoners -

which are then defined in recommendation 6. Similarly, inrecommendation 9 on the next page:

Introduce a two-tiered case management model. Tier 1case management targets high risk prisoners and thosewith more intense management requirements and isbased on the current standards of delivery. Tier 2case management is applied to prisoners who are nothigh risk and have fewer requirements for regularformal contacts.

The irony there seems to be that a system which theavailable evidence would suggest has never really beenevaluated after the pilot which was overtaken - it's nowproposed that there be a new model, so after the four yearsor so of this process not reaching a formal evaluation

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stage the proposal is to move to something different andthe tiered case model would suggest that there will be atier based on the current standards of delivery and thenanother tier which doesn't have the current standards ofdelivery. Recommendation 11:

To finalise director-general's rule 14.

Again that would be something a long time coming.Recommendation 14:

That the public prisons directorate to define theperformance reporting requirements for strategic andoperational management assessment and casemanagement, sentence management branch should begiven responsibility for ongoing performancemonitoring of ACM across the prison system.

That would appear to be a recommendation which echoesthe very things which were sought to be defined during thecourse of the pilot in those audit reports but which werenever defined and it would appear never followed up. Interms of the performance of the system, this is a reportthat will be referred to in more detail at a later point intime but provides a detail of assessment in relation tothese matters, but is not a review which evaluates thedocuments as such or evaluates the tools as such in ascientific or qualitative way.

It would appear that there has been a process ofevaluating the case management tools in relation toprograms that has gone to the crime research centre at theUniversity of Western Australia, so some of these thingsare happening rather late in the piece but in terms of thehistory that has been identified, which I would submitdirectly contributes to the apparent haste with whichMr Cross had to be dealt with when he was eventually found,has not been finally or adequately addressed up until thisstage.

MAHONEY, MR: Do I understand this correctly then: thatCross was in prison for a sentence of 15 years imposed on27 November 97. That meant that prima facie he was thereuntil 2012 unless he were let out on parole or in someother method to serve some of this sentence outside thegaol. He was then, notwithstanding all of that and hisprevious history, classified ordinarily as medium securitybut then classified as minimum security and within three orfour months of that he escaped again and committed the samekind of offences as before?


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QUINLAN, MR: Yes. He certainly didn't commit an armedrobbery offence, but he was found with a sawn-off shotgun,in effect.

MAHONEY, MR: Stealing guns and things of that kind.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: I suppose you're going to look at thecircumstances then in which he failed to be dealt with, howhe then became classified not medium security but minimumsecurity and why that happened.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes. If I can indicate the witnesses, thatcompleting the opening that I propose, the witnesses whoare likely to be called at this stage of the hearing:Ms Kenworthy, who did the review which identified Mr Crossas one of the prisoners, Mr Pierre, who conducted the casemanagement conference and the individual management planpreparations and made the various recommendations,Mr Pattenden, who communicated with Karnet Prison Farm andwho made the direction to the sentence planner on27 October, Mr Bond, who was the assistant superintendentprisoner management at Karnet Prison Farm, Ms Doyle, whowas and is the manager of sentence management.

Then in relation to the other matters that I havegone through, Mr Ellis, who was the manager strategicdevelopment, Mr Bandy, who is the manager of assessments atHakea Prison and Ms Leske, who carried out the review. Theother person who would be called at a later point in time,because he's currently on leave and I think out of thecountry, is Mr Smith, who is the acting superintendent atBunbury Prison, who will be able to address those mattersas to how case management was or was not rolled out atBunbury prison.

Those opening remarks conclude the opening I wasproposing to make and we will then proceed with thewitnesses tomorrow morning.

MAHONEY, MR: I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

QUINLAN, MR: Those opening remarks conclude my openingand we will proceed with the witnesses tomorrow morning, soI would seek to adjourn until tomorrow morning at 10.30.

MAHONEY, MR: Again, do I understand it clearly that inorder for him to be classified as appropriate for minimumsecurity somebody had to form the bona fide view that hewas not apt to escape?

QUINLAN, MR: He had to be classified minimum under thesecurity rating system, which was the recommendation of theassessment officer in October 2004, that notwithstanding

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that his score was a seven that he should be overridden tominimum. If his score was a six the program would havesuggested the classification to minimum.

MAHONEY, MR: Let me press you a little bit on it. Forminimum security to be proposed on the recommendation ofsomebody, could that person recommend that that be doneunless the person thought that he was unlikely to attemptto escape? If the person thought he was likely to attemptto escape, did the system require that he or she,notwithstanding that, recommend that the person be put inminimum security?

QUINLAN, MR: I would think it highly unlikely that aperson would recommend a reduction to minimum security ifthey had formed the view that the person was likely toescape. Obviously the question of override in relation tothat decision-making process is one which would naturallytake into account escape history.

MAHONEY, MR: So that we have here somebody who ordinarilywould be there until 2012 and somebody must have formed theview that this man, notwithstanding his history, was notlikely to attempt to escape.

QUINLAN, MR: That would seem to be the natural inferenceto draw from the recommendation which was made, that thatview was formed.

MAHONEY, MR: No doubt we will hear something about thattomorrow.

QUINLAN, MR: Yes.

MAHONEY, MR: Yes. Well, I notice then it's going on forquarter to 4. It's proposed, I understand then, to sitfrom 10.30 tomorrow until approximately 4 o'clock.

QUINLAN, MR: Until 4 o'clock or we run out of witnesses,whichever comes first.

MAHONEY, MR: Well, I hope we don't run out of witnessesbefore 4 o'clock. Yes, all right. Well then we willadjourn until 10.30 tomorrow morning. The transcript oftoday's material will be available in the way which haspreviously been announced. I think it's probably tomorrowmorning first thing it should be available. Part oftoday's transcript will already of course have beenavailable. Yes, well, we will adjourn until 10.30tomorrow.

AT 3.44 PM THE MATTER WAS ADJOURNED UNTILFRIDAY, 10 JUNE 2005


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