The ACT's human rights commissioner believes a new agency set up to oversee the territory's corrections system should have the power to scrutinise all institutions where people are involuntarily locked up.
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Dr Helen Watchirs welcomed the decision to install an Inspectorate of Custodial Services, 10 years after she first recommended the agency be introduced.
But Dr Watchirs said the inspectorate's focus should extend beyond the Alexander Maconochie Centre and Bimberi.
"When governments lock someone up against their will they have a huge human rights responsibility in how that person will be treated so to have an inspectorate goes a long way in showing that responsibility is being taken very seriously," she said.
"In my view it should also cover other areas including Dhulwa, the new forensic facility, the adult mental health unit, anywhere people are involuntarily detained."
This month corrections minister Shane Rattenbury announced an inspectorate would be formed later this year in response to several scathing reviews on the ACT's incarceration record.
A particularly damning review by former integrity commissioner Phillip Moss found widespread systemic failures contributed to the death in custody of Aboriginal inmate Steven Freeman last year.
"There certainly have been failures identified in the Moss report, in the Auditor-Generals' report and the report we did in 2014, but I think an inspectorate using a human rights framework would make a big difference," Dr Watchirs said.
"The current oversight arrangement is very part-time in the ACT. No one has full-time staff dedicated to it."
But while Dr Watchirs made the recommendation to establish an inspectorate in 2007, she does not blame the ACT government for failing to institute it before now.
"We wanted an inspectorate in place before the AMC started. At the federal level the campaign has been a difficult one but last year it certainly revved up again, which is why we did the submission to the Moss inquiry saying the time has come, the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture's about to be ratified, let's get on board and get a good system started here in the ACT, we could be a good model for other jurisdictions," Dr Watchirs said.
"To be fair the federal government only signed the optional protocol in 2009 and it's taken eight years since then to ratify and two years to come into force so at a federal level it's taken a long time."
Mr Rattenbury said while the directorate would focus on the corrections system for adults and young people, the government would consider all models as it deliberated the scope of the inspector's role.
"There are a range of models for inspectorate functions in other jurisdictions, which provide oversight for facilities such as adult, youth and mental health detention facilities, as well as courts, cells and other facilities where people are deprived of their liberties," Mr Rattenbury said.
