00:00During her final year in prison, Beryl Dandy noticed a drastic change.
00:08Some of the girls were sleeping at reception and when I was there I used to stay in a block
00:15and we used to share with other girls and the other girls used to sleep on the floor.
00:20She says the prison was regularly forced into lockdown due to staff shortages, prisoner misbehaviour
00:27and for prisoner headcounts among other reasons, preventing the delivery of rehab programs.
00:33Actually there was no program like AOD, Family Violence Program and Triple S and Women of Worth, there was none.
00:46NT corrections data shows that in the six months to March 2025,
00:5010 of the 11 sessions scheduled as part of the Addictive Behaviours Program were cancelled.
00:55Of the six sessions of the Safe, Sober, Strong Program which provides skills to improve pro-social behaviours,
01:01five were cancelled.
01:02Overall, 34 of the 46 scheduled psycho-educational programs across the six month period were cancelled due to lockdowns.
01:10Professor Stuart Kinner, an expert in prisoner health, says the lack of addiction treatment and counselling programs
01:16is something the public should be concerned about.
01:19The healthier people are when they return to the community, the better we provide them with services to meet their health needs,
01:26particularly mental health and substance use treatment needs, the less likely they are to re-offend.
01:31In other words, better health, less crime.
01:34Outside prison, wait times for residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics like Banyan House are getting longer.
01:41Demand has significantly increased and we've got a lot of demand, especially from the criminal justice system right now.
01:49Everyone wants to get into rehab as soon as possible and that's the expectation,
01:53but we can't meet that expectation at the moment due to the demand.
01:56But the government says that won't stop at implementing its suite of tough-on-crime measures.
02:01We make no apologies. We're going to make sure that the territory is safe.
02:04If you commit a crime out there, there's going to be a consequence.
02:07If you get ordered into detention by the courts, there's going to be a bed.
02:10There has been some movement on rehab.
02:13Last month, Mr Maly announced a $2 million pathway program for helping prisoners develop skills to help them get jobs.
02:20But for Beryl, treating addiction is key.
02:24If we don't have access to the program in Sector 4, the ladies and me probably will keep going back to jail.
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