By Tim Anderson
No scalps at ICAC
It seems that no serious charges will be laid against senior police or prison officers after the Independent Commission Against Corruption's prisoner informers inquiry. There will be no major "scalps", and ICAC will seek to placate concern over perceived corruption in the informer industry through a series of bureaucratic reforms.
Commissioner Ian Temby is likely to criticise the poor police scrutiny of some discredited informers' backgrounds, whilst acknowledging the police "need" for such informers. ICAC's proposal for a centralised database of informers, to be maintained by the director of public prosecutions, came after the commission refused to investigate the role of prosecution lawyers in the industry. In this respect, it's perhaps significant that Temby was himself a federal prosecutor, who gave indemnities from prosecution to informers in exchange for their evidence. If the terms of reference had not been limited to NSW, ironically, Temby himself could have become a witness at his own inquiry.
ICAC looked at several cases involving prisoner informers so as to be able to assess "patterns" of conduct. To this extent, then, the inquiry moved away from an attack on actual corruption to a search for administrative changes which might make the system "work better". However, the pattern of substitution of prisoners' verbals for police verbals was not seriously investigated, nor was the fabrication of informers' evidence, since this would have been to "interfere in the criminal justice process".
The main problem with bureaucratic reform is that the current "safeguards" are being ignored. The ICAC hearings did show that, despite existing disclosure rules, there was a widespread withholding of evidence from the courts to increase the credibility of and reward informers.
Further, under common law, informers are routinely rewarded for perjured evidence, even after the courts have discredited them. Fred Many and Ray Denning were both given substantial sentence discounts by the same Court of Criminal Appeal that had earlier discredited their evidence. This bizarre anomaly has to be resolved by parliament.
A central issue was the future of prisons security boss Ron Woodham, whose Internal Investigation Unit laid the basis for the widespread use of prisoner informers in criminal cases. Woodham rose to power in the 1980s, and is now in effect head of the Corrective Services Department, although nominally third in charge. He developed his power base through the jail "emergency units" and a unique relationship with police, which came to include the recruitment of informers.
At ICAC, Woodham was forced to admit that the favours to his "kennel" of informers extended to turning a blind eye to stabbings and heroin trafficking. He gave character evidence for Ray Denning in ting his knowledge of Denning's involvement in a major heroin import plan. He also provided special favours to informer Bill Cavanagh, while Cavanagh was selling drugs and involved in standover activities including stabbings.
Woodham has thus exposed himself, at the least, to serious charges of neglect of duty. It seems, however, that his survival has been politically assured by corrective services minister Terry Griffiths, who, more than his predecessor Michael Yabsley, appears content to rely on a "strong man" in the department.
None of this inspires much hope that there will be a substantial change in the grubby business of police and prosecutors purchasing the "evidence" of prisoner informers. Like the traditional police verbal, the accounts of jailyard "confessions" have become one more means of determining criminal cases in the police station rather than the courtroom. It remains to be seen if ICAC will recognise the simple fact that all such evidence is tainted.