Corrective services

If you are not sure about complaining, please contact us for advice. 

We are the NSW Ombudsman. Our job is to listen to people who complain about the government or something that the government has done. We try to work out what the problem is and how to fix the problem or improve things.

If we are not the right people to listen to your complaint, we will tell you who you can contact. If there are any other steps you can take to make things better, we will tell you this.

We are a free service: There is no charge to complain and no charge for our help. 

We are independent: This means that we don’t work for the government, and we don’t take sides.

You can keep your complaint confidential: You can decide if you want to us tell people that you have complained.

If you complain, it can help to make things better for you and for other people. Complaints can:

• help to fix or improve the problem you are complaining about
• help other people who have similar problems
• give you more control over your situation
• tell you the reason for the problem so that you understand why it is happening
• tell Corrective Services or other government agencies that there is a problem.

You can complain about things that happen in prison

You can complain if people are not following the rules or you think you are not being treated fairly. Here are some examples of things you can complain about in prison:

• you are not being told about activities or programs or you are not allowed to do them
• your friends or family are not allowed to visit or they are only allowed non-contact visits
• the prison takes too long to get you your mail or too long to put phone numbers on your phone list
• the prison makes mistakes with your buy-ups
• the prison lost some of your things (your personal belongings) when you moved within the prison or from a different prison
• you are being locked in your cell for long periods and not being given a good reason for this
• somebody who works at the prison uses unreasonable or excessive force against you. This might mean they hit or push you or hold you to stop you moving (restrain you) in a way that you feel is not fair
• you were charged with an offence in custody and the charge is not fair or you did not get a chance to have your say about it
• you have been told you need to have a blood test (Mandatory Disease Test) and you believe this is not fair.

There are many other things that you can complain about. It doesn’t have to be something on this list. 

You can complain about prisons and community orders

We also listen to complaints about:

• government correctional centres (prisons run by the government)
• private correctional centres (prisons run by a private company) including Junee, Parklea and Clarence 
• health services in prisons.

Community-based orders (like intensive corrections orders or community corrections orders). 

Here’s how to complain from prison:

You should talk to the prison first

If you believe something is not fair, the first thing you should do is talk to the prison or agency you want to complain about. This gives them a chance to fix the problem. 

If you are in prison, you can usually do this by:

• speaking to an officer, manager or case officer
• filling in a form 
• calling the Corrective Services Support Line (CSSL) – Line 1 on the CADL system (free call list).

If you don’t feel safe contacting the prison first, you can contact us. 

You can call us, write to us or see us when we visit

Call us

You can call us for free. We are Line 8 on the free call list. We are usually open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 12 pm and 1 pm to 4 pm. When you call us, we will ask for your name and your MIN. People who work at the prison are not allowed to listen to your call or record it. 

Write to us

You can write to us in any language. If you need help, ask a SAPO (Services and Programs Officer) to help. Ask an officer for an envelope, then write our address on it:

NSW Ombudsman
Level 24, 580 George Street
Sydney NSW 2000.

Put your letter into the envelope and seal it closed. Corrective Services will pay for the postage. People who work at the prison are not allowed to open the envelope or read any letters you send us. They also are not allowed to read any letter we send back to you. 

See us when we visit your prison

We visit prisons to check how inmates are being treated and see what the prison is like for them. The prison should put up a poster before we come to let everyone know that we are coming. When we visit your prison, you can talk to us in person.

You can complain anonymously

You are allowed to complain anonymously. This means you don’t have to tell us your name. 

We will still try to help you. But it can make it hard for us to look into your problem and tell you what we are doing.

It is not legal to punish or threaten a person who has complained to us or a person who is helping us. Please tell us if you complained to us and you think someone is punishing you because you did this.

Your friends and family might want to complain for you

If your friends or family are worried about how you are being treated, they might contact us. We will usually tell them that they can’t complain for you. You should contact us if you want to complain. We do this so we can be sure that you want to complain and that you want us to help. 

You can also complain about other agencies

We can also help with problems when you are not in prison. These are some of the agencies you can complain to us about:

• NSW Department of Communities and Justice
• Youth Justice
• Housing NSW
• Service NSW
• Revenue NSW
• local councils
• community service providers (agencies that help government agencies with things like housing, children, families and safety).

We will review your complaint  

We will look into what you complained about to decide what we should do. But we are only allowed to do something if we think that how you were treated was not legal or not fair. 

Some of the things we might do about your complaint are:

• ask for more information from you, the prison manager, Corrective Services or another agency
• work out which government agency can help with your problem and then ask that agency to investigate your complaint and tell us what they find out
• tell a senior manager at the prison what they can do to make things better for everyone
• start a formal investigation into your complaint. This is a process where we look at what you complained about in detail.

NSW Police

We can’t look into complaints about NSW Police. Instead, you can call the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission. They are Line 19 on the free call list.

Health care decisions

We don’t usually look into complaints about decisions your doctor or nurse made about your health care. Instead you can contact the people listed below.

• in a public prison, call Justice Health – Line 5 on the free call list
• in Parklea Correctional Centre, contact St Vincent’s Health by filling in a health request form
• in Junee Correctional Centre, call Line 23 on the free call list and leave a message or fill in a request form
• in Clarence Correctional Centre, contact Serco Health by filling in a health request form on your tablet.

If these people don’t fix or improve your problem, the next thing to do is to call the Health Care Complaints Commission. They are Line 17 on the free call list.

Legal matters

If you want to ask a question or complain about something legal, you can call organisations like:

• Law Access
• Legal Aid 
• Aboriginal Legal Service. 

See the free call list for numbers.

If you want to complain about a lawyer, you can write to:
Office of the Legal Services Commissioner
GPO Box 4460
Sydney NSW 2001