A British-born murderer and rapist has made a successful claim for racial discrimination against his jailers after they imposed tougher prison restrictions upon him because his visa was revoked.
Barry Whiteoak, 65, was originally sentenced to life in prison for the murder of nurse Noreen Hannon, whom he stabbed and strangled to death at Parramatta in 1983.
The bloody, unprovoked crime was committed while Whiteoak was on parole for a 1980 sexual assault, and followed his rape of a young woman in 1978.
In 1994 Whiteoak appealed against his sentence and the NSW Supreme Court granted him a minimum non-parole period of 15 years. The NSW Parole Authority has knocked back all of Whiteoak's subsequent applications for release.
However, Whiteoak had more success in the Civil and Administrative Tribunal this week.
After a long, drawn-out legal battle, Whiteoak succeeded in having a finding of racial discrimination made against the NSW Department of Corrective Services.
He was awarded $500 – a sum which, in accordance with NSW law, he must hand over to the NSW Victim Support Fund.
Whiteoak's claim centred on a decision by Corrective Services management to impose a more restrictive security classification on him in December 2008 after the Department of Immigration and Citizenship formally revoked his visa.
The decision was made in accordance with a Corrective Services policy known as “Old inmates of interest to immigration”.
Under this policy, which has now been amended, prisoners deemed “unlawful non-citizens” who faced deportation upon release, had to be placed on the tough C1 classification. This required them to be confined to a cell at all times except in the company of a corrective services officer.
Whiteoak claimed that he was unfairly prevented from being housed in a “less secure environment” and denied the opportunity to take part in day leave, which was harming his chances of obtaining parole.
This, he said, was “discrimination on grounds of race for goods and services”.
“The policy [that the then corrective services commissioner] Mr Ron Woodham implemented was in effect a Kneejerk [sic] reaction to one inmate who absconded while on a day leave treating all inmates as if they were all potential escapees," Whiteoak wrote in a letter to the tribunal.
"[I]t is discrimination because the policy decisions are treating me differently to what an Australian citizen is treated."
The prisoner claimed that five separate decisions by Corrective Services between 2006 and 2010 to keep him on the C1 classification were discriminatory.
The tribunal found that only the decision made in December 2008 was unlawful because it was made a few days after another tribunal found that the “Old inmates of interest to immigration” policy was discriminatory.
Subsequent decisions to keep Whiteoak on the C1 classification were based on his refusal to undertake an intensive treatment program for violent offenders, the tribunal found, and so were legitimate.
