Corrective Services NSW Is Surveilling Inmates’ Calls to MPs to Silence Complaints

Corrective Services New South Wales is surveilling privileged calls between inmates and members of parliament, while the government has also tried to whittle away at the confidentiality of calls between inmates and lawyers. And the reason is clear, corrections wants the abuse and malpractice inmates are subject to in the NSW corrections system to stay hidden behind prison walls.

NSW Greens MLC Sue Higginson has recently raised the issue with CSNSW, as well as NSW corrections minister Anoulack Chanthivong and the press. The lawmaker told Sydney Criminal Lawyers this week that she knows of “scores of cases”, where inmates are threatened to stay mum and if they do mention inconvenient truths, then guards have repeated what they said back to them.

And this issue has precedent. Corrections is permitted to eavesdrop on and record the regular calls of inmates. But calls between prisoners and lawyers, MPs or the NSW Ombudsman are required to be confidential, so inmates can raise wrongdoing. However, the 2024 Astill inquiry uncovered officers monitoring privileged correspondence to silence reports of ongoing sexually assaults.

Going to prison isn’t meant to be a summer camp, but neither is it meant to be a place of medical neglect or a where the convicted go to be raped by state-employed guards. NSW prides itself on being a contemporary state, yet its prisoner population is stripped of more than just the right to liberty. Indeed, this state ran the much-lauded UN OPCAT prison inspectors out of town in 2022.

CSNSW is investigating the Greens MLC’s complaint, while the corrections minister has said it “needs to be fixed”. But as Higginson and others have been raising of late, under the Minns government, NSW prisons are overflowing, and the number of inmates on remand is at an all-time high, yet corrections obviously considers the best way forward is to continue with its failures and malpractice.

Hidden behind prison walls

“Too often, incarcerated people seeking justice while behind bars are shut down and targeted by prison guards, including when they reach out to oversight bodies, like the Ombudsman, Legal Aid, and members of parliament,” Higginson said on Monday. And in terms of the threats being made to inmates, she said if they speak out, solitary confinement or withdrawal of privileges often awaits.

“In many cases, inmates report details of phone calls being repeated back to them,” the NSW Greens justice spokesperson added. “My office is often given a prerecorded message notifying us that our conversations are being recorded.”

Clause 19 of the Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Regulation 2014 (NSW) governs inmate phone calls. Inmates can make a limited number of calls a week, and they must get authorisation to do so, especially when calling prisoners in other gaols. Guards can terminate calls if their content threatens a facility’s good order or the security of a person, or it’s being carried out in contravention of the law.

Clause 119B of the Regulation stipulates that a “call made or received by an inmate may be monitored or recorded, unless a party to the telephone call with the inmate is an exempt body, or an exempt person”. Exempt people are MPs, lawyers and police officers. A long list of exempt bodies includes the NSW and Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.

“Just last week, I wrote to the corrections minister about an inmate who was forced to sign documentation saying he was happy with his treatment in custody, after he detailed his experience of abuse inside a prison to me,” Higginson set out.

And while Chanthivong hasn’t gotten around to replying as yet, the Greens MLC hopes he’s doing something, as this goes “to the fundamental integrity of our prison system”.

Eroding lawyer-client privilege

On 3 February 2026, the Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Amendment (Exempt Persons) Regulation 2026 was quietly tabled in both houses of parliament at the behest of minister Chanthivong. The reason there was no parliamentary vote on this is that regulations are a form of delegated legislation, and changes to such legislation are made directly and solely by the minister.

The exempt persons amendment altered clause 3 of the Regulation, so that in terms of legal practitioners, they were only to be considered as exempt persons if they represented the prisoner, “including by giving legal advice to” them, or the lawyer was “in the process of becoming a legal representative of the inmate”.

In respect of the tweaking of the rule, Higginson told the upper house in March that either the minister was “unaware of the risks” that it would be “struck down by the courts” given the extensive judgements upholding “the right of inmates to legal representation free of surveillance”, or she considered he might be fully aware of them but made “a ham-fisted attempt to get around them”.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the rights of incarcerated people to legal professional privilege,” Higginson said earlier this week. “This concept is inextricably linked to the constitutional right to a fair trial, which goes to the integrity of our criminal justice system.”

“The unfortunate reality is that our corrections minister Anoulack Chanthivong is asleep at the wheel,” the Greens MLC told SCL on Monday. “In making this regulation, the Minns Labor government ignored the Supreme Court and the findings of the Astill inquiry.””

Dubious law struck down

Higginson raised a disallowance motion to strike out the law on 19 March 2026. She also pointed to the impracticality of the law, as she questioned how officers would know a lawyer who is not yet working on behalf an inmate is about to become their representative, or how one would ascertain that a solicitor not representing an inmate is not providing legal advice to them before listening in.

“As a legal practitioner myself, I have had many conversations with incarcerated people who I did not yet at that time represent,” the Greens MLC told the chamber, whilst this week she underscored that “lawyer-client confidentiality is breached the moment a privileged conversation is overheard, which meant that regulation risked significant breaches with wide-ranging repercussions”.

Unsurprisingly, the opposition and entire crossbench supported the disallowance motion to end the law that created a legislated grey area that was rife for abuse and provided an excuse to breach lawyer-client privilege.

The revoking of this amendment also ended any confusion around prying into written correspondence, which was also an issue in the Astill inquiry. Clause 112 of the Regulation allows prison officers to open mail either sent by or to an inmate and then read it. But clause 113 prevents this from happening in terms of exempt persons and exempt bodies.

“Members of parliament from across the political spectrum could see that these laws enabling prison staff to spy on lawyers were clumsy, unsubstantiated and potentially dangerous in the administration of justice,” the lawyer made clear. “I’m relieved the Greens were able to change the law to uphold these protections.”

And this dubious lawmaking scenario further lends credence to Higginson’s claims around CSNSW surveilling her exchanges with incarcerated persons.

Leaving the wound to fester

“We know from serious cases like the Astill inquiry that sexual abusers have monitored the calls and letters of women in prison as a way to make sure they can’t speak up about their abuse,” Higginson added.

“It is vital for the safety of people in custody that they can have protected channels of communication with the very few people that the law allows, including lawyers, MPs and oversight bodies.”

The 2024 Astill Special Commission of Inquiry involved investigators considering how much prison officers and inmates knew about the crimes of former prison officer Wayne Gregory Astill, who was convicted of 27 sex crime offences in 2022, which he perpetrated while working on Dharug land in Dillwynia Correctional Centre, near the NSW town of Windsor. And he’s now serving 23 years.

The report did find that Astill could get away with committing sex crimes whilst it was generally known because the culture inside the gaol involved disrespect, fear of retribution and abuse. Astill was prompted to the senior position of intelligence officer, which allowed him to monitor inmate phone calls and mail, and he was found to have intercepted correspondence revealing his offending.

Higginson explained that at times she is contacted about inmates “experiencing acute health issues, even potentially fatal ones”. She told parliament that in one case, an inmate encouraged a prisoner who was seriously ill to call her because his condition was being neglected. And this led to his getting treatment, but the other inmate was threatened with a correctional centre offence and isolation.

Another key issue that the NSW Greens MLC deals with in regard to the NSW prison system is when the families of First Nations inmates get in contact after their loved one has been transferred off Country, to see if that arrangement can be reversed for cultural reasons.

“I’m concerned with the Minns government’s approach to our corrections system. Right now, our prisons have never been fuller, the remand population is through the roof, First Nations men, women and children are grossly overrepresented, and the minister is currently at serious odds with the Ombudsman because of disastrous changes he made to the discipline system,” Higginson added.

“Those changes have weakened the chances of cultural reform on part of Corrective Servies NSW, which is one of the most important changes needed to improve the whole corrections system in NSW,” the Greens MLC said in ending.