In 2025, the Corrective Services Administrators’ Council revised the Guiding Principles for Corrections in Australia (‘the Guiding Principles’), articulating a renewed statement of national intent to guide the development of corrective services policy, practice, and performance across Australian jurisdictions.
At their core, the guiding principles reflect five key outcomes:
(1) Respect;
(2) Safety and Security;
(3) Health and Wellbeing;
(4) Rehabilitation and Reintegration; and
(5) Governance and System Improvement.
Relevantly, the guiding principles provide that:
- restrictions imposed on prisoners should be limited to the minimum necessary to ensure safety and security (Principle 1.1.11);
- prisoners who engage in work, rehabilitation programs, or full-time education should be remunerated in accordance with applicable policy and legislation (Principle 1.3.12); and
- prisoners are to be managed in a way that affirms their continuing part of the community, rather than their exclusion from it (Principle 4.1.1).
Taken together, these provisions reflect a clear position: imprisonment should not entail unnecessary deprivation; engagement in constructive, pro-social activity should be recognised and incentivised; and people in prison remain citizens, whose dignity and social membership continue, despite their incarceration status.
We support these ideals and indeed any corrective services policy or practice that seeks to uphold human dignity and rights for people in prison.
However, it must also be acknowledged that a persistent gap remains between these stated commitments and aspects of correctional practice across Australia. One area in which this tension is apparent relates to people in prison who participate in academic research.
As we have recently argued elsewhere, only two Australian jurisdictions (New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory) currently permit people in prison to receive remuneration for research participation.
This persists, even though people in prison are frequent contributors to research across law, criminology, health, and beyond, and are often asked to contribute insights drawn from their lived experience. These contributions can be deeply personal and, at times, involve recounting traumatic or emotionally challenging events.
There is increasing recognition of the value of lived experience in improving correctional practice – for example, Victoria’s Cultural Review of the Adult Correctional System found that ‘[l]ived experience should shape custodial strategy and services’ (2022: 2012). Yet, notwithstanding both the value of this contribution and the guiding principles’ express commitment to social inclusion, incarcerated research participants are, in most Australian jurisdictions, denied remuneration altogether.
This position sits uneasily alongside standard practice in the community, where research participation is routinely acknowledged through payment or other forms of compensation. This raises a fundamental question: how can research be managed in a way that affirms incarcerated people’s continuing membership of the community, while simultaneously excluding them from benefits they would ordinarily receive, but for their incarceration status?
It is also important to recognise that research conducted in prisons will inevitably involve a disproportionate number of First Nations participants, due to their overrepresentation in the prison population.
Research has a complicated history in this space. It has often been criticised for sidelining First Nations voices and reinforcing Western ways of thinking about knowledge and punishment. Many established research approaches have not adequately respected Indigenous sovereignty, ensured cultural safety, or met expectations of reciprocity.
Against this backdrop, the current practice of not paying people in prison for participating in research raises real concerns. It risks allowing inequitable research and sits uneasily with accepted standards for ethical engagement with First Nations Peoples, their lived experiences, and cultural intellectual knowledge.
We argue that there are several compelling reasons to appropriately remunerate people in prison for their contributions to research. From a human rights perspective, the failure to provide payment, particularly where participants in the community would ordinarily be reimbursed for comparable involvement, risks being both discriminatory and exploitative. Remuneration also serves an important symbolic function: it affirms the humanity of people in custody and recognises the value of their participation.
Further, the absence of appropriate reimbursement raises concerns, in relation to established ethical research standards. It may undermine recognition of individuals’ capacity to make autonomous decisions about participation and, in many cases, fails to properly acknowledge the time, effort, and expertise that participants contribute.
So, what do we recommend?
First, there is a need for a uniform and consistent policy across Australia. The current patchwork of jurisdictional approaches produces inequitable outcomes, with access to remuneration determined by geography, rather than principle. A nationally consistent position should be adopted, expressly permitting research remuneration for people in prison and setting out clear processes for its administration.
Second, remuneration for incarcerated research participants should be standard practice. Fair compensation ought to be the default position, with any departure from this requiring clear justification. Researchers should be expected to incorporate appropriate remuneration into project budgets, while funding bodies should require applicants to articulate and justify their proposed compensation arrangements. Human research ethics committees should scrutinise these justifications, to ensure that practices are fair, transparent, and aligned with established ethical standards.
Third, clearer guidance is needed on the form and quantum of payment. Remuneration for incarcerated participants should, as far as possible, reflect what would be offered to community-based participants undertaking comparable research tasks. Consistent with current New South Wales Corrective Services Ethics Committee guidance, payments of up to $100 provide a useful benchmark, subject to review, to ensure ongoing appropriateness.
If the guiding principles are to operate as more than aspirational statements, their underlying commitments to dignity, inclusion, and fairness must be reflected in correctional policies and practice.
The issue of research remuneration may appear narrow, but it provides a useful reflection of whether people in prison are, in fact, treated as continuing members of the community.
Addressing this inconsistency would not only bring the reality of correctional practice into closer alignment with the guiding principles, but also strengthen the ethical integrity of research conducted within correctional settings. This may in turn also contribute to increased engagement in research that has the potential improve prison practice and increase community safety.
Dr Dodd would like to recognise co-authors – Professor Lorana Bartels, Dr Caitlin Davey, and Dr Michelle Sydes for their work on Justice, Beneficence, and Respect: Towards Equitable and Uniform Research Remuneration for Incarcerated Participants.
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