Safety of prisoners and staff being compromised and 11 jails in New South Wales deemed obsolete, audit report says

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

New South Wales prisons are cramming dangerous numbers of inmates into cells, re-opening obsolete jails, and spending vast amounts of money to cope with an overcrowding crisis, a report has found.

An audit report on Friday found prisoner numbers increased from 9,602 to 13,630 between 2012 and 2018, a jump of 40%.

That’s despite most major crime types either falling or remaining stable in the corresponding period.

It is part of a worrying national trend, in which prisoner numbers across states and territories increase significantly while general crime rates fall.

In Victoria on Friday, the state government was forced to pump more than $1.8bn into its prison system to cope with dramatic increases to prisoner populations, caused partly by a tightening of bail laws. Most of the $1.8bn would go towards a new 1,650-bed facility near Geelong.

The NSW auditor-general found fault with the NSW government’s response to prison overcrowding.

Young Indigenous 17 times more likely to be in detention than other Australians Read more

It had been sluggish in reacting to its own department’s warnings of a looming crisis, enacting only “temporary” measures to cope, including the re-opening of ageing or obsolete facilities.

NSW has been forced, for example, to re-open the heritage-listed Berrima jail, a 178-year-old prison in the southern highlands. The prison is so old that it once held bushrangers like “Captain Thunderbolt” and German prisoners of the first world war.

All up, 11 facilities currently in use have been deemed obsolete. Eight have been operating for more than 100 years.

NSW has also begun double- or triple-bunking existing cells. The report said such measures were fine for temporary fluctuations in the prison population.

But the auditor criticised the NSW government for using the temporary measures in an ongoing way.

“While suited to manage temporary ‘surges’ in inmate numbers, DOJ’s ongoing reliance on these temporary responses is contrary to its correctional principles,” the report said.

“Insufficient increases to prisoner support services and physical spaces within facilities, alongside temporary responses, contributed to crowding. This increased risks to prisoner and staff safety, prison security and to operational and strategic objectives.”

Prisoner violence has also increased alongside the growing population.

The audit found prisoner assaults – targeting both fellow inmates and prison officers – had gone up, rising from 15 to 25 assaults per 100 inmates between 2012 and 2018. Waitlists for key support programs were growing, and the time inmates spent outside of their cells remained static but well below the national average, the report said.

Average costs to house prisoners are supposed to decline as the prisoner population grows. But the state government was now spending $181.85 per prisoner per day, after two successive increases from $172.80 in 2016-17 and $166.94 in 2015-16. The current prisoner spend is still below the 2012-13 rate of $191.56.

The costs are principally coming from the growing workforce needed to manage the inmates. Staff numbers increased 30% from 2014 to 2018, and hours worked increased by 40% in the same period. Overtime has increased by a staggering 140%.

Between 2013 and 2015, the department of justice continued to warn of the dangers of rising prisoner numbers.

Isolating terrorists in jail hardens extremist beliefs, prisons study finds Read more

The NSW government did little in response, other than adding a small amount of additional capacity, the audit found.

In 2015, the department said the system was in crisis. The NSW government then provided $314.6m for a large of number of new beds, and later announced a $3.8bn program over four years to increase prison bed capacity.

A vast new private prison is being built in Grafton, to be operated by multinational Serco, and other facilities are being expanded significantly.

Experts have routinely warned that building new prisons is not a long-term solution to the problem. Instead, they have advocated for more non-custodial options, greater crime prevention efforts, and an increased focus on proper rehabilitation to prevent recidivism.

In 2017, criminologist Eileen Baldry, also the University of New South Wales deputy vice-chancellor, told Guardian Australia that prison overcrowding was a product of failed political leadership. She said governments were unable to withstand the pressure to appear tough on crime through incarceration.

“I think it’s also a failure of intellectual or evidence-based leadership,” Baldry said at the time. “I have talked to a number of treasurers over decades in NSW, for example, and laid out in front of them the cost of doing this.”

NSW corrective services said it had taken significant steps to reduce recidivism. A spokeswoman said an extra $330 million had been injected into delivering more rehabilitation programs, and ten new “high intensity program units” were established to help address recidivism.

“Up to 1,200 inmates will be treated through these units each year,” the spokeswoman said.

“Over the next three years about 20,000 inmates are expected to benefit from the new case management program, which includes tailor-made plans for offenders while they are in custody, as well as support for their release'”

The government also says prison violence reduced last financial year.

“Rate of inmate-on-inmate assault declined from 27.48 per 100 inmates in 2016-17 to 24.9 per 100 inmates in 2017-18,” the spokeswoman said.

“Rate of inmate-on-officer assault declined from 1.55 per 100 inmates to 1.53 in same period.”