ANOTHER $20 million will be pumped into Tasmania’s ailing Risdon Prison after a scathing report condemned prison management and said the jail was little more than a warehouse for criminals.
In the $488,000 report into the five-year-old, $90 million prison – tabled in State Parliament yesterday – former Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer recommended a major overhaul of operations.
He found the glaring deficiencies in the management of the prison “should have been obvious for some time”, noting that inmates weren’t even counted properly and that opportunities for rehabilitation, education and recreation were severely lacking.
Corrections Minister Nick McKim yesterday promised the spending increase but said nobody would be sacked, transferred or disciplined and nobody had offered their resignation for their role in the running of the jail.
Mr Palmer’s report found a deficient and largely invisible management team, poor staff training and morale, systemic staff absenteeism, inadequate security checks, poor fire prevention strategies and redundant, deficient or missing operating procedures.
“Within the [prison] there is a lack of effective leadership; a volatile environment of distrust and industrial tension; a serious lack of commitment to workplace health and safety; a lack of respect for prisoners by some staff and a silo mentality particularly between uniformed staff and everyone else,” he said.
