The $200,000 prisons chief on Twitter …

Unguarded twitter entry – since removed, but not before Peter snapped it …

Mercury: British jail boss for Risdon

DAVID KILLICK
06 February 2012 04.31pm

A FORMER British prisons chief has been recruited into the $220,000 a year job as change manager at the troubled Risdon Prison.

Brian Edwards OBE, retired from the UK prisons service in 2006 but will come to Tasmania to implement the recommendations of the Palmer report, Corrections Minister Nick McKim said today.

In June last year former Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer handed down a scathing report into the prison noting glaring deficiencies in the management of the prison “should have been obvious for some time”.

He highlighted 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.

Mr Edwards will start at the end of February, almost eight months after Mr Palmer called for the position to be created to oversee sweeping reforms.

“Mr Edwards is a man of three-and-a-half decades of experience in the United Kingdom prisons service and he had demonstrated expertise in turning around difficult or problematic prisons,” Mr McKim said.

“I will back Mr Edwards 100 per cent in the job that he does, he has my full confidence and he is an exceptional appointment to this role.

“On more than on occasion he has taken prisons from the bottom of the UK rankings to near the top in a very short period of time.”

Community and Public Sector Union chief Tom Lynch said change was slow coming after $250,000 was spent on the Palmer report.

“I don’t think things have improved markedly at Risdon Prison,” he said.

“I think it’s taken too long. It’s taken too long to get a report like the Palmer report – a lot of the recommendations in Palmer were in previous reports – it’s taken too long to get the change manager in place and I call on the minister to make sure it doesn’t take too long for change to actually occur.”

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/02/06/298795_scalesofjustice.html