Page 4686 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 27 November 2019
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methadone doses, presumably to be more sedated and compliant. This is appalling and a form of chemical sedation.
In his first four years as corrections minister Mr Rattenbury focused on implementing a needle and syringe program in the prison. This would have armed prisoners with further weapons and put staff in unsafe positions. His priorities were all wrong. Meanwhile, there is not a formal program to help inmates get off methadone if they so choose and no real action has been taken to help end their addictions. Too many people go into the facility clean and come out addicted to drugs.
Years of mismanagement and low staff morale at the AMC have left us with a staff shortage crisis. The government now relies on thousands of hours of overtime and rolling lock-ins simply to keep the prison running. The AMC is suffering from a toxic workplace culture, with 93 resignations in the past three years and multiple job vacancies in need of filling.
Due to understaffing, one of the AMC’s main cell blocks, the AU building, had up to 111 rolling lock-ins over 92 days. That is a quarter of the year. Having to conduct rolling lock-ins for a quarter of the year because of chronic understaffing is a failure of government. The minister is now relying on his prison guards working an extra 26,000 hours of overtime simply to keep the lights on and the doors locked.
Even with overtime almost tripling in 12 months, the government cannot keep up. This reliance on overtime and rolling lock-ins has much wider implications for both staff and detainees and it greatly inhibits any rehabilitative process. This was demonstrated in the healthy prison review released yesterday by the Inspector of Correctional Services, which I will speak to in more detail later. It is no wonder corrections staff are resigning at record rates. This is just another example of this government’s and this minister’s inability to properly regard our men and women in service and frontline roles.
I turn to the healthy prisons review—this scathing review points to over 100 serious and systemic failings in the facility. The review highlights that the four pillars of a healthy prison—safety, respect, purposeful activity, and rehabilitation and preparation for release—are not performing satisfactorily and in some instances require urgent remedial action.
What is performing satisfactorily in this facility? Not a great deal. Further areas of concern identified by the review include insufficient staff to assist prisoner activities, overcrowding in the facility and a severe lack of policies, procedures and staff training in a variety of areas across the facility. That was seen when the section 26 lockdown was called earlier this month and there were no policies for how to manage medical needs and the decisions were being made on the go. Staff had not been drilled and procedures had not been practised. It was the first time and there was no plan.
Court transport unit staff are concerned about the transport and detention of children and young people for which they are not adequately trained and for which their facilities are not adequately set up. There is a lack of policies and instructions relating to the handling and disposal of contraband. What is happening to the contraband once
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