Overcrowding in Queensland Prisons
Today’s Courier Mail report (15/2/21) dealing with serious overcrowding in Queensland jails resulting in fatigued prison officers having to work 18 hour shifts and sleeping in their cars to keep up with the soaring inmate population has caused the QCCL to call on the Corrective Services Minister (Mark Ryan) as to why an Independent Inspectorate of Prisons has not been established in Queensland.
Civil Liberties Vice-President said that the establishment of an Independent Inspectorate was first recommended in 2016 in the Sofronoff Review of Queensland Parole Laws.
Two years later the Crime and Corruption Commission in its 2018 report on Queensland prisons entitled Taskforce Flaxton also called for the establishment of a properly resourced Independent Inspectorate of Prisons which would have the power to do snap inspections of prison conditions without notice to the General Manager of a correctional centre.
The CCC Taskforce Flaxton Report also said the Independent Prisons Inspectorate should produce an annual publicly available report so that Queenslanders could be properly informed about conditions in Queensland jails including whether effective and timely rehabilitation programs were being provided to Queensland prisoners.
“It is well now into 2021 and the establishment of the Prisons Inspectorate five years after it was first recommended by the now Court of Appeal President Walter Sofronoff is nowhere to be seen,” Mr O’Gorman said.
Mr O’Gorman said that today’s valuable Courier Mail report about the overcrowding crisis is a rare insight into Queensland’s badly functioning jail system.
“If the Independent Prisons Inspectorate had been established by the current Labor Government five years ago Queenslanders would have had the benefit of an annual report every year for the last five years on prison conditions including overcrowding, prisoner and prison officer assaults and the adequacy of prison rehabilitation programs.”
Mr O’Gorman said that at the time of the Sofronoff Review in 2016 and the CCC’s Operation Flaxton Report in 2018 the State Labor Government had promised the Independent Prisoners Inspectorate would be established.
A cynic would maintain the Inspectorate has not been established five years on as it suits the Minister and the Queensland Corrective Services bureaucracy to maintain the status quo and keep prison conditions both for officers and prisoners out of sight and out of mind,” Mr O’Gorman said.