Safety concerns amid chronic staff shortages in prisons
Monday 25 Aug 2014The WA Prison Officers’ Union has raised serious safety concerns, amid chronic staff shortages in several of the state’s prisons.
Casuarina maximum security prison has been on rolling lockdowns in the past week because there was not enough staff to operate the prison normally.
“Casuarina was 53 staff short on Friday. That’s almost 50%,” said WAPOU Secretary John Welch.
“Even after recalling as many available officers as possible, the prison was still operating with 30 fewer staff than it required for normal operations.
“This means prisoners had to be locked in their cells for up to 20 hours in a day because prison officers could only open certain sections of the prison at a time.”
Mr Welch said staff shortages were an ongoing problem in a number of prisons.
“We also had a situation at Wooroloo prison last week where there was a severe lack of staff to cover night shift,” he said.
“This is a particular concern because even though Wooroloo is a minimum security prison, prisoners are not locked in at night, which increases the potential for an incident to occur.”
Mr Welch said Hakea prison also had 40% fewer staff than required on a night shift last week.
“There are certain duties and checks which officers have to carry out during the night, and if they are 40% understaffed, I don’t see how they could manage to do this,” he said.
Mr Welch said the chronic understaffing posed serious safety risks to both prison officers and prisoners.
“We have genuine concerns that if a major incident occurs, especially during a night shift, there will not be enough officers on duty to handle it and it could escalate.”
Mr Welch said the union warned the State Government months ago that there was a shortage of prison officers in the system.
“It is not good enough that both prisoners and staff are being put at risk due to the government’s poor planning,” he said.
The union has called for an extra 200 prison officers to be urgently employed across the state.