A Labor advisory committee has recommended innovative solutions for the overcrowding and underfunding woes of Western Australian prisons, advocating for increased public private partnerships in the sector.
A Labor advisory committee has recommended innovative solutions for the overcrowding and underfunding woes of Western Australian prisons, advocating for increased public private partnerships in the sector.
The Community Development and Justice Standing Committee, led by outgoing Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan, has made several recommendations, the overarching one being to encourage PPPs between prisons and businesses in order to make prisons self-sustaining in WA and lessen the significant current burden prisons have on the state.
“We want a financially sustainable approach to the rehabilitation and employment of prisoners and we want to reduce the tax burden to the community,” Ms MacTiernan said.
“We are going into a downward spiral – we don’t have enough money, we’re not putting enough money in to employment opportunities in the prisons – and therefore we are getting high level of recidivism.
“If we follow the model of setting up private businesses working with the prisons and being very focussed on job opportunities and training in prisons, we could actually get these prison industries to generate enough money to keep the level of business activity up in the prison and to fund the training within prisons.”
A separate report into justice reinvestment by opposition corrective services spokesman Paul Papalia found WA prisons are currently beset by massive overcrowding, not as a result of increasing crime rates, but the lack of rehabilitation services within prison systems.
The report states some 60 per cent of the recent steep growth in WA’s prison muster can be attributed to parole policies and practices since April 2009.
Ms MacTiernan told WA Business News if WA prison systems employed the same system as NSW and Singapore, which the Justice Standing Committee’s report used as an example, that burden on the taxpayer and the state would lessen.
“In some cases they build their prisons with workshop space and then they tender this out. So different companies can come in, bring in their own machinery, employ the prisoners to do the work and produce their goods that way.”
“It can actually become self sustaining, that’s the whole point.”
Alongside expanding PPPs, the report recommends the Barnett government create a semi-autonomous trading enterprise to run all employment and industry initiatives, encourage private sector involvement in getting ex-prisoners employment and expanding the existing program.
The Barnett government is scheduled to respond to the recommendations in September.
