107: Inspection of Greenough Regional Prison

This is the fifth time we have inspected Greenough Regional Prison (‘Greenough’). The inspection took place in late May/early June 2016. The prison has a capacity of 334 and accommodates a mix of minimum, medium and maximum security men and women. At the last inspection in 2013 we said that the prison: ‘generally goes about …

In 2016 we found that Greenough was not performing well in many areas. Some important progress had been made for women held at the prison, but there were many other areas where previously identified issues were still a problem. Overall, Greenough’s services and conditions needed improvement. Unfortunately, we saw little evidence that the prison’s performance …

We found that: Cost cutting measures had impacted on operations and services, with critical services not meeting demand. This included: A large backlog in Departmental assessments of prisoners’ treatment needs Some prisoners reaching their parole date without even having been assessed Some being assessed as needing non-existent programs Many prisoners unable to access programs before …

Recommendation 1 Greenough management and staff should work together to improve relationships. The Department should closely monitor this and provide expert intervention if relations do not improve by the end of 2016.   Recommendation 2 Starting immediately, the Department and Greenough should fund and fill all vacant positions at the prison, prioritising those in health, …