WA Prison ‘not fit to accommodate women’

By PETER ROWE

A women’s prison in WA has been slammed as totally inadequate by the State’s Inspector of Custodial Services.

Eamon Ryan’s inspection of Melaleuca Women’s Prison was described as ‘making do’ and not designed or built to accommodate women.

“As a facility originally designed as additional accommodation units for men in Hakea Prison, Melaleuca has struggled to meet the complex and unique needs of women held there on remand,” Mr Ryan wrote.

“The prison is limited by its small footprint, the addition of inadequate spaces necessary to provide essential services and activities, and increasingly the stresses of short staffing.”

His report noted several infrastructure inadequacies:

• The absence of therapeutic crisis care cells
• lack of appropriate self-care accommodation
• no dedicated programs or education spaces
• no accommodation designed for pregnant women
• minimal industry/workspaces
• poor cultural spaces
• no gym or indoor recreation space, and
• no purpose-designed management unit.
• The inspection report also noted ongoing increase of numbers – up by 21 per cent with population pressures continuing to rise.

On November 27 the prison was at 95 per cent capacity.

The report also noted the absence of an integrated strategic model of care for women.

Despite finding a mostly hard working and dedicated management and staff, evidence showed there was limited shared understanding and approach to managing women in their care.

“While we found many references to the need for a ‘trauma-informed approach’ and a Departmentally endorsed women’s framework ‘Better Futures’, there was a lack of awareness of the framework and no systemic strategy in place for its communication or how to operationalise it,” Mr Ryan said.

“The inspection found the prison was constantly operating short staffed and with many staff redeployed to cover unfilled essential positions.”

The Department acknowledged many of the shortcomings and had plans to address them, but these were all subject to government resources.