Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services annual report reveals staff shortages, Unit 18 straining prisons

Staff shortages are straining prisons across WA and the State’s scandal-plagued youth detention sector is also having a significant impact on adult prisons, a report has revealed. Custodial Services inspector Eamon Ryan tabled his office’s report in parliament on Tuesday in the wake of 16-year-old Unit 18 inmate Cleveland Dodd’s death. Mr Ryan wrote in his report that “perhaps the most common issue” across all prisons was “the impact of staffing shortages”. The inspector said these shortages were due to vacant positions, unplanned personal leave, workers compensation leave and secondments to other roles. “Whatever the reasons, the impact of these shortages is significant on the daily lives of people in custody,” he said. “These shortages also have a significant impact on the working lives of staff, with redeployments and restrictions commonplace.” The inspector found staff shortages meant detainees were facing delays in accessing health and mental health services, which was also reducing the chance of “meaningful rehabilitation” and hindering efforts to prevent reoffending. Mr Ryan found a backlog of 811 prisoners in June 2023 waiting for an individual management plan that would determine what treatment they would receive, up from 738 a year prior. Mr Ryan said the oversight of Banskia Hill and Unit 18 in Casuarina Prison — where the most dangerous juvenile detainees have been transferred — had consumed “much of our time and resources”. “We have not had any additional resources, and consequently, we have been required to risk assess and reprioritise our liaison oversight of other facilities in order to meet this need,” he said. The inspector’s office also raised concern about the rise in people in custody who had not been sentenced. Last year, 31 per cent of the prison population had not been sentenced, up from 18 per cent in 2011. Casuarina Prison saw a 358 per cent increase over this time and Broome Regional Prison saw a 256 per cent increase. Despite Hakea Prison being the State’s main facility for people in custody on remand, Casuarina is holding a large number of these unsentenced prisoners “for security reasons”. This left Hakea instead taking onboard “a large proportion” of sentenced prisoners, despite the prison “not being equipped to meet their needs”. Mr Ryan said the Mandela Rules — international law to protect the rights of prisoners named after the heroic anti-Apartheid leader — demand prisoners who have not been convicted should be kept separate from convicted prisoners, have single-bed accommodation, be able to wear their own clothes, and should be allowed to pay for their own food. “However, in practice, there is often very little difference between the conditions for remand and sentenced prisoners,” the inspector said. “Remand prisoners held in any Western Australian prison do not wear their own clothes, do not have a right to their own single-bed accommodation, and are not procuring their own food. “And, at many prisons across Western Australia sentenced and unsentenced prisoners live, work and recreate together.”