Male prisoners including Eddie Obeid moved out of Berrima Jail to make way for women
THE urinals have gone while a mothering program has been introduced as one of Australia’s most historic prisons at Berrima becomes a women-only jail to house the state’s soaring female inmate population.
NSW
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IT was Australia’s most fearsome prison, built to imprison bushrangers and murderers, but now Berrima Jail is to host mothering programs and addiction courses as a minimum-security women’s facility.
A soaring female prison population has spurred the NSW Government to repurpose the 75-bed jail and ship out the male prisoners, who have included former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid, ex-union boss John Maitland and the recently released celebrity cocaine dealer Richard Buttrose.
The men will be relocated to other prisons across the State and in an act of apparent finality, the urinals have been dismantled.
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While reoffending among women is declining, numbers of females forced to do jail time has soared from 693 to 1041 in the past five years to March.
A recent NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research report found police are taking proceedings against more women, especially repeat offenders, although women are not committing more serious offences.
The biggest rises have been in theft and drug crimes and ‘offences against government procedures’ such as resisting or hindering police and failure to appear in court.
Women are most likely to be convicted of traffic and vehicle offences, illicit drugs, ‘acts intended to cause injury’ and theft.
Built by convicts and opened in the 1830s to accommodate bushrangers and other local criminals, Berrima was home to Australia’s first serial killer, bushranger John Lynch, who was hanged at the facility in 1842.
Others to be hanged included lovers Lucretia Dunkley and Martin Beech whose death sentences followed the murder of Mrs Dunkley’s husband.
The jail operated as a women’s prison for a decade from 2001 before it was mothballed under Labor, only to be reopened as a men’s prison in 2016 in the wake of an overcrowding crisis.
As a women’s prison, the jail will be running mothering programs, behavioural therapies and courses addressing aggression, domestic abuse and addiction.
Corrections Minister David Elliott said better policing and tougher sentencing had
resulted in an increase in female inmate numbers.
“There has been significant growth in female numbers and this has been addressed
with the construction of more than 500 additional beds for women,” he said.
Upgrades made to the minimum-security prison include replacing urinals with
“appropriate bathroom facilities”, two Audio Visual Link suites for court appearances
and legal visits, upgrading bunk beds and an additional assessment cell.
Programs being introduced include the Mother at a Distance course aimed at strengthening relationships between jailed mums and their children, increasing maternal sensitivity and reducing separation trauma.
Other programs are offence-specific while there will also be a group self-help course.
Corrective Services NSW Commissioner Peter Severin said more than $330 million was being spent on rehabilitation programs to target inmates at the greatest risk of reoffending.
“It’s important to recognise that women in the prison system suffer from high rates of
sexual and domestic violence, so programs are designed to address these specific
needs and offer a real opportunity to break the cycle of reoffending,” he said.
Other jails able to cater for women include Bathurst, Broken Hill,
Cessnock, Grafton, Junee, Mid-North Coast, Wellington, and female centres at Emu
Plains, Silverwater, Dillwynia near Windsor and Mary Wade in Lidcombe.