Parklea jail staff accused of stealing charity toys

A STICKY-FINGERED staff member at scandal-wracked Parklea Prison was forced to return a sack of charity children’s toys worth hundreds of dollars after a colleague raised the alarm.

A prisoner was stabbed and tear gas was used to disperse rioting prisoners.

A STICKY-FINGERED staff member at scandal-wracked Parklea Prison was forced to return a sack of charity children’s toys worth hundreds of dollars after a colleague raised the alarm.

A prison insider revealed the wooden toys crafted by inmates for children of prisoners reappeared at the privately-run jail after the general manager fired off a round-robin email to staff warning head office were investigating yesterday.

The gifts were swiped from an employee area near the staff-only gym and reappeared yesterday morning, although some were missing and wrapping paper had been ripped open.

“The general manager sent out an email to all Parklea staff about the theft after a thorough search then announced head office would come to the party,” a source told The Daily Telegraph.

“If misplaced means anything like the missing plans I guess they are lucky they did a second search.”

A spokesman for the jail insisted the toys had been delivered to the charity SHINE For Kids children at Blacktown PCYC.

It’s the fourth incident to hit Parklea jail in a week.

However, SHINE For Kids said the charity has not received the gifts from inmates at the jail for the last two years and “did not expect to”.

“Nothing has arrived here because the program has stopped running since last year — our children no longer receive gifts from inmates at Parklea,” the charity’s business development manager Juliette Sanders said.

Opposition justice spokesman Guy Zangari described the latest incident “a sad indictment on the centre to steal toys”.

“This is the lowest of the low, to steal gifts for people less fortunate than themselves,” he said.

“This is the fourth incident at Parklea this week — it’s unacceptable.”

Private operator GEO insisted no toys had been stolen.

“Someone mistakenly believed they were missing, but it was because they had already been delivered to the charity.

“Parklea Correctional Centre staff are proud to be donating to four children’s charities this year.”

The GEO spokesman later added he had not been informed SHINE For Kids was no longer linked to the jail.

Guy Zangari says the government has lost control of the prison. Picture: AAP/ Carmela Roche

It is the fourth incident in a week at the troubled facility, after the The Daily Telegraph this morning revealed a Parklea jail inmate had been stabbed and tear gas deployed to disperse rioting prisoners.

The 23-year-old inmate was allegedly assaulted by two other inmates at the privately run Parklea Correctional Centre, in Sydney’s northwest, about 9.30am yesterday.

At that time, Opposition Correctives Services spokesman Guy Zangari said it was the latest controversy in just one week to plague the prison, following revelations that an inmate was found with architectural plans for an extension at the jail and the arrest of a female warden over smuggling contraband.

Mr Zangari said his information was that an inmate received multiple stab wounds and gas was used to disperse 50 prisoners involved in a “riot”, but a spokeswoman for Corrective Services NSW denied it was a riot.

“A 23-year-old inmate has been transferred to hospital after he was allegedly assaulted by two other inmates at Parklea Correctional Centre about 9.30am yesterday,” the spokeswoman said. “The inmate received non-life-threatening injuries.”

Mr Zangari said “clearly gas is only used to dispel prisoners when there’s unrest” and said the government had lost control of the jail.

He said the state government put a governor in place to review security at the jail in July — but the results had not been made public.

“Three different controversies in one week …. now there’s a stabbing and a riot, it doesn’t leave the community feeling confident,” Mr Zangari said.

Today, questions were raised over how the prisoner who possessed the architectural plans was moved to Bathurst jail and then to Silverwater before they were found in his cell last week.

He is believed to have taken the plans from Parklea’s administration building where a manager assumed they had been misplaced and did not report them missing.

It is thought they could have been used to plan an escape, smuggle contraband or tap in to plumbing and phones.

On 2GB radio, NSW Corrections Minister David Elliott said the tender for the maximum security jail was up, and if he commented on the situation at the jail that could “expose NSW taxpayers to a lot of money unnecessarily”.

He said he put one of the best public governors in the system into the facility and the recommendations were being reviewed.

Asked about the stabbing, Mr Elliot said: “Prisons are bad places where bad people go. These are criminals, that’s what prisoners do, they behave badly.”

He accused Mr Zangari of hyping up the theft of the architectural plans.

“That was a breach in security, not a security breach,” Mr Elliot said. “Those plans were of a portable building outside the perimeter.”