Authorities lift emergency lockdown at Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre after searches
An unprecedented security crackdown at Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre has uncovered steroids, syringes, home brew and weapons.
Canberra Star
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Prison guards have found weapons, drugs, mobile phones, syringes, a tattoo gun and home brew in a sweep of Canberra’s prison during an unprecendented security breach and lockdown.
ACT Corrective Services executive director Jon Peach on Monday said inmates and guards would be returning to normal routine at the Alexander Maconochie Centre after a prison-wide contraband search and lockdown.
Inmates had been locked in their cells 23 hours a day since last Wednesday, following the discovery of a hole in the jail’s outer fence last Monday and concerns a gun might have been smuggled inside.
“We have conducted a thorough and systematic search of every part of the accomodation,” Mr Peach said.
“We have recovered an amount of contraband … we are satisfied that there are no weapons of significant note within the prison.”
An investigation into the security breach has found the package smuggled in last week likely contained mobile phones, vials of steroids and diazepam.
He said prisoners would either be internally disciplined or criminally prosecuted if investigators could prove whether a prisoner was linked to an item of contraband.
Mr Peach said there was never any “credible intelligence” that a gun might have made its way inside the jail, but that the security sweep went ahead presuming the worst case scenario.
Some prisoners were strip searched as part of the sweep, and guards “checked places that they wouldn’t usually check in a routine cell search,” Mr Peach said.
Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury said the security breach was “obviously a serious matter” and that it was “essential that we took this approach” of searching the entire prison.
He said the fight against contraband in jails “really is an arms race” and authorities were considering new measures such as mobile phone jammers.
An internal security review would take place and Mr Rattenbury would receive the report in coming weeks, but would not make it public.
Shadow Corrections Minister Giulia Jones said the security breach and the government’s handling of it were concerning.
“The whole thing is a complete shemozzle,” Mr Jones said.
She said guards were dealing with low morale already, and many only found the scale of the security breach through media reports.
“They probably feel like they have been treated like mushrooms,” she said.
“Why were they being kept in the dark?”
“If we run a facility for people to be punished appropriately and, where possible, rehabilitated, this kind of (extended lockdown) is antithetical to that.”
She said inmates were not given antipsychotic medications during the first days of the lockdown.