‘Confined, dirty and overcrowded’: Gold Coast watchhouse conditions revealed

CONDITIONS in a Gold Coast watchhouse’s temporary holding cells are so bad prisoners and defendants can’t wait to be taken to notoriously overcrowded jails.

CONDITIONS in Southport Watchhouse’s temporary holding cells are so bad prisoners and defendants can’t wait to be taken to notoriously overcrowded jails.

Some are languishing for weeks in conditions akin to solitary confinement inside windowless watchhouse cells without clean clothes or a chance to make a phone call for weeks at a time, according to lawyers.

Grant Lawyers director Jason Grant said there were concerns watchhouses were being used as extensions of overcrowded jails with some spending up to two weeks at Southport before being transported to prison.

PRISONERS ‘TREATED LIKE ANIMALS’ IN WATCHHOUSE

Detoxing drunks, public nuisance offenders and people who failed to turn up for drink driving hearings can be held alongside accused rapists and murderers in Southport Watchhouse.

HILARIOUS ONLINE REVIEWS OF SOUTHPORT WATCHHOUSE

Under law, it is recommended people spend no more than 21 days in a watchhouse where detoxing drunks, public nuisance offenders and people who failed to turn up for drink driving hearings can be held alongside accused rapists and murderers.

Mr Grant said prisoners were sitting without a change of clothes, had to use their fingers as toothbrushes, and their only chance to shower was during a short period early in the mornings.

On weekends, prisoners were barely able to sleep in cells often filling with screaming drunks and drug-affected people.

He said conditions were so bad many in the watchhouse did not know what day it was when they met their lawyers.

Mr Grant says inmates were desperate to get out of the watchhouse.

“They can’t wait to get to Arthur Gorrie (prison) because even if there is overcrowding, and there’s mattresses on the floors (for sleeping), every single person is relieved to get to the prison because they can walk around,” Mr Grant said.

The Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre has been described as a “powder keg” and is known for bashings and hostility towards new prisoners who add to the crowding.

The centre is currently sitting at 1176 inmates, well over its capacity of 890.

Despite this, Mr Grant said Southport inmates were desperate to get out of the watchhouse, which is in the same complex as Southport’s police station.

“Most of them want to know what they can do to get out of there,” Mr Grant said.

“At least in prison you can make calls, buy yourself some underwear, some shoes and all those sorts of things but in the watchhouse you can’t even talk to anyone.”

He said prisoners were left in a state of uncertainty on transfer timing and were not told when they would be taken to the Arthur Gorrie facility at Wacol, run by US-owned GEO Group Australia.

Some prisoners can’t wait to be taken to notoriously over crowded prisons to leave the Southport Watchhouse behind. Pic Richard Polden

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“You’re just waiting for your name to come up to go get on a bus that goes to Arthur Gorrie,” he said.

“They don’t give you a heads-up of when that’s going to be.”

In response to questions from the Bulletin, Queensland Corrective Services said overcrowding did not deter the department from adding more criminals and defendants to the corrections system.

“We do not simply stop accepting prisoners because prisons reach capacity,” the department said in a statement.

Prisoner have a low opinion of the conditions in the watchhouse.

“QCS increases the intake of prisoners from watchhouses to respond to watchhouse numbers.”

QCS said overcrowding was not just an issue in Queensland but a “nationwide phenomenon”.

Asked how long people should be held in watchhouses, the department said it attempted to take prisoners into custody within a week.

“However there are a range of factors that can influence this, including court holdovers,” the statement read.

Asked if there was a limit on how long prisoners could remain in watchhouses, the department cited theCorrective Services Act 2006.

It states prisoners may be held in a watchhouse for up to 21 days, or until such time as transfer to a corrective services facility can conveniently occur.