Violent attack on prison staff leads to WorkSafe charges against Justice Department
A brutal scalping of a Malmsbury Justice Centre worker by a guitar-wielding inmate has led to WorkSafe laying charges against the Department of Justice for failing to provide a safe workplace. WARNING: GRAPHIC PICTURES.
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The workplace watchdog has laid charges against government department for not ensuring its youth detention employees are safe.
WorkSafe have laid charges against the Department of Justice after a teen thug scalped a female prison worker with a guitar.
The regulator has been investigating the January 2018 attack for months.
Two charges have been filed at the Melbourne Magistrates Court under section 21 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, for failing to maintain a working environment that was safe and without risks to health.
It is understood the poor management and storage of the facility’s guitars formed part of the inquiry.
Guitars are easily accessed by youth in detention as a therapeutic tool.
Concerned Malmsbury staff had made multiple reports to management about the boy’s increasingly abusive behaviour towards them in the four months before the January 24 guitar attack on the female officer.
She was knocked unconscious and rushed to hospital with a 12cm wound to her head so deep it exposed her skull in what has been described as one of the worst assaults in the juvenile justice system’s history.
The ambush came three weeks after the teen swung the guitar like a baseball bat at two male officers, hitting their arms, raised to protect themselves, at the same facility on January 2.
WorkSafe alleges DJCS failed to provide and maintain safe systems of work and failed to provide necessary information and instruction to reduce this risk.
The workplace charges are another blow to the trouble-plagued youth justice system.
The Herald Sun yesterday revealed that more than 60 staff assaulted in Victoria’s two youth jails have been left too traumatised and hurt to work.
The then 17-year-old brute was involved in a succession of serious assaults.
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Earlier this month staff walked out of the Malmsbury Youth Justice facility after one of the workers was attacked by detainee with a cricket bat.
Youth Justice management have struggled to deal with a more violent cohort of detainees, staff absenteeism as a result of the high rate of assaults.
The matter will be heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on 13 November 2019.