Corella Place facility awash with dangerous drugs, stashed by prisoners

Hordes of dangerous drugs and drug paraphernalia are making their way through the barricades of Victoria’s “village of the damned” facility.

Corella Place facility for serious sex offenders outside Ararat is awash with contraband, including illegal drugs. Pictures: Department of Justice

Victoria’s so-called “village of the damned” facility for serious sex offenders remains awash with illegal and dangerous drugs, despite corrections introducing strict rules following three drug-related deaths.

A series of photographs released to the Sunday Herald Sun under Freedom of Information laws reveal guards found hundreds of items of contraband at the squalid Corella Place facility, next to Hopkins Correctional Centre at Ararat, last year.

The contraband included large hauls of potentially dangerous prescription medications including the painkiller oxycodone, syringes and kitchen spoons with drug residue.

Contraband seized at the Ararat facility include oxycodone and syringes. Pictures: Department of Justice

Inmates were also caught with homemade bongs, more than 100 unidentified pills and potentially fatal amounts of over-the-counter drugs.

In total, in the year to September 2022, guards seized far more contraband at the 50-bed Corella Place facility than they did at the neighbouring 730-bed Hopkins Correctional Facility.

Crucial documents detailing the circumstances in which the drugs were seized have not been released.

The discovery of large quantities of prescription medications calls into question comments by coroner Jacqui Hawkins that corrections had made changes to the way prescription medications were handled at the facility which would “prevent future harm to … other residents”.

Inmates have been caught with more than 100 unidentified pills. Pictures: Department of Justice

Ms Hawkins’ made the comments in her findings into the death of 42-year-old Gregory Sedgman, who overdosed on a cocktail of painkillers, tranquillisers and chemotherapy drugs in 2018, just days after guards confiscated his stockpile of other drugs, including Viagra.

A month after he died, a 28-year-old detainee, whose identity is suppressed, died in the week after he took what fellow inmates said to the Sunday Herald Sun was a “massive” dose of prescription painkillers.

That man’s death was not the subject of a public inquest, and unpublished coronial findings found he died of natural causes.

He had no trace of the prescription drugs in his system by the time he died, and inmates claim they were never interviewed by coronial investigators despite having vital information about last week of his life.

Kitchen spoons with identified drug residue have been found by guards. Pictures: Department of Justice

In the week before his death, he repeatedly told guards he was in excruciating pain, including “tingling in his tongue”, and alarmingly swollen ankles.

The Coroner’s Court has repeatedly declined to respond to questions about the breadth of its investigations into drug-related deaths at Corella Place.

In May 2020, a third man, aged 32 died after taking large quantity of prescription medication.

He had previously been hospitalised after taking a near-fatal overdose of paracetamol at Corella Place.

His death remains the subject of a coronial investigation, but dates for a public inquest have not been set.