Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley outlines major recruitment drive in bid to reshape department
Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley has singled out a massive increase in people being refused bail for his department’s spiking overtime and attrition rates.
Northern Territory
Don't miss out on the headlines from Northern Territory. Followed categories will be added to My News.
NEW Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley has conceded his organisation faces a tough challenge to overcome significant staffing shortages but has vowed to give a recruitment drive in coming months “a red hot shake”.
The Commissioner, who has been in the role for a little over three months, pointed towards an increase of 300 prisoners within the NT’s corrections system as being behind the stress, attrition and $13m overtime bill, saying the increase was largely made up of people on remand.
In an exclusive interview a week after his first Estimates appearance, Mr Varley said union figures suggesting a lack of about 64 staff across the Territory, including 48 corrections officers in Alice Springs, were ”not far off the mark”.
Union delegate and corrections officer Phil Tilbrook told ABC Radio last week he believed the department was “dysfunctional”.
Mr Varley rejected that assessment, saying it dismissed the efforts of corrections staff who worked in challenging conditions day and night.
“I agree that Corrections has challenges and there’s a lot of things we’re going to work on to improve … but I don’t think saying Corrections is dysfunctional gives credit to the good work that’s done every day,” he said.
The Commissioner vowed there would be a major effort to recruit more corrections and parole officers to address staffing shortages, saying it was part of a multi-year plan to overhaul the internal processes of the department.
“I absolutely recognise, and I’ve said this to the union staff in the workplace, that we are short-staffed,” Mr Varley said.
The Corrections Department provided its own figures, which roughly lined up with Mr Tilbrook’s own statistics, suggesting there were rostering nightmares at both Darwin and Alice Springs’ correctional facilities.
There were 357 custodial officers at Darwin, below the 382 to 385 officer target.
In Alice Springs, against a target of 207 officers, there were just 167 officers in June, making up a shortfall of 40.
“What I’ve done just recently is set our average target for the number of staff I want to recruit for each prison, but what I know is, I want to recruit more than that to deal with attrition,” he said.
“We’re going to give it a red hot shake.
“We’re advertising nationally. Mind you, so too are correctional agencies interstate. New South Wales, I think, is in the market for several hundred correctional officers, so too is Queensland.”
It was revealed in Estimates that attrition within Corrections was above 10 per cent, which was higher than its historical average of about eight per cent.
Mr Varley said rostering was also complicated by prisoners requiring care at the Royal Darwin or Alice Springs hospitals, which took up two corrections officers per inmate.
He said this complexity was why he would always be unable to provide a figure to Estimates on how many positions need to be filled within Corrections.
“It’s about how our rosters are built,” he said.
Mr Varley also pointed towards greater pressures on Corrections as a result of more people being put on remand while awaiting trial.
In Darwin, the number of inmates has increased from “just under 1000” five years ago to 1187 at present.
Alice Springs is housing 625 people, up on the average of between 530 and 540 five years ago.
35 per cent of inmates in the Alice Springs Correctional Facility were on remand.
“The number of sentenced prisoners hasn’t changed markedly – numbers on remand have increased,” Mr Varley said.
He said many inmates were still learning trades and some were even doing higher education while behind bars, stressing that the organisation had not abandoned rehabilitation efforts despite staffing shortfalls.
Join the conversation
Cunningham: Sense must prevail to prevent an avoidable death
It’s sensible if an Aboriginal child must be removed from their parents, they be placed with a family member or another Indigenous family. But adhering to this principle at the expense of the child’s welfare, as has happened in the past, is madness.
Read more
Size matters as new incentive could land fishos more cash
There’s plenty of reasons to cast a line in February particularly with an exciting new twist to the Million Dollar Fish, which could see one lucky fisho walk away with an extra $40k.
Read more