This was the tenth inspection of Roebourne Regional Prison (Roebourne) conducted by the Office of
the Inspector of Custodial Services (the Office).
The prison is located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, five kilometres from the town of
Roebourne, 40 kilometres from Karratha, and about 1,500 kilometres north of Perth. The Traditional
Owners of the land are the Ngarluma people.
The prison opened in 1984 and was originally a minimum-security facility before being upgraded to
medium security in 1995. It holds both men and women, on remand or sentenced, and all security
classifications. Medium- and minimum-security prisoners are held for longer periods, but maximum security
prisoners are only held on a short-term basis.
A minimum-security work camp was opened adjacent to the prison in June 2014. The work camp has
25 beds for male prisoners only. It was not within the scope of this inspection, having been looked at
during our work camps inspection earlier in 2025 (OICS, 2025a).
Lack of climate control in the prison had been a longstanding problem. Roebourne is located in one
of the hottest climate zones in Australia. Monitoring undertaken during our 2022 inspection showed
the temperatures in cells without air-conditioning averaged over 32 degrees throughout the night.
Positively, after more than 20 years of recommendations by this office, the Department of Justice
(the Department) installed air-conditioning in all cells at Roebourne. This project ran from September
2024 – July 2025 at a cost of around $16 million. Over that period, the prison population was
reduced with one unit at a time closed while installation works were undertaken.