1. The Department ensures that Bunbury Regional Prison has a permanent management team holding substantive positions.
  2. That the Department establishes the causes underlying the high number of workers’ compensation claims at Bunbury Regional Prison and addresses these.
  3. Upgrade the sally port, gatehouse and reception area at Bunbury Regional Prison to allow for more efficient and secure entry processes for staff, prisoners and visitors.
  4. Increase the number and diversity of emergency management exercises held each year at Bunbury Regional Prison to better prepare officers to deal with emergency situations.
  5. The Department improve process and information sharing between Justice Intelligence Services and prison sites.
  6. The Bunbury Regional Prison leadership team reinvigorate and reinforce an ethos of prisoner management that emphasises high levels of engagement with prisoners to enhance the safety of prisoners and staff and to restore the excellent levels of interaction found in past inspections of the prison.
  7. Bunbury Regional Prison management evaluate the functioning of the ‘I want parade’ to ensure it is still meeting the needs of prisoners and staff to address prisoner needs, and modify practices based on the outcome of this evaluation.
  8. The Department meet its obligation to provide legal resources to prisoners throughout the state, including those accommodated at Bunbury Regional Prison, by establishing system-wide access to all relevant materials and by maintaining and updating these materials.
  9. Evaluate the new reception intake assessment process to ensure it is appropriately useful and valuable to prisoners and staff.
  10. Maintain prisoner numbers at Bunbury Regional Prison at a level which allows for a proper hierarchical model of prisoner management to be reinstated.
  11. Reinvigorate the peer support system at Bunbury Regional Prison. In addition to the peer support team, consider introducing a prison forum (akin to those operating at Acacia and Albany Prisons) as an alternative mechanism for prisoners to raise concerns with management.
  12. Increase recreation opportunities to reflect the needs of the population, including more passive options for older prisoners and community integrated sports for minimum security prisoners who do not have access to an oval.
  13. Replicating the system in the PRU, provide a life skills officer to support, educate and mentor prisoners in the self-care unit in the main prison (unit three).
  14. Recruit an Aboriginal Health Worker for Bunbury Regional Prison.
  15. Ensure that prisoners employed to clean health centres at Bunbury Regional Prison and other prisons are suitable trained to carry out such specialist cleaning services.
  16. Review and revise assessment and care planning tools to ensure that they are culturally appropriate and facilitate more comprehensive identification of and support for health issues.
  17. Review and revise pharmacy services and medication administration processes to better provide for prisoners’ evidenced needs. Outcomes should include 24-hour pharmacy coverage; flexibility in prescribing, dispensing and administration processes; and compliance with prescribing guidelines.
  18. The Department should prioritise the development of an integrated case management philosophy and operational model that includes all prisoners.
  19. Re-open unit five.
  20. Develop a specific roster for the PRU with dedicated PRU officers and provide appropriate training in the role and operations of a pre-release facility to all officers who will work in the PRU.
  21. Remove the cap on gratuity levels and allow each prison administration team the flexibility to manage gratuity levels locally, in accordance with the prison’s own industry plan.

Read DCS Response to Recommendations.

Page last updated: April 10, 2014