The Western Australian Department of Justice is consolidating its award winning prisoner work camp program, with two new camps soon to open.
One of the camps will be established at Wyndham, in the State’s far north East Kimberley region, while the other will be situated at a former prison farm near Albany on the south coast.
The camps will bring to six the number operating across the State.
Prisons Executive Director Terry Simpson said local government authorities competed with each other to host the work camps, which provided work parties of up to 20 minimum-security prisoners who were either serving short-term sentences or nearing the end of their imprisonment.
“The Department conducts extensive consultations with local communities before committing to a work camp to ensure it has maximum public acceptance,” Mr Simpson said.
“It is important the community has the confidence to take ownership of their local work camp, as the prisoners work amongst them on a wide range of local work projects.”
These include:
Environmental projects such as tree planting, salinity control, coastal regeneration, eradicating non-indigenous vegetation, eliminating/controlling fire risks etc.
Recreation/tourism - maintaining and developing infrastructure in national parks, nature reserves, other tourist parks and rest areas. Projects include trail construction, construction and erection of footbridges, information shelters, BBQs, and picnic facilities.
Heritage - maintaining and restoring heritage sites and buildings of significant historical and heritage value and in need of preservation - such as pioneer cemeteries and homesteads and other important buildings.
Community projects such as streetscaping, upgrading community facilities, erecting playground equipment and facilities for young people and projects for local clubs.
Work camp prisoners have also played important roles in disaster relief operations, providing a "rapid response" to natural disasters such as floods, bushfires and cyclones.
Mr Simpson said the work must provide benefits to the broad community and is work that would otherwise not get done either because of a lack of community resources or volunteers.
“So far we have had tremendous success, with communities regularly hosting barbeques and other similar functions for the prisoners in appreciation for the work they have done around their towns,” he said.
The first work camp specifically for Aboriginal people was opened at Millstream, in the Pilbara, in 2000 while the Derby camp in the West Kimberley opened just last year.
The work camp program has been recognised with a number of prestigious State and National awards for excellence.
In 1999, it won a WA Premier’s award for services to regional communities and was, again, a finalist the following year.
Also in 2000, it won the State and National Public Relations Institute of Australia Golden Target Award for Community Communication and the StateWest Credit Society Award for outstanding achievement by an individual or group of colleagues.
With such high praise, it’s little wonder more local communities in Western Australia have their sights set on a prisoner work camp for their town.