JUNEE’S mayor has dismissed fears an influx of 480 maximum security prisoners into the town’s correctional centre puts the community at risk, saying bolstered safeguards would make escapes less likely.
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The state government on Wednesday said enlarging the jail – already the largest in regional NSW – would create another 130 construction, administration and correctional officer jobs.
The project is part of a $3.8 billion four-year expansion of NSW prison infrastructure that will create about another 7000 prisoner beds, many of them in country areas.
The Junee jail, opened in 1993 for minimum and medium security prisoners and the state’s first privately-operated prison, will have more than a third of its inmates classified as maximum security after the upgrade.
Mayor Neil Smith welcomes the jail expansion and is not worried about some of the state’s most hardened criminals being locked up on the town’s outskirts.
“I had a quick chat to the (jail) general manager about that this afternoon and he says there will be new infrastructure and security procedures,” Councillor Smith said.
“Security will be so much tighter and it will be less likely there will be any escapes.
“So it’s business as usual in my view.”
The Junee expansion is expected to be completed in 2018, but the government is not saying how much will be spent there because it does not want to affect the tender process.
There were 837 inmates held at Junee on Tuesday night, which means another 480 prisoners would take the jail population past 1300, a 57 per cent increase, in two years.
Member for Cootamundra, Katrina Hodgkinson, said the expansion would create more jobs for the local economy.
“This is great news for Junee and the broader district,” she said.
Cr Smith said he believed there would be a positive community reaction to the expansion, not least because of the way the jail’s private operator, the GEO Group, supported the community.
“They donate over $100,000 a year to local and regional charities and festivals,” Cr Smith said.
A GEO spokesman said the company injected more than $30 million into the community each year through salaries and its “buy local” policy.
He said the jail expansion was a reflection of the unprecedented increase in inmate numbers across the state.
