A fire broke out on Wednesday morning at the maximum security prison in Victoria where 300 inmates rioted overnight, just hours after Corrections Victoria said police and emergency staff had brought the situation under control.
A Corrections Victoria spokeswoman confirmed just after 11am that firetrucks were attending the Metropolitan remand centre in Ravenhall and were attempting to contain the fire.
“As per the standard response to such incidents, fire trucks were automatically dispatched to the premises,” she said. “There is no risk to staff or prisoner safety.”
Corrections staff began to clean up the prison, in the outer-western suburbs of Melbourne, on Wednesday morning after a night of rioting.
Prison sources confirmed to Guardian Australia the inmates had rebelled in response to the introduction of a smoking ban, which takes effect in prisons across the state from Wednesday.
The unrest began just before 12.30pm on Tuesday and took until 3am the following morning to contain, with prisoners breaking into prison buildings and causing extensive damage to property.
A coalition of Victorian criminal justice and legal organisations, Smart Justice, has called for an independent investigation into the rioting.
“We do not have an independent prison monitor in this state, so the only review that’s going to happen as a result of this is an internal one by the department of justice,” said a Smart Justice spokeswoman, Michelle McDonnell.
“Other jurisdictions have an independent review system, and given that this particular prison is a private prison, there are added concerns around transparency.”
Any review conducted by the department of justice and Corrections Victoria had to be made public once complete, McDonnell said. It was likely extensive overcrowding, a persistent problem in Victoria’s prisons, had contributed, she said.
Neither department would reveal details of the investigation or whether the findings would be made public.
On Wednesday morning the Victoria Police assistant commissioner, Stephen Leane, told reporters “several hundred” police and emergency service officers had been involved in bringing the prisoners under control.
“We’ve still got police at the prison and will continue to do that until corrections are satisfied security is being maintained,” he said.
“A team of detectives will review the footage and take statements to assess who caused the damage and who started the riot. We have lots and lots of CCTV to work our way through over the next days and weeks.”
Many of the prisoners had been in the yard exercising when the riot began, he said, breaking into worksheds where they got hold of sticks and other weapons.
They “took what they could grab hold of, sticks and whatever they thought they could utilise”, he said.
The corrections minister, Wade Noonan, said members of the public were never in danger. Two staff members had suffered minor injuries but these were not as a direct result of being harmed by a prisoner, he said.
“Four prisoners have been taken to the hospital at Port Phillip prison with injuries, including two with dog bites, and a fifth prisoner will require hospital treatment for a suspected broken jaw,” Noonan said.
“Damage assessments have now begun and maintenance staff are on site, and work has begun to return the prison to normal operations. The events of yesterday were unacceptable, they are unacceptable to the government and they are unacceptable the Victorian people. This behaviour will not be tolerated.”
The corrections commissioner, Jan Shuard, said she expected police to charge prisoners alleged to have committed an offence in rioting, and for those people to face the courts.
It was too early to put a dollar figure on the damage they had caused, Shuard said.
“The prisoners have done a lot of damage inside some of the units and that’s just damage like breaking things, breaking things in cells, breaking things in the units, and they’ve done damage in the workshops they got into, to the gardens and around the windows, things like that,” she said.
Prisoners had made a demand of staff during the riot but Shuard would not elaborate on what they had asked for.
Corrections staff had spent the past 18 months preparing prisoners for the introduction of the smoking ban, Shuard said, providing nicotine replacement patches, increasing recreational activities and providing quit resources.
But Guardian Australia understands that given the prison was a remand centre, the high rate of new detainees being brought in each week meant not all would have been prepared for the ban to the same extent as longer-term prisoners.
There were no plans to reconsider the ban, Shuard said.
About 80% of Australia’s prison population smokes, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows, with high nicotine dependency, mental illness, and a lack of smoking cessation programs all contributing to this.
Smoking bans in prisons have had mixed success. A Queensland government inquiry found that a ban on smoking was partly to blame for a prison riot at Woodford correctional centre in Queensland in 1997.
Associate Professor Jennifer Martin, a social work researcher with RMIT University in Melbourne, warned smoking bans in prisons increased the risk of harm to both prisoners and staff. “Smoking can be to relieve boredom, stress management, or in response to withdrawal from their addiction to nicotine,” Martin said.
“Patients and prisoners may blame staff and become hostile as these people are in the frontline of everyday relationships with people.
“I do not advocate smoking but recommend it be allowed in prisons and secure mental health wards in separated open courtyard areas where health impacts of smoking will not impact negatively on others.”
Her comments were echoed by the tobacco researcher and professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Simon Chapman, who said there was little evidence that smoking outdoors in wide open spaces caused harm to anyone but the smoker themselves.
