Long Bay jail in Sydney is one of a number of sites being considered to build a new maximum-security facility for prisoners facing terrorism-related offences.
In a statement on Sunday, Corrective Services New South Wales confirmed it was “taking proactive steps to manage the rising number of people on remand facing terrorism-related offences”.
It follows concerns raised last month by the NSW corrective services commissioner, Peter Severin, that the Supermax high-risk management centre in Goulburn in the Southern Highlands, was causing younger inmates to become further radicalised by hardened extremists.
On Sunday a NSW Corrective Services spokeswoman said in a statement: “The installation of a new high-risk management unit closer to Sydney to house them, and a small number of other extreme high-risk inmates, is in the early planning stages.”
She said the facility would be located closer to Sydney to allow NSW Corrective Services “to meet its requirements to provide legal access and transport for inmates on terrorism-related offences, as the existing high-risk management unit is located at Goulburn, 195km from central Sydney”.
Severin told News Corp the rising number of people facing terrorist-related charges meant “we need to create new options”.
“We need to be prepared,” he said. “There is an expectation of more activity and this is really a proactive step. We are continuously looking at managing people who are extreme high risk.”
But RMIT university professor and security expert, Joseph Siracusa, said the new facility risked replicating the issues being experienced in the Goulburn Supermax.
“Putting a bunch of people on similar offences together in the one place is a bad idea, unless you keep them in isolation from each other,” Siracusa said.
“Supermax prisons are designed to break people. They do their jobs in terms of keeping people locked up, but it sounds in this case that there is no talk of rehabilitation to run alongside it. In Minnesota there is a maximum security prison where judges are working with younger people on serious charges to give them a chance to come back and to rehabilitate.
“If this is just going to be just another supermax facility, then that’s not very progressive.”
He said there were about 135 people in prisons across Australia on terrorism-related offences.
The opposition NSW corrections minister, Guy Zangari, told the ABC that he was concerned moving high-risk inmates to Long Bay in Port Botany may place the public at risk.
“This is around suburban Malabar, Chifley and Little Bay, there is increasing development around the area and a growing population, surely they don’t want to wake up to the news that supermax prisoners will be housed in the heart of their suburb,” he said.
