Peter Dutton says state budget
initiative is a good move and George Brandis says it can work with
deradicalisation programs
A new multimillion-dollar “mini-max” prison is to be built beside
Goulburn’s high-security Supermax facility to house radicalised inmates.
The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, announced a $47m package
upgrading the 16-year-old jail alongside David Elliott, the counter-terrorism
and corrections minister, and Dominic Perrottet, the treasurer, at Silverwater
jail on Sunday morning.
The new “Supermax II” facility would house 54 inmates, the Daily
Telegraph reported, and ease the process of keeping radicalised inmates
separate from others. Segregation had been a priority since Supermax high risk
management correctional centre began holding prisoners with terror convictions
in 2005.
Peter Severin, the NSW corrections commissioner, told the
Telegraph that there were 34 inmates at Supermax on terror-related offences.
“We keep the al-Qaida affiliates, who are highly disciplined and
very dogmatic, away from the IS affiliates, who are unruly young tearaways who
engage in noisy behaviour and challenge everyone and everybody.”
Construction on a third unit to hold inmates awaiting trial on
remand was under way at Long Bay, while the 16-year-old Supermax facility would
be upgraded and nearly double in capacity, from 45 inmates to 75.
The overhaul would include soundproofing and improvements to
audio and CCTV to monitor visits from family and friends, and facilitate
intelligence gathering.
“We are dispersing them in a way that will allow us eventually
to get them to disengage,” Severin told reporters. “By centralising those who
have the potential to cause the most harm, we actually keep the rest of the
system safe.”
The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said NSW should be
applauded for the plan and encouraged other state leaders to come up with
similar initiatives.
“We don’t what people within the prison environment
indoctrinated, being converted into a radical form of Islam,” Dutton told
reporters in Canberra on Sunday. “We don’t want these people coming out a
bigger threat than when they went into jail.”
The federal attorney general, George Brandis, said he was in
favour of the separate facility to counter radicalisation within Supermax, as
long as it worked in tandem with formalised programs.
“It seems to me to be a good thing, so long as the way in which
these prisons are designed and configured doesn’t mean all the terrorists are
together in each other’s company reinforcing each other’s ideology,” Brandis
told Sky News on Sunday.
“I would suggest to my NSW counterparts a proposal like that has
to work hand in glove with effective deradicalisation programs.”
Also on Sky, the Labor frontbencher Ed Husic said policymakers
needed to consider new approaches to tackling the threat of terrorism “in a
calm and rational way”.
The NSW budget announcement coincided with other
counter-terrorism initiatives in other states, following a spate of attacks
around the world in recent weeks, including in London and Melbourne.
A boost to police resources – 30 counter-terrorism offices and
20 frontline police – in Queensland was announced on Sunday morning in response
to the “ever-growing” threat of local terror attacks.
“In recent months we have all seen the horrific terror-related
incidents unfolding right around the world ,” the state premier, Annastacia
Palaszczuk, said. “Unfortunately we are not immune to these threats.”
Ian Stewart, the state police minister, said the additional
resources would help authorities try to eradicate the “menace” of terrorism by
relying on preventative tactics and intelligence techniques.
Details as to how the new officers would be deployed had not yet
been finalised, he said, but some may be based in regional Queensland.
“Terrorism is borderless and so policing has to be,” he said.
On Saturday the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced
temporary concrete bollards would be erected in central Melbourne locations
including Federation Square and Bourke Street Mall to protect the public.
“There’s no time to be wasted here,” he told reporters. “We need
to be vigilant in all manner of different ways and that’s what it’s all about.”
In time, the bollards would be replaced with street furniture or
planter boxes and other features to make them appear “a little bit less
imposing”, but the priority was safety. Other vulnerabilities in Melbourne city
would be addressed in the next six months.
With Australian Associated Press
No comments:
Post a Comment