Site preparations for the government's expansion of the ACT's Alexander Maconochie Centre have begun, in an attempt to deal with the prison's overcrowding problems.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The ACT government announced the $54 million upgrade in April, saying it would increase the capacity of the Canberra prison by 110 beds and add a 30-cell specialist care facility.
At the time, Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury said the new buildings would be completed by mid-2016 and would allow inmates to be segregated into categories to avoid violent confrontations.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for the Justice and Community Safety Directorate said the current work was to prepare the site for construction of the Additional Facilities Project.
"A 30-cell Special Care Centre [SCC] and a 56-cell/80-bed flexible accommodation unit will be built," she said.
The spokeswoman said special security arrangements had been put in place during the construction period, which was expected to last for two years.
"The site will be screened by a dedicated fence and an exclusion zone," she said. "Additional custodial officers will be rostered to monitor the work. All contractor and delivery movements will be tracked and person and vehicle searches will occur."
The site preparation will take about six weeks according to the spokeswoman, with construction work for the prison extension expected to begin soon afterwards in late August.
Last year, Fairfax Media reported that the Alexander Maconochie Centre had reached capacity.
In April, Mr Rattenbury said the government had balanced cost and demand when deciding on how much extra space was needed at the prison.
"We're not going to build the biggest prison we could build, because there's a limit to the amount of money that's available and we don't want to just create a massive prison to fill up," he said.
Opposition corrections spokesman Andrew Wall criticised the new prison buildings after the announcement in April, saying they were an attempt to make up for previous ACT government mistakes.
He said the expansion would not have been necessary if the government had heeded expert advise when originally proposing the prison in 2001.
"If the advice the government was given as far back as 2001 was followed, and the prison was built in accordance with the professional's recommendation on the size, we wouldn't be here ... spending $54 million to expand the prison," Mr Wall said in April.
