Inmates are expected to file into one of Queensland’s largest and most expensive prisons – at a princely sum of $1 billion – in the Lockyer Valley once it opens in September.
The new men’s prison, ‘The Lockyer Valley Correctional Centre’, is currently going through its final tests. Once it becomes operational more than 1500 inmates will be housed in the facility.
Queensland Corrective Services have also employed 800 staff, 550 of those will be custodial officers.
The prison, which is the first in the state in more than a decade, had cost blow outs of more than $300 million.
The high security jail is expected to help deal with significant overcrowding in the state’s prisons.
The issue often sees up to three inmates jammed into a cell.
Photo: Corrective Services Commissioner Paul Stewart, Corrective Services Minister Laura Gerber Lockyer State MP Jim McDonald and Lockyer Valley Mayor Tanya Milligan outside the new prison. Supplied.
Corrective Services Minister Laura Gerber said that the LNP Crisafulli Government has fast-tracked the Lockyer Valley Correctional Centre to take pressure off our correctional system.
“When we came to government, we discovered that our correctional system is operating – particularly in the men’s – at 150 per cent capacity and we’re at risk of tripling up in correctional centres.”
“The Lockyer Valley Correctional Centre coming online, and commissioning now underway, means that the Crisafulli Government has narrowly avoided tripling up,” Minister Gerber said.
Meanwhile, Corrective Services Commissioner Paul Stewart said the high-security centre would have “significant” rehabilitation resources.
“Rehabilitation and reform of prisoners is really what the heart of this centre is all about,” he said.
“There’s more space in this centre than other centres for rehabilitation, education and training, and for developing skills, so prisoners, when they leave, are in the best place they can be to not reoffend,” Commissioner Stewart said.
