Rangeview Juvenile Remand Centre in Murdoch Drive
4 Aug 09
Most of us missed a small media release on the 14 May, 2009 announcing the intended closure of Rangeview Juvenile Remand Centre in Murdoch Drive and the development and expansion of the site into an 80 bed prison for young adults.
The committee for the Kardinya Residents Association Inc met to discuss this and wrote to Christian Porter, MLA expressing our concern. The City of Melville actively supported requests from the KRA, the Winthrop-Murdoch Community Group and other concerned residents in seeking to have this decision reversed, expressing concern that there has been no community consultation over such an important matter.
Representatives from the local residents groups (Kardinya, Winthrop-Murdoch and Leeming) met to discuss the issue. The representatives felt it was unwise to spend money refitting the remand centre and the Canning Vale prison to accommodate this change because of the location of the proposed prison. Over the next twenty years the Fiona Stanley Precinct will be developed into one of Western Australia's premier educational and medical precincts. A prison will not sit well in this development and there will be pressure to relocate the centre in the future.
Last Friday (31st July 2009) representatives from Kardinya, Winthrop-Murdoch and Leeming met with Christian Porter, MLA to discuss this matter. We will be meeting with Mr Porter again in two weeks for more discussion and consideration of an MOU (see below)
Here is a summary of the outcome:
· Christian Porter apologised for the lack of community consultation, but he said he had inherited overcrowding in the prison system and had been given just a few months to deal with it. Changing the use of the Remand Centre site was part of an overall plan.
· There will be no new major capital expenditure at Rangeview. Most of the $35M allocated in the budget will be spent at Banksia. A small amount will be spent on building a workshop at Rangeview. The important point we took from this was that without a major upgrade the useful life of the facility is not extended, which will make it easier to convert the land to a different use in the longer term.
· The centre will be used to house only minimum security prisoners. Only 80 18 to 22 year old males will be selected out of 4400 total prisoners in WA and the centre will be used for rehabilitation. The prison will be a minimum security facility.
· The 80 person capacity will not be increased.
· It was agreed there will be a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Melville and a Draft will be provided to us at the next meeting. The MOU will state that there will not be more than 80 beds and that only minimum security prisoners will be held in the Facility. In 1994 we were given assurances that the centre would only ever be a remand centre, but this was not put in writing. Consequently, we have little authority in the current situation. At least with this MOU in place we have some guarantees about the future.
Report from Chris Soutar
President of Kardinya Residents Association Inc
August 4th 2009