Our prisons should not be gulags

POLICE Minister Mark Ryan’s comments that he would let offenders sleep “on the floor” of prisons if they were overcrowded — that it wouldn’t prevent people from being jailed — is not only inhumane and contradictory, but it sends the wrong message to an angry community.

The community wants to see the crime rate drop, but reacting to that anger is not what we need from government representatives.

We need to see there is a proper system in place, and that there is rehabilitation underway.

And it also begs the questions, was he being sincere, or simply spouting what he thought would be popular to a heated crime forum crowd?

Maybe Mr Ryan needs to be reminded that it was his government that enacted Queensland’s Human Rights Act.

And if Thuringowa MP Aaron Harper is right that the average person “couldn’t care less” about the conditions in our prisons, then it is a troubling indictment on our society.

Prisons in Queensland are meant to strive to rehabilitate. They’re not gulags.

Townsville Correctional Centre, male and female, is over capacity, and this is one of the core factors behind the safety and structural issues it is facing.

There have been concerns about the health of female inmates, some of them pregnant, at the low security facility due to the lack of night nurses.

A prison officer fears for the safety of some of the prisoners.

If it is too difficult to empathise for criminals — woman, man or child — we need to at least think instead of the prison staff, who are already starved of resources that have to navigate a workplace that is overcrowded, tense and potentially unsafe.