Plan to turn unused $400m Covid quarantine centre near Perth into new jail as prison crisis grows

A study is underway to determine if a mostly unused Covid quarantine facility should be turned into a prison.

The Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience was built just north of Perth at the end of the Covid pandemic, but has never fully been used.

The 500-bed facility was purpose-built for long-term residence and included onsite medical facilities and separate staff areas.

It was left vacant when the pandemic ended, shortly after its completion.

The Western Australian government operated the $400m centre until 2023, and it was flagged as a potential site for crisis accommodation or a prison facility to house inmates.

Most recently, it was used to quarantine passengers from the hantavirus cruise ship after they repatriated to Australia last month, and as an emergency evacuation centre during a bushfire in 2023.

The Western Australian government is now pursuing a feasibility study to determine if it should turn the centre into a jail to alleviate the state’s overcrowded prison system.

Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia said Western Australia’s prison population had grown 38 per cent in the last three years driven by the state’s response to domestic violence.

He said a number of initiatives were being undertaken to address the extraordinary growth, including studies on further infrastructure.

“There’s a feasibility study being undertaken on what that facility might be used for in corrective services, but at the outside, I can say it wouldn’t be a prison,” he said.

“What it would be is place for the type of people right now who, at the end of their sentence, they’re very low risk.

“They’ve been assessed and the security clearance is such that they go out of prisons every day of the week and go and work in the community.”

Custodial Services Inspector Eamon Ryan told ABC the prison system was at absolute capacity and they had been calling for something to happen for years.

He said most of Western Australia’s big prison were operating above capacity to 107 per cent with no spare beds and inmates sleeping on mattresses on the floor in a cell designed for one bunk bed.

While he believes the Bullsbrook centre is worth investigating, he said there was a need for a new prison.

“Now there’s a third person on floor, I think there’s around about 140 or 150 people on the floor,” he said.

“If you send someone to jail and you keep them locked in the cell for 23 hours or 22 hours a day crammed in with one other person, and you don’t give them any programs or education, they come out worse than they went in.

“We need to treat them decently, and we need to rehabilitate them to give them any chance of not reoffending when they get out.

“What I do advocate really strongly for is the need for a new prison and a very large maximum security remand facility.”

Opposition Leader Basil Zemplias posted on social media that the government’s move showed how badly the system had been mismanaged.

“After years of poor planning, Labor is scrambling for quick fixes and Band-Aid solutions to deal with an overcrowding crisis of its own making,” he said.

“Local residents are rightly asking questions about what this proposal means for their community and why planning appears to be underway before proper consultation has occurred.”