Albany prison riot misfires for inmate

A 24-year-old man who was nearly halfway through a seven-month stint at Albany Regional Prison has been jailed for another 30 months after starting a fire at the maximum-security facility. Lincoln Alexander Wiggan was jailed in January last year for aggravated common assault and unlawful wounding, the District Court of WA was told last week. Unhappy about being detained in the Great Southern, Wiggan set a cell alight on March 26, believing it would force the Department of Justice to transfer him and two co-offenders to a prison in WA’s north, State prosecutor Sarah Jessup told the court. “The fire completely engulfed cell B20, causing significant damage,” Ms Jessup said. A fire was also started on a table-tennis table in a common area by one of Wiggan’s co-offenders. In preparation for the incident, the trio collected condiment bottles, buckets, brooms and bedding. Prison officers were pelted with some of those items as they tried to put out the common room fire. “It was done for an entirely selfish purpose,” Ms Jessup said. “He had absolutely no regard or care for the health, the life or the safety of not only his fellow inmates, but of the prison officers who worked there as well.” “The unpredictability of fire and the complete inability to know how a fire is going to play once it’s lit is the exact point that the legislature considers this is an offence which warrants the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.” Wiggan’s defence counsel Janie Gibbs told the court he wanted to return to a prison in the State’s north, after he was transferred from West Kimberley to Albany. Instead, he was moved to Greenough Regional Prison. “So firstly, he didn’t achieve his goals in any respect whatsoever,” she said. Judge John Staude said the fire was lit by Wiggan “deliberately, defiantly and recklessly”. “I can understand that you would prefer to remain on country to serve that sentence but, be that as it may, you were, at the time of this offending, almost halfway through a relatively short sentence,” Judge Staude told Wiggan, before handing down a sentence of two years and six months. “A fire in a prison situation causes particular risks to inmates and prison officers because of the nature of the prison environment. It is a secure environment and a fire that spreads rapidly, as this one did, did put other people at risk of injury.”