Dom Post on Corrections

Today’s editorial pulls few punches:

It is hard to imagine how the ombudsmen’s investigation into prisoner transport could have been more damning.

Corrections Minister Damien O’Connor is said to be alarmed to find out that standards drawn up in 2004 for the safe transport of prisoners had not been introduced. Instead, they were eventually dropped because they were impossible to meet. However, that does not appear to have stopped the department previously giving the ombudsmen the impression that the standards were being implemented, something that has left them “most disturbed”.

At worst, that means the department misled the ombudsmen. At best, it means its communications were inept. Neither proposition is acceptable. What is clear is that the department is dysfunctional.

Worse, there is little reason for the public to have confidence for believing that Mr O’Connor and corrections chief executive Barry Matthews are the right men to fix things. They are responsible for a department that has failed time and again. The time for tolerating those failings is long past. Both men should consider themselves on notice.

I think it is beyond being on notice. That might have been the case two years ago but nothing has improved.