NT government expands role of G4S private security guards to support overcrowded watch houses

Australia Broadcast Center

7 days ago

In an expansion of private prison staff responsibilities in the Northern Territory, Department of Corrections employees have heard the duties performed by private security firm G4S will be increased.
In March, the NT government signed a six-month contract with G4S to manage the transfer of Darwin prisoners.
G4S security guards currently help to transfer inmates between prisons and the courts, as territory correctional staff face record prisoner numbers.
Despite a recruitment drive for 202 new corrections officers to be employed inside prisons this financial year, NT Corrections Minister Gerard Maley has previously acknowledged the prison population is growing and that the government needs to expand the workforce.
In an internal memo seen by the ABC, corrections staff were told Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley had signed a work order to expand the duties carried out by private security guards.
"As we shape this next phase, we are working closely with G4S to determine what a Northern Territory-based G4S staffing model could look like."
The United Workers Union (UWU), which represents corrections officers, has been strongly opposed to the NT's six-month arrangement with G4S since it began in March.
UWU NT branch secretary Erina Early said although G4S guards had been assisting with prison transfers since that time, corrections staff had not seen any improvement to their working conditions.
"It hasn't made much change to our correctional officers at all because the [prisoner] numbers are increasing," she said.
"Bringing in G4S may relieve a couple of shifts, but it's not having the outcome that the government [is] hoping for."
Ms Early said union members were worried for "the safety of the prisoners and also safety of the police" — who have a different skillset to correctional officers — and held concerns the expansion of G4S's services signalled growing privatisation in the NT's corrections system.
"They've been saying this since it was announced by Commissioner Matthew Varley, that G4S were coming in — as soon as you have them in, it's like a cancer, they will spread," she said.
"They have been taking more and more roles."
Corrections Minister Gerard Maley last month told the ABC that privatising the entire NT prison system was not on the government's radar.
"There are private firms that run prisons in their entirety, that's not our plan at all," he said.
"Our plan is to make sure that we have highly trained officers behind the wire, and then independent contractors such as G4S doing the services outside that."
The NT's corrections department has been housing a growing number of prisoners in police watch houses in recent months, due to capacity constraints at territory prisons.
Earlier this week, there were about 100 people being held inside the Palmerston police watch house, including overflow corrections prisoners.
G4S is part of American private security giant Allied Universal, which employs more than 800,000 people internationally and generates about $20 billion in annual revenue.
The company describes itself as a "global leader in security".
Security guards employed by G4S in Australia mainly work in prisons and detention centres.
The firm has operated Victoria's largest maximum security prison, Port Phillip Prison, since it opened in 1997.
A 2018 report by the Victorian auditor-general's office found "serious incidents" at Port Phillip Prison, including assaults and drug use, and "exposed weaknesses in how G4S … manage safety and security risks".
A Victorian coroner recently recommended G4S improve staff training following the "preventable" 2022 death of an Aboriginal man in his prison cell.
Port Phillip Prison is due to close by the end of this year.
Last year, G4S reached a confidential settlement with the parents of an Iranian asylum seeker, who was fatally bashed by guards at a Manus Island offshore detention centre in 2014.
The company was also fined over its role in the death of an Aboriginal elder, who overheated in the back of a prison van in remote Western Australia in 2008.
It is not yet clear how much the NT government's contract with G4S has cost the public.