Overcrowding in the Palmerston Police station watch house was at ‘crisis point’ on Monday with 92 people in custody, including 76 Corrections prisoners, the police union has said, which is a statement at odds with the Corrections Minister’s claim in March that all the Corrections prisoners had been moved.
Northern Territory Police Association president Nathan Finn said the critical capacity came despite repeated assurances from the CLP Government the facility would no longer be used to house correctional prisoners and said it was putting police officers, prisoners, and the broader community at unacceptable risk.
“This is officially out of control. The CLP Government has made repeated promises to stop using police facilities for correctional purposes, yet the Palmerston watch house is now overflowing,” Mr Finn said.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when a serious custody incident occurs.
“Our members are being diverted away from critical front line duties to manage this escalating crisis. Police officers are exhausted, burnt out, and being called in on overtime just to maintain basic safety within the watch house.
“This is no longer just a resource issue, it is a workplace safety issue. It’s an unacceptable and dangerous environment for our members.”
Mr Finn said the association was calling for the government to stop using watch houses for correctional prisoners, and said it needed to immediately invest in appropriate correctional infrastructure.
RPS, the project managers on the construction of the Palmerston police station, states on its website that it has 27 cells and the capacity for 100 inmates but Mr Finn said the maximum number was dependent on who was being locked up, giving the example of someone who was violent from taking drugs needing to be in a cell by themselves.
“Yesterday’s numbers were dangerously full, with no capacity to mitigate any incidents occurring,” Mr Finn said.
On March 18, Corrections Minister Gerard Maley told Parliament that Corrections would cease staffing and using police watch houses for prisoners and that by March 10 all prisoners had been moved from Palmerston watch house to Holtze and Berrimah prisons, with final transfers in the Alice Springs Correctional Centre completed by March 16.
However on April 8, Mr Finn said that inmates from correctional facilities were never relocated from Palmerston and it had led to concerns about the number of offenders police can arrest on a nightly basis due to capacity issues.
Mr Maley conceded he had held a meeting the week before with the Corrections Commissioner and the Acting Police Commissioner to address the ongoing challenges facing the justice system, acknowledging that Corrections staff departed from the Palmerston watch house in March, but remanded prisoners will remain in police custody until space opens up in a correctional facility.
Mr Finn said the CLP’s tough-on-crime stance did not match adequate planning or infrastructure investment, and frontline officers were paying the price.
“This government continues to beat its chest about locking up more offenders, but it has utterly failed to plan for the consequences of its own policies,” Mr Finn said.
“If immediate action isn’t taken, we’re gravely concerned that someone – be it a police officer, a prisoner, or a member of the public – is going to be seriously injured or worse.”
During Budget Estimates in June, Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley said there were “lockdowns across all of the facilities all of the time” because of increased prisoner numbers and the strain the department has been experiencing.
On May 2, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said there were on average 600 more people in jail every day while on March 14, the ABC had reported Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the NT’s prison population rose by seven percent from 2,236 to 2,401 in the 2024 December quarter. The NT Corrections Department said the prison population has risen by another 300 inmates since then, to reach 2,704 at that time.
Mr Maley announced $455 million in the Budget for operational spending including new funding of $86 million for the 2025-26 financial year, which is made up of $80 million for additional staffing and operational capacity, including expanding prisoner health services because of rising prisoner numbers, and $6 million for additional electronic monitoring capacity.
Included in the operational budget is $4.2 million allocated for domestic and family violence programs.
The government has also said there would be $40 million held in “contingency” and drawn down to address corrections pressures as needed.
From the 2026-27 financial year, there would be an additional $40 million for additional staffing and operational capacity money on top of the increase for next year, and an additional $50 million in the contingency fund, the government said.
On top of the operational budget, there was also $117 million allocated for the infrastructure master plan, the cost of which has not been publicly disclosed by the government. How that $117 million will be spent was also not specified.
In January, the government announced its Corrections Infrastructure Master Plan was being fast-tracked to help deal with the influx of prisoners.
The plan includes converting the newly refurbished Alice Springs youth jail into a women’s prison, with 48-beds ready by January 2025, turning the Alice Springs Paperbark facility into a 16-bed youth boot camp and bail centre, expanding the Alice Springs adult jail with a 96-bed modular block by an unspecified date, while a 150-bed work camp in Darwin, and another 50-bed work camp elsewhere in the NT will be built by the fourth quarter of 2026.
Are territorians blind, deaf and lacking awareness? RDH / PALMERSTON / ALICE / KATHERINE / TENNANT / et al. What ethnic percentage dominates community services? If we can’t identify and address . . . how can we redress communal problems. Know what is needed? The cost and demands of Indigenous persons virtually prioritize every communal public service Budget? Unsustainable. Our Police Force in shreds. Governance fully dependent on toss of a coin. And public discourse blind, deaf and dumb. We cannot continue to afford the financial drain? Hard times are on our doorstep? It is two hundred and twenty plus years. We truly need Indigenous awareness, participation and leadership to share the load. Start with a month . . . NO INDIGENOUS BEFORE THE COURTS. NO INDIGENOUS IN JAM PACKED CELLS. NO INDIGENOUS BEATING UP FELLOW FAMILIES NEXT DOOR. NO STEALING SOMEONE’S CAR. NO WEAPONS. WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER! And none of us have clean hands.