More than 60 inmates have been moved from Holtze Prison to the refurbished old Berrimah Prison, and another 50 will be moved at some point in the near future, Corrections Minister Gerard Maley has said, which follows the union representing police last week saying the Darwin police watch house was being used purely for Corrections prisoners.

Mr Maley said in a statement on Wednesday there was a record 2,497 prisoners in the Northern Territory, an increase of 234 prisoners since the CLP came to power on August 24.

He said 66 had been moved from Holtze but said he could not specify when the next 50 would be moved. However, Corrections Commissioner Matthew Varley told Mix 104.9 on Thursday they would be transferred to Berrimah from Holtze by Christmas.

“Our government inherited a crime crisis and a broken Corrections system, and we are doing what needs to be done to protect Territorians and ensure that violence, crime, and harm are met with real consequences,” Mr Maley said.

For more than a year, Corrections prisoners have been housed in police watch houses due to a lack of space in the Territory’s prisons.

Last Wednesday on Katie Woolf’s Mix 104.9 program, NTPA president Nathan Finn said he was told by NT Police on the Monday that they could not process prisoners at the Palmerston police watch house, and that the Darwin police watch house was no longer able to be used by police to hold prisoners.

“I was contacted by the police force saying that they had an inability to lodge our prisoners into a custody facility due to the demands being placed on that facility by the Corrections for overflow prisoners,” Mr Finn said.

“We are only operating the Palmerston watch house for the whole of Darwin area at the moment. So we had police prisoners and we had to wait until other people had been released before we could release them and put them into our custody.

“We’re at capacity…and this is putting great strain on our members of the police force that obviously are working in that environment to start with.

“But as of this morning, we have 98 corrections prisons in that watch house. It’s not built for a permanent facility for the Corrections presence. There’s nowhere to exercise, there’s nowhere to move.

“That’s placing severe risk on our operational staffing in that capacity. So we we’ve got a situation where we’re running out of space, so any arrests that we have, are potentially going to be turned away if we don’t actually do something about this.”

Mr Finn said he understood the CLP had inherited the problem and the government was doing everything it could to create more room for prisoners.

Mr Maley said the government was trying to implement its plan to increase the prison capacity as quickly as it could.

He said the plan included having 200 male prisoners at Berrimah by March, turning the Alice Springs Youth Prison into a women’s prison, with room for 130 additional male prisoners at the Alice Springs prison once female inmates were moved and a 96-bed modular sector was created.

The plan also includes a new 150-person work camp in Darwin and a new 50-person work camp in Katherine.

The government also plans to build a new 150-bed multi-classification women’s prison at Holtze by September 2028, a new youth justice boot camp and bail facilities in Katherine and Tennant Creek, with the Alice Springs Paperbark facility repurposed for up to 16-bed youth boot camp and bail facility.

The old Berrimah Prison had most recently been used as the Don Dale Youth Prison.

The government has also refused to say publicly how much it would all cost. Territory Labor claimed the CLP’s four-year prison infrastructure plan could cost taxpayers at least $700 million.