Data shows violence in South Australian jails have reached a five year high

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Violence in South Australian jails has reached a five year high. According to the latest data, 481 inmates and correctional officers were assaulted in the last financial year.

Transcript

00:00These figures from the Department for Correctional Services show that there has been a rise in

00:07the number of prison officers assaulted on the job during the past five years.

00:13The data shows that there were 44 correctional officers who have been assaulted in the past

00:1912 months and 14 of those were the victim of a serious assault.

00:25Now this data does paint a wider picture as to what's unfolding in South Australian

00:31prisons and we can see as well that the combined number for prison officers and prisoners assaulted

00:39has reached the highest point that it has been in the past five years.

00:43During the last reporting period between 2023 and 2024 there were 481 assaults on both prisoners

00:55and prison officers and we compare that back to the reports between 2022 and 2023 where

01:02there were 239 instances of assault and then 143 in 2021 and 2022.

01:12This comes as well as the average daily number of prisoners has been on the rise across the

01:17state during the past 12 months.

01:20At Yatla prison behind me they've seen a 17% increase in the number of inmates there.

01:27We've had some response from South Australia's Corrections Minister Emily Burke.

01:32She says they are cracking down on this problem, they're ramping up security at jails and doing

01:39more searches too.

01:40She says during the past 12 months there's been a 17% increase in searches and they've

01:47confiscated a record amount of contraband and they're hoping that there'll be some flow

01:54on effects and they'll be able to reduce the violence in prison.

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