Six prison officers were hurt after a 10-hour violent stand-off between juveniles and guards in one of Western Australia’s harshest prisons.
Two prisoners at Perth’s Casuarina Prison are accused of using a homemade weapon to strike an officer in the head before snatching her keys, which began the commotion on Saturday.
Authorities claimed that 13 adolescent detainees assaulted the security guards, caused damage to three buildings by scaling roofs, and threw fire extinguishers and other objects.
A guard in his 50s needed to be transported to the hospital because his foot was fractured.
At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, two prisoners outside are accused of hitting a young officer with a metal bar and stealing her keys so they could let others out of their cells.
According to Andy Smith of the WA Prison Officers’ Union, this kind of occurrence has never occurred in the state.
“Once a detainee gets a key, it ceases to be a prison,” he declared.
Eventually, the Specialist Operations Group was requested, and the last prisoner was let go about 2.15 am.
The troublemakers were being housed in the contentious adult prison’s section 18, which was designed for inmates who were acting out too poorly for Banksia Hill Detention Centre.
But not all of those kept there are minors, and Premier Mark McGowan wants that to change.
“Unless there’s some extraordinary circumstance, you’ll be transferred to an adult prison when you turn 18 and you’re a juvenile,” he said.
Unit 18 won’t be shut down for some months, though, as Banksia Hill is undergoing a significant security improvement.
According to 9News, the ringleader has a history of assaulting police officers and had recently stolen pepper spray from a police officer.
Additionally, they twice placed another female employee in a headlock in the same day.
“The juvenile justice system need a significant makeover. It is unacceptable for them to abuse police officers and then be released back into society, according to Smith.
In the absence of an urgent staffing boost, the union forecasts more drama.
Smith stated that Casuarina Prison now lacks 90 officers.
