A new prison at San­ta Rosa for state of emer­gency de­tainees has im­proved con­di­tions over gen­er­al prison sys­tems and will be ready be­fore the end of the week, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons John Rougi­er has said.Rougi­er in­di­cat­ed this at a me­dia brief­ing at the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice, St Clair.Rougi­er said work was pro­ceed­ing on the Ari­ma fa­cil­i­ty off the high­way near San­ta Rosa. He said about 650 peo­ple could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the fa­cil­i­ty with a max­i­mum of 1,000 if nec­es­sary.The new fa­cil­i­ty would there­fore re­move any threat of over­crowd­ing in the gen­er­al prison sys­tem where 521 peo­ple charged un­der the state of emer­gency were cur­rent­ly housed, Rougi­er said.He con­firmed that the new fa­cil­i­ty had some im­prove­ments on oth­er fa­cil­i­ties.Rougi­er said some spaces in the prison were "con­tainer­ised" and there were al­so tra­di­tion­al con­crete ar­eas as well as dor­mi­to­ries and in­di­vid­ual cells. He said all cells have toi­lets, bath­rooms and face­basin­sRougi­er said there had been no threat of over­crowd­ing at the Women's Prison, since on­ly two fe­male de­tainees were sent there.He said be­fore the state of emer­gency, there had al­ready been over­crowd­ing in the prison where males were held, since that prison pop­u­la­tion was 3,800.To date, af­ter the ad­di­tion of state of emer­gency de­tainees, he said the prison pop­u­la­tion was 4,321-in­creased by 521.Rougi­er said the 521 had been charged and be­longed to the pe­nal sys­tem.Cur­rent­ly, he said, those peo­ple were be­ing placed in a spe­cial pris­ons unit which housed high-risk pris­on­ers.

That fa­cil­i­ty which could house 350 max­i­mum, on­ly held 16 pris­on­ers be­fore the state of emer­gency.Af­ter the state of emer­gency, Rougi­er said the 16 had been moved out, and more than 243 state of emer­gency de­tainees were placed in that par­tic­u­lar fa­cil­i­ty.He said there was there­fore no re­al over­crowd­ing of the pris­ons save "for what ex­ist­ed be­fore."Peo­ple brought in re­sult­ing from state of emer­gency charges were placed in dif­fer­ent ar­eas, Rougi­er added.He said gang-af­fil­i­at­ed peo­ple were sep­a­rat­ed from oth­ers to avoid con­flict and chal­lenges from oth­er pris­on­ers. Those on drug charges were placed in oth­er fa­cil­i­ties, he added.Rougi­er said the prison sys­tem had re­ceived $2.5 mil­lion from the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure state of emer­gency in­mates were tak­en care of ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.He said ex­tra food and fa­cil­i­ties were be­ing made avail­able. Up­grad­ed ac­com­mo­da­tion such as dou­ble deck­er beds, were al­so pro­vid­ed.Rougi­er said when in­mates en­tered the sys­tem-usu­al­ly around 6 pm or 7 pm-they were giv­en a bath and pro­vid­ed with toi­letries, toi­let pa­per and tow­els.Rougi­er said 300 pris­ons of­fi­cers were re­called from va­ca­tion to en­sure the 2,000-strong prison force was in place. He said train­ing was al­so be­ing done for oth­ers to deal with su­per­vi­sion and man­age­ment of the sys­tem. (GA)