NSW Corrective Services have opened their doors to shine a light on the hard work done by corrective services staff ahead of National Corrections Day.
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This year, the day puts a particular focus on the work conducted by staff rehabilitating offenders by helping them work within the Corrective Services Industries.
Attorney General and Acting Minister for Corrections Mark Speakman highlighted the monetary benefits of the Industries to taxpayers while thanking corrections officers for their ‘difficult and dangerous’ work.
“Another of the aims of prison industries, where inmates make their own clothes and prepare their own food, is to substantially reduce the cost to NSW taxpayers.”
MOS Jason Quinn says that the number of inmates working with the Corrective Services Industries staff numbers in the hundreds.
“We’ve got about 350 to 400 inmates working throughout the industries on any given day here at Wellington Correctional Centre,” Mr Quinn said.
Mathew Wellings is one of 32 corrections officers in overseeing inmates who work in Wellington’s various correction centre industries and one of more than 9,000 staff around NSW being celebrated on Friday, January 18.
Mr Wellings was a concrete-fencer who helped put up fences for prison perimeters before coming to work at Wellington Correctional Centre in the Industries team.
“When I was building the prison perimeter fences we actually had inmates working with us and I thought it was a bit weird, but then I heard their stories,” Mr Wellings says.
“They have made their mistakes and they have to pay for it, but I’m hoping that they go on to use their trade and the skills that we are teaching them and be rehabilitated.”
Corrections officer Rodney Pedron went through many career changes before coming to Wellington Correctional Centre, where he currently works as one of the senior officers in charge of monitoring the ‘buy-ups’ program.
The ‘buy-ups’ area focuses as a sort of grocery store and packaging plant, where inmates work to package and distribute orders to six other correctional centres around the country, but can also spend their wages on food and toiletries.
“Most of the inmates are good workers here, a lot of them are so keen they even want to work on the weekends,” Mr Pedron said.
“If you give them a bit of freedom to make their own decisions, and some ownership of the job, they seem to have a bit more dedication to their work.”
“We had one guy not that long ago who had been in prison for five years. We had some contractors doing work on site and they liked his work ethic, and when he left prison they offered him a job, so he had a good start back at life.”
