POLICE PRISONS

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:52): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Police a question relating to police cells.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Since February 2007, the Adelaide City Watchhouse, a police facility, has been used to house prisoners for up to 15 days to cope with the increase in prison numbers and South Australia's drastically overcrowded prisons. Our prisons are now 22 per cent over capacity and the most overcrowded prisons in the nation. In the Government Gazette of 29 November 2007, the government declared 19 police stations to be police prisons under the Correctional Services Act. As a result, South Australian police officers will be off the beat, diverted to manage Correctional Services prisoners. My questions to the minister are:

1. Have the police been given any additional resources to take on this expanded custodial role?

2. Were SA Police and the Police Association consulted about this declaration before its gazettal in November?

The Hon. CARMEL ZOLLO (Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Road Safety, Minister Assisting the Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:53): The reason I am responding to this question is that it was gazetted and proclaimed pursuant to the Correctional Services Act.

I can advise the chamber, as the honourable member would have as well, that a review was undertaken by SAPOL in relation to police cell facilities. A number of police prisons were revoked because they were no longer needed, for obvious reasons, and some were proclaimed pursuant to the Correctional Services Act 1982.

It is simply a matter of a good government's planning and an integrated criminal justice system. It is about ensuring that there were no administrative impediments to using these cells should the criminal justice need arise.