Apologies again, our office underwent minor technical difficulties earlier regarding internet connection and total lack thereof (by office, I of course mean me).
In my inaugrual post I fully justified my verbose posturing on this here blog 'o mine; I felt I had no choice because I was effectively if unofficially not welcome in any of the local media.
The Mount Gambier jail (which is actually in the Grant District Council area) is a low-medium security facility designed to house non-violent, short-term inmates.
In the past I have had very limited success in raising the issue of associated services for prisoners and their families given that many of these prisoners are transferred from elsewhere (predominantly Adelaide) so their families follow them down here; this requires housing, social support and services, health and transport etc.
DC of Grant have made applications for funding around this issue but Mount Gambier City Council, the area where these people would be most likely living has failed or refused to recognise this as an issue; this is basically the one thing that I have been able to address through the media.
Namely, that services are required for visiting families who may need to move here, and ex-prisoners who are likely to move into the local community upon release. Recently though, it has been put to me that issues of visitors and families moving to the area are not relevant because 'nobody at the jail gets visitors' (paraphrasing) and 'none of their families move down here', the reason being that 'all the prisoners are paedophiles and their families don't want to know and nobody visits them'.
This has been put to me by employees within the Correctional Services Industry, but obviously I'm not about to divulge what people have said to me, not motivated by a desire to get in my face and tell me I'm wrong, but by a genuine concern for the community they live in and what they know is happening within that community.
Officially, it is denied that prisoners are simply released into the local community and that therefore their criminality is an issue for Mount Gambier, but I have also spoken directly with ex-detainees from the Mount Gambier prison who make roughly the same claim; that they were returned to Adelaide and literally escorted to the Adelaide bus station where they immediately got on the bus back to Mount Gambier.
Admittedly, this is a very small sample and hardly a conclusive statistic, but it's clearly a pattern of behaviour that does exist and it has specific, severe and even sinister implications for Mount Gambier.
Next time you're in a Mount Gambier shopping centre or park or street or shop or wherever, just have a look around and check out the problematic individuals in your local, family community.
With the jail expansion this situation will worsen; Minsiter Jennifer Rankine said in The Border Watch last year that inmates receive counselling that has a fifty per cent success rate. There is no such thing, particularly when it comes to non-repentent paedophile offenders, some of whom do not think they are doing anything wrong.
In South Australia there is virtually no such thing as a first-offence 'paedophile' conviction leading to a jail sentence; it is almost inevitably suspended sentences, good behaviour bonds etc.
By the time an offender ends up in Mount Gambier jail they are likely to be repeat offenders (recidivists) and these are the most difficult to convince that they need to change their behaviours. Ms Rankines' comments completely misrepresent the likelihood of rehabilitation (more like ten per cent success) but do clearly demonstrate that this is the profile of offenders in the Mount Gambier jail.
These offenders are in jail, most likely for multiple offences of the most grievous nature, and yet they still need to be educated as to the fact that they are doing something wrong. This is not just me being paranoid or upset, this is the reality of the Mount Gambier jail.
Ms Rankines' comments that locals are happy because of the work are just offensive given what the Labor Government has done to the South East economy eg, Shared Services, Forestry Sale, etc.
The Rann Labor Government has ripped the guts out of the South East and by way of compensation dumps Adelaide's sexual offenders, particularly paedophiles, into Mount Gambier.
And the expansion guarantees that this pattern of Adelaide's offenders being effectively dumped in Mount Gambier will grow from a trickle to a torrent.
Tomorrow: Dear SA Water - What the Heck is Coming Out of My Tap?
The dog won't drink it and it's killing my garden, etc.
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