The Department of Justice held a public forum in Malmsbury last Thursday night for its first official meeting with residents since announcing the town’s youth detention centre would reopen.
About 50 residents, local first responders and councillors attended the DOJ’s sausage sizzle, held on the prison lawn adjacent to the carpark. The crowd informally gathered around the deputy secretary of youth justice, Jodie Henderson, who apologised for the sudden nature of the government’s latest announcement.
“I apologise for taking people by surprise, but really, we only got a decision on the Monday and I think we announced it on the Tuesday. So prior to that, we didn’t know what decisions we were going to get about it. So it wasn’t like we wanted to take people by surprise,” Ms Henderson said.
She added, “when the setting started to change in terms of having to have a third precinct because of our anticipated numbers, we did believe that Malmsbury could have a second chance.
“We are only saying at this stage, and hopefully that’s the case, that it’s up to 30 young people [in the detention centre].
“We are only taking a small part of the site with kids who should be able to go out and about in the community and go to TAFE and go to do the things that they can to rehabilitate themselves, but also we shouldn’t stop planning for the future use of what this site could look like.”
Ms Henderson took questions from residents who made suggestions, alongside anecdotes of successfully rehabilitated inmates who worked with the community, while others raised issue with the lack of transparency and community safety.
One resident asked, “a lot of work must have gone in before this announcement [last] Tuesday. That must have been known for a while. How it was so hasty?”
Henderson replied, “So, we [the Department of Justice] put our submissions to the government based on what we think. So that’s how it came about. We have to prepare bills for cabinet to consider and it all gets pushed into the government. And so then cabinet made the decision on the Monday. Before that, there is no way we would have known, or could have known. But we did have Malmsbury as part of our proposal”.
One resident said, “we had rumours going around here for a week. We had contacts in the justice system who said they were preparing a budget to reopen it”.
Another said, “these kids could do a lot around our town beautifying it. Every naturestrip could do with a haircut”.
Ms Henderson confirmed with representatives of the Malmsbury Progress Association that an official line of communication would be set up with them for community consultation.
She added the seeming consensus from local residents to replace ‘Malmsbury’ from the prison’s name – to removes negative connotations associated with the town – would be passed on internally.
