A concoction of homebrew made from hand sanitiser is being blamed for a riot at the Springhill prison in 2013.
A report into the nine-hour riot has revealed prisoners were being locked up for 26-hours at a time.
The Department of Corrections says it was the homebrew that kickstarted the riot. However they admit the prison was never designed to be high-security and tensions were long simmering.
A phone call from a prisoner on the day of the riots captured the drama that had prison officers trapped in an emergency room.
Carnage caused by around 27 gang-affiliated prisoners drunk on homebrew made from alcohol-based hand sanitiser, sugar and fruit - since restricted to inmates.
Now, four years later, a Department of Corrections report admits there was more in the days before that exacerbated discontent in unit 16B.
On alternate days, some prisoners were being locked up for 26 hours at a time.
The report also points to other shortcomings:
- double-bunking had been introduced but the security plan to manage it had not
- management was dysfunctional
- homebrew was a recurring problem
- emergency services were restricted in accessing the site
- the building design created a "significant operational risk" - as it held a "high density of unmotivated, high security prisoners in a site that was not designed to manage them"
"There was a lot of signals along the way which, if earlier action had been taken, may - and I only say may - have prevented the situation from occurring," Corrections chief custodial officer Neil Beales says.
The building design and its management has since changed - but for the officers there that day it's not easy to forget, some now suffer with post-traumatic stress.
Newshub.
