Deputy Mayor John Rawnsley’s suggestion (Centralian Advocate 29/10/10) that we utilise the skills of incarcerated inmates at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre to help build footpaths around town is excellent. Supervised work parties could really help to make a difference in providing the helpful & useful outcomes in a short time.
Along with footpaths, there are many homeowners, real estate agencies and businesses around town that require an array of tradespeople to help build or renovate property. There are a significant number of inmates currently detained who have the skills, time and capacity to do so. In the prison workshops, they could be sub-contracted to build and assemble fit-outs for kitchens, bathrooms etc. in homes or businesses (thus reducing the ever increasing time frames and costs) for the limited number of tradespeople available in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek to deliver and install.
Having worked in a professional capacity within the Correctional Centre facility periodically for well over a decade, I have observed there to be many talented and skilled individuals ‘beind the fence’ who, despite their transgressions with the law and community, have the capacity to assist in building and growing this fine town. Let’s utilise those skills to ‘get the jobs done’.
Those assessed as qualifying for the opportunity could benefit both psychologically and economically from such a plan. Not only would it build a sense of achievement while they serve out their respective sentences (leading to a greater sense of self-esteem), it provides opportunities for inmates to create their own ‘real income’ rather than attracting taxpayer handouts for doing not much. That’s a win-win for everyone in the community. Building skills and training for new ones in a variety of trades industries that would be useful once they are released back into their respective communities makes sense. Learning to tender for commercial contracts would be another useful ‘tool’ to hone.
Correctional Services, in negotiation with contractors, could make this idea a reality within months (bureaucracy permitting)!! Let’s avail ourselves of this opportunity to achieve better outcomes for prisoners and their families as well as the broader Centralian community.
Phil Walcott
Greatorex
Alice Springs
