Critical Times

“It confirms our view that the Attorney-General needs to establish an independent inquiry into the state’s prisons,” he said.

THE professional conduct of Risdon Prison’s acting head has been questioned in two coronial inquests in two different states.

Assistant director of prisons Greg Partridge is the man in charge of the state’s prisons while director Graeme Barber is on leave.

Mr Partridge has been questioned in two probes into deaths in custody in privately operated prisons in the past 10 years.

Mr Partridge appeared at a death in custody inquest in South Australia in 1997.

He had been working as a supervisor at Mt Gambier Prison, a medium security jail operated by Group Four Correction Services, now GSL Australia.

Murat Susic, a known drug-user who had managed to keep up his habit in prison, had been found dead in his cell on December 16, 1995.

Five months before he died, Susic had tested positive to drugs. Yet a drugs test, which Mr Partridge approved, ordered less than a week before Susic’s death never happened.

Coroner Wayne Chivell questioned why a drugs-test order, prompted by the “strong smell of cannabis smoke” in the cottage Susic shared with other inmates, was not followed up.

Mr Partridge said he did not require a sample from one prisoner because the prisoner offered him intelligence about heroin coming into the prison.

Mr Chivell rejected Mr Partridge’s explanation.

“The concrete evidence … in the context of Susic’s drug-taking history, should have set alarm bells ringing that a resumption (of drug use) had occurred.

“I do not agree with Mr Partridge’s approach that the testing of Susic’s urine in those circumstances was not urgent.”

Mr Chivell concluded the test would not have prevented Susic’s death because the results would have come after his death.

Mr Partridge had already resigned from the Mt Gambier prison when Mr Chivell delivered his findings.

His next job was with the same company, GSL Custodial Services, at another private facility, Victoria’s Port Phillip Prison.

Mr Partridge was employed as a duty manager from when the prison opened in August 1997 until at least November 1999.

The jail experienced four deaths in custody in its first six months.

In 2000 the Victorian State Coroner found the State Government and the prison’s operator GSL (Group Four) contributed to the suicides.

Coroner Graeme Johnstone was also critical of emergency responses by prison staff, including a systematic failure to follow standard operating procedures when hanged prisoners were discovered.

Mr Partridge was duty manager the night one of the four deaths happened.

Adam Irwin, 20, hanged himself two weeks after being taken into custody.

It was his first time in prison and he had been placed on suicide watch.

At the inquest, it was revealed Mr Partridge had not known Mr Irwin had been placed on suicide watch until after his death.

He admitted he had not “specifically known which prisoners were on watch” and had not followed procedure.

Prison Action Reform legal officer Greg Barns, who also writes a column for The Mercury, yesterday repeated his call for Risdon’s senior management trio – Mr Partridge, Mr Barber and Corrective Services director Peter Hoult – to be sacked.

Mr Barns said the reform group was worried about the revelations from Mt Gambier and Port Phillip prisons.

“It confirms our view that the Attorney-General needs to establish an independent inquiry into the state’s prisons,” he said.

Mr Hoult had no comment to make.

A government spokesman was asked when Mr Partridge started at Risdon but did not provide an answer.

He has been assistant director of prisons since at least January last year.

Mr Barber broke his holidays yesterday to appear at the Tasmanian Industrial Commission where Risdon correctional officers have taken action in the wake of the Easter siege.

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