As a former Police Prosecutor who worked here in Parkes and many other centres throughout the Central West, I witnessed first-hand the unnecessary burden placed upon police officers to transport prisoners.
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Our Police have a tremendous workload and their responsibilities should be to police their community, and not be tasked with the additional responsibility of transporting prisoners who are subject of a court-imposed incarceration.
Once a court determines an individual to be held in custody, from that moment onwards the prisoner is the responsibility of Corrective Services New South Wales.
For as long as I can remember the New South Wales Police Force has taken it upon itself to perform the duty of transporting prisoners to correctional centres following court imposed sentences or orders, which has drained the already limited police staff and resources for considerable periods.
It is a reasonable expectation of our community that police and their resources remain within their townships to perform their essential duties.
The loss in time and money allocated to prisoner transport by police in Regional New South Wales would be far better spent on increasing the front-line.
It is time for this tradition to be abandoned by the New South Wales Police Force and the responsibility appropriately placed upon Justice New South Wales.
Having been made aware of this issue, I recently held meetings with the Western Region Commander, Assistant Commissioner Geoff McKechnie and the Central West Police District Commander, Superintendent Chris Taylor.
In each of those meetings I raised the issue of prisoner transport with Mr McKechnie and Mr Taylor.
Mr McKechnie advised that it was a matter which he and the New South Wales Police Force would address, however it required some time to do as it would require negotiations with Justice New South Wales to have resources made available for prisoner transport.
Mr Taylor advised that the matter was before the Industrial Relations Commission and a reply was expected by the end of June 2018.
I will always advocate for our Police; they need every support they can get.
Their job is hard enough without having to fight to keep what limited resources they have to put on the front line to keep our community safe, so I intend to advocate for them and raise this issue directly to the Government in New South Wales Parliament.
Philip Donato MP
Read more: Transporting prisoners is not police work
