Bunbury jail report awaited

The independent inspector of the State's prison system has finished his latest report on the conditions at Bunbury Prison.

But despite concerns the prison is overcrowded and unsafe for officers, the Inspector of Custodial Services' report will not be released to the public for at least three months.

Inspector Neil Morgan is overseas and no-one from his office was available to comment on what was found during the latest inspection.

It follows a further disagreement between the WA Prison Officers' Union and the Department of Corrective Services about conditions at the Bunbury Prison.

The union seized on a report from the Australia Bureau of Statistics which, the union said, found WA had the second-highest imprisonment rate in Australia.

The union also alleged Bunbury was more than 30 per cent overcrowded - claiming the jail housed 293 prisoners earlier this month, more than the 224 prisoners it was designed for.

"The State Government has a tough on crime agenda, which is its right, as long as it keeps building cells to accommodate the extra prisoners," WAPOU secretary John Welch said.

"But what this Government is doing is trying to cram more and more prisoners into existing cells, which is leading to chronic overcrowding.

"When prisons are overcrowded, prisoners are more likely to become violent and that is putting prison officers at greater and greater risk."

However, a department spokeswoman said Bunbury Prison held 304 prisoners but had a capacity for 384 beds.

"Union claims that the prison system is overcrowded are inaccurate," she said.

"Current prisoner numbers are consistent with forecasted trends and within our projections for the prison population.

"Every prisoner has a bed in a secure cell. References to a prison's design capacity are not relevant.

"This is a historical number and only identifies the original number of beds the site opened with.

"Prisons have ongoing upgrades, expansions, changes to configuration and beds added."

The discrepancies in prisoner number tallies between the union and the department are based on the so-called practice of "double-bunking", which enables more than one prisoner to be held in one cell.