Adjudication No. 1264  (December 2004)

The Australian Press Council has upheld (by 9 votes to 8) a complaint by Commissioner Kelvin Anderson, of Corrections Victoria, about an article, in The Bendigo Advertiser, Jail shame: Prison source says drugs, corruption rife, in which an anonymous source alleged there was a culture of corruption, drug smuggling and cover-ups in central Victorian prisons.

The source, identified only as a prison insider, claimed Corrections Victoria employees had been gagged from speaking out about conditions in prisons and their jobs threatened if they raised issues of concern. The article detailed other claims about guns and knives found in vehicles in visitors' car parks, tennis balls containing drugs being thrown over prison walls, a visitor discovered to have $7000 in her underpants and others with drugs in their possession.

In his complaint, Commissioner Anderson said the newspaper had approached him the afternoon before publication with five allegations. He had responded by fax later that afternoon denying three of the allegations and offering explanations for the others.

Commissioner Anderson said the newspaper had not published any of his denials of the specific allegations. It had also chosen not to print his comments that there was no problem with prison drug smuggling; that guns or other weapons had not been found in prison car parks recently; and that the seizure of marijuana plants and seeds demonstrated the effectiveness of prison security.

While the article concluded with a comment from Commissioner Anderson rejecting the allegation of a cover-up of events in one prison, the Press Council believes the story was unbalanced in that the Commissioner's specific responses were not included in the article and he was not given the opportunity to respond to all the allegations, and that the newspaper did not fulfil its duty to provide a fair news report of a matter of public controversy.

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