The Department for
Correctional Services can trace its history in South Australia's
penal system from the days when the State was founded.The Department for
Correctional Services can trace its history in South Australia's
penal system from the days when the State was founded.
In those early days the prisons were the direct responsibility of the Sheriff. The gaols eventually came under the 'umbrella' of the Sheriff's Gaols and Prisons Department.
In 1963 the Department's title was changed to The Prison's Department and it was in 1974, that the Department obtained the title of The Department of Correctional Services.
The Department is now known as Department for Correctional Services.
The Department's current role is to contribute to the administration of justice and to the protection of society by exercising safe, secure and humane control of all persons referred to the Department, while providing opportunities to assist offenders to become law-abiding members of the community.
When the first settlers arrived in 1836 there were no
convicts or gaolers amongst them.
South Australia was a "free State" unlike other Australian States.
Colonel Light, when designing the City of Adelaide, did not make provisions for a Gaol.
Harsh conditions, scarcity of material goods ...... theft ...... excessive drinking and its associated problems ..... a criminal element emerged.
Serious offenders were transported to Van Dieman's Land.
Petty offenders were locked in irons and imprisoned in a tent which was later replaced by a wooden stockade.
By 1841 Adelaide Gaol was completed and within 10 years it had reached its capacity of 140 prisoners.
The initial construction of Yatala Labour Prison was undertaken by 14 convicts and was completed in 1854, using bluestone quarried from Dry Creek that runs past the rear of the prison. Even today vast open cut quarries into the creek hillface bear witness to those quarrying days. Some of the original buildings and parts of old equipment can also be seen and inspected along a walking trail constructed beside the creek
Stone from the creek was also used in some other Adelaide buildings.
In its early days Yatala was a stockade before it developed into the State's main high security facility.
Adelaide Gaol was closed in February 1988 after being in operation for 147 years. It is now operated as a tourist attraction.
Fifty people were executed in South Australia, 38 within Adelaide Gaol. The first being Pitti Miltinda on 7 June 1861 and the only woman was Elizabeth Woolcock, aged 25, on 30 December 1873.
The last person to be executed in Adelaide Gaol was GLEN
VALANCE in 1964.
RONALD RYAN was the last person to be executed in Australia at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne in 1967.
After an execution the body remained the property of the South Australian Government, buried between the inner and outer walls of Adelaide Gaol. The only identity to the body is a number and the date of the execution which are stencilled on the Gaol wall.
Capital punishment was abolished in South Australia in 1976.
In the later part of the 19th Century a number of other smaller gaols were opened throughout the State. Some of the original areas of Yatala Labour Prison are still in use today. Mount Gambier and Port Augusta Prisons have been rebuilt and Mount Gambier Prison is being operated by a private consortium. Long closed Red Ruth Gaol at Burra and Gladstone prison are still open to the public as tourist ventures.
