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Speaker 1: Only for prison. Story in the Herald this morning, the

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Speaker 1: ninety eight million bucks set aside in last year's budget

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Speaker 1: to higher staff for ten eight hundred inmates has already

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Speaker 1: been spent. Apparently, prisoner numbers have hit ten thy, seven

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty three. So just shy of that. Almost

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Speaker 1: a year of head of forecast, there are two hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy six jobs still vacant. Mark Mitchell, the minister,

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Speaker 1: good morning, Hey, good morning, Ryan, So forecasts we're off.

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Speaker 1: Is this because we have more criminals or a higher

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Speaker 1: proportion of them being locked up?

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Speaker 2: There's just more people being locked up? Because is it

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Speaker 2: incoming government? We're really clear who are prioritizing public safety?

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Speaker 2: Do that it means that we're not leaving people out

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Speaker 2: in the community that we're hurting in causing problems. Actually,

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Speaker 2: they're now in a corrections facility and we'll have a

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Speaker 2: good credit reahabilitating them.

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Speaker 1: Do you think he was here if there's double bunking.

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Speaker 2: I don't know. I think that they. I think they

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Speaker 2: care that we make sure that we run the best

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Speaker 2: possible class corection service we can in the world, and

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Speaker 2: we do that. I love the chance to be able

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Speaker 2: to talk about our Corrections offices with the facility to

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Speaker 2: join the community because they asked quite something world class.

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Speaker 2: They've do do an amazing job. There are tens of

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Speaker 2: thousands of points of interactions that happen every day. The

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Speaker 2: problem is, of course you only hear when something goes

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Speaker 2: wrong through the media, but may be quite something. They're

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Speaker 2: outstanding and they've got a very important part to play

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Speaker 2: around public safety and they're standing up and win that role.

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Speaker 1: Will fair enough, but Correction says the staff and levels

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Speaker 1: are suboptimal.

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Speaker 2: We're the best we've ever been in the last eight

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Speaker 2: years in terms of staff. We're in the best position

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Speaker 2: we have been and eight years. It's not suboptimal at all.

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Speaker 2: It's not the Christians saying that they're suboptimal. They're saying

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Speaker 2: that Corrections are at the best place of the being,

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Speaker 2: like I said, for eight years. As an incoming government,

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Speaker 2: they started a new recruiting campaign that's been extremely successful.

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Speaker 2: We've got a massive pipeline of people wanting to join

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Speaker 2: and become correct sufts as we've got another seventy officers

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Speaker 2: being trained and ready to deploy deployed. At the moment,

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Speaker 2: we're the best place that we've been yea.

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Speaker 1: That campaign was very successful and they pointed out they

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Speaker 1: had one hundred and thirty five thousand apparently applying for

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Speaker 1: jobs and you still have two hundred and seventy six vacancies.

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Speaker 2: How does that compute, you know, because that doesn't mean

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Speaker 2: that everyone gets through, you know, there are my standards

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Speaker 2: required to become a new zerone Trections officer, as it

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Speaker 2: should be. But yes, like I said, we're in the

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Speaker 2: best place we've being for eight years. And the recruiting,

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Speaker 2: deployment and actually staff on the floor. Now, what that

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Speaker 2: meant when I first became minister is that we had

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Speaker 2: a lot of new officers out on the floor, and

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Speaker 2: of course that was with its own challenges. But we're

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Speaker 2: now sort of almost two years in and like I said,

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Speaker 2: we're in a really good position. Look, I have the

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Speaker 2: opposition in peace is there green in Peas are visiting

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Speaker 2: twice this week different prisons. They're dying fighting something wrong

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Speaker 2: with what we're doing, with what our staff are doing.

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Speaker 2: And I'm doing that now for us two years and

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Speaker 2: they haven't been able to come up with anything. And

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Speaker 2: that's a good thing. There's an other health check.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like a two Minister appreciate it. Marke Mantell,

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Speaker 1: Corrections Ministry.

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Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live

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