Dame Phyllis Frost Centre (formerly the Deer Park Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre) is a maximum security women's prison located at Deer Park, Victoria, Australia. It was designed by Guymer Bailey Architects Pty. Ltd. and built in 1996 as the first privately designed, financed and operated prison in Victoria. The centre is named after welfare worker and philanthropist Dame Phyllis Frost who was well known for her commitment to unpopular causes, most notably helping women prisoners. It is Victoria's largest women's prison and holds 260 prisoners.
Aside from HM Prison Tarrengower it is the only women's prison in Victoria. As HM Prison Tarrengower is minimum security mainstream, all other female prisoners (medium security, maximum security, and all protection prisoners) are imprisoned at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.
The prison facility was opened on 15 August 1996 and received its first prisoners that same month, many of whom had been transferred from Fairlea Women's Prison. It was the first privately designed, financed, built and operated prison in Victoria.
On 3 October 2000, the government took control of the facility and appointed an administrator under section 8F of the Corrections Act, and section 27B of the prison contract to operate the prison. On 2 November 2000, the Minister for Corrections announced the transfer of ownership and management of MWCC to the public sector.
On 24 October 2003, a male prison guard was charged with raping prisoner after a mentally ill prisoner was found to be pregnant when she was transferred to the Thomas Embling Hospital, a secured psychiatric hospital, and DNA tests revealed the prison guard was the father. The guard pled not guilty to the charges.
In December 2007, a Department of Justice office filing cabinet which was being moved to new offices was mistakenly discarded at a second-hand furniture shop and bought by a Point Cook couple who discovered abandoned documents in the cabinet. After lengthy court action, documents from the filing cabinet were released and revealed allegations of corruption and sexual abuse at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.
In November 2009, it was reported in the media that heroin and methamphetamine were "readily available" in the jail and that there had been a large increase in drug overdoses and suicide attempts among inmates at the prison. The acting operations manager was also accused of changed rosters in order to have sex with a female prison officer, including once at the jail.
Read more about Dame Phyllis Frost Centre: Notable Prisoners
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