Govt outsources jail staff for $700,000

The West Australian government has been accused of unnecessarily spending $700,000 of taxpayers' money outsourcing the recruitment of prison guards.

It has emerged that an external contractor had been brought in to quickly recruit 260 prison officers to cope with a 13 per cent-plus jump in WA's prison population in the last year from 5490 to 6228 this month.

That outsourcing was costing taxpayers an extra $700,000, representing waste and incompetence when it could be run in-house without further costs to the budget, said Commonwealth and Public Sector Union assistant secretary Rikki Hendon.

Department of Corrective Services staff believed they were perfectly capable of running a recruitment drive, she said.

Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis told a budget estimates hearing that the outsourcing was justified as an urgent, one-off large recruitment drive to screen, vet and select potential prison officers.