The Silverwater Correctional Complex, an Australian maximum and minimum security prison complex for males and females, is located in

Silverwater Silverwater is a suburb in western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Silverwater is located 15 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district on the southern bank of the Parramatta River within the local governme ...

, west of the

Sydney central business district The Sydney central business district (CBD) is the historical and main Central business district, commercial centre of Sydney. The CBD is Sydney's city centre, or Sydney City, and the two terms are used interchangeably. Colloquially, the CBD or c ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. The complex is operated by

Corrective Services NSW Corrective Services New South Wales (CSNSW) is a division of the Department of Communities and Justice of the Government of New South Wales, Australia. CSNSW is responsible for the state's prisons and a range of programs for managing offenders in ...

, an agency of the

New South Wales Government The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of New South Wales. It is currently held by a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party. The Governmen ...

Department of Communities and Justice The New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice, a department of the Government of New South Wales, is responsible for the delivery of services to some of the most disadvantaged individuals, families and communities; and the administrat ...

. The complex comprises four separate facilities including Silverwater Correctional Centre (a minimum security prison for males); Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre (a maximum security institution for women and the major reception centre for female offenders in NSW); the Metropolitan Remand & Reception Centre (a maximum security correctional facility for males); and the Dawn de Loas Correctional Centre (a minimum security correctional centre for males). The complex accepts prisoners charged and convicted under both New South Wales and Commonwealth legislation, and serves as a reception prison for inmates on remand or pending

classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes. It may also refer to: Business, organizat ...

Silverwater Correctional Centre

Silverwater Correctional Centre, an Australian minimum security facility for males is located within the complex.

Notable prisoners

Sef Gonzales Sef Gonzales (born 16 September 1980) is a Filipino Australian man who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the July 2001 murders of his father Teodoro "Teddy" Gonzales (46), his mother Mary Loiva Gonzales (43), and his sister C ...

Filipino Australian convicted of murdering his parents and sister. *Tony Hinesa standover man shot dead by a member of the

Bra Boys The Bra Boys are a gang centred on surf culture, founded and based in Maroubra, an eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales in the 1990s. The gang has gained notoriety through violence and alleged links to organised crime, as well as some commun ...

. * Robert Hughesan Australian actor convicted of sexual assaults on then minors during filming of the hit Australian TV sitcom '' Hey Dad...!'' *

Chris Munce Chris Munce (born 17 May 1969) is a highly successful Thoroughbred horse racing jockey, having won both the Melbourne Cup and the Cox Plate. He is now a highly successful trainer of horses in Brisbane Queensland heading up a family based operat ...

convicted of fixing during a horse racing meeting in Hong Kong. *

René Rivkin Rene Walter Rivkin (6 June 1944 – 1 May 2005) was a Chinese-born Australian entrepreneur, investor, investment adviser, and stockbroker. He was convicted of insider trading in 2003 and sentenced to nine months of periodic detention. Early l ...

(1944–2005)

stockbroker A stockbroker is a regulated broker, broker-dealer, or registered investment adviser (in the United States) who may provide financial advisory and investment management services and execute transactions such as the purchase or sale of stocks an ...

and businessman, sentenced to

periodic detention Periodic detention or weekend detention is a type of custodial sentence under which the offender is held in prison between Friday and Sunday evenings each week, but is at liberty at other times. Promoted by prison reformers as an alternative to i ...

due to ill health. *

Eddie Obeid Edward Moses Obeid (born 25 October 1943) is a retired Australian politician, and convicted criminal, who served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council between 1991 and 2011, representing the Labor Party. He was the Minister f ...

a former NSW politician convicted of

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...

and

misconduct in public office Malfeasance in office is often grounds for a just cause removal of an elected official by statute or recall election. Malfeasance in office contrasts with "misfeasance in office", which is the commission of a ''lawful'' act, done in an officia ...

. He was ordered to hand himself in in October 2021. His son will join him in jail too. *

Salim Mehajer Salim Mehajer (born 12 June 1986) is an Australian convicted criminal, property developer and former deputy mayor of Auburn City Council. In March 2018, Mehajer was declared bankrupt and in April 2018 was found guilty of electoral fraud, and s ...

a former property developer and

Deputy Mayor The deputy mayor (also known as vice mayor, assistant mayor, or mayor ''pro tem'') is an elective or appointive office of the second-ranking official that is present in many, but not all, local governments. Duties and functions Many elected dep ...

Auburn City Council The Auburn City Council (formally City of Auburn) was a local government area in the Greater Western Sydney region of New South Wales, Australia. Prior to its 2016 merger, the council area was located about west of the Sydney central business ...

who was imprisoned at Silverwater for

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

charges.

Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre

The Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre (formerly known as the Mulawa Correctional Centre), an Australian maximum security facility for females is located within the complex. The centre is divided into twelve living units, a protection/segregation area, an induction unit, a hospital annexe, and provides accommodation for both sentenced and unsentenced inmates and various special program units. The facility opened in 1970 as the old women's prison at Long Bay was converted into a medium security facility for men.

Fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

is the most common reason for imprisonment. Inmates are eligible to study for national recognised qualifications including vocation and

TAFE Technical and further education or simply TAFE (), is the common name in English-speaking countries in Oceania for vocational education, as a subset of tertiary education. TAFE institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational cours ...

courses. In the 2010 New South Wales state budget, the prison was allocated $200,000 for a new video conferencing system.

Notable prisoners

* Evie Amati convicted of the attempted murder of 3 people. *

Lindy Chamberlain Alice Lynne "Lindy" Chamberlain-Creighton (née Murchison; born 4 March 1948) is a New Zealand–born Australian woman who was wrongfully convicted in one of Australia's most publicised murder trials. Accused of killing her nine-week-old daught ...

New Zealand-born Australian convicted and later acquitted of murdering her 9-week-old daughter

Azaria Azaria ( he, עֲזַרְיָה), or Azarya is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Shephelah around five kilometres south-east of Ramle, it falls under the jurisdiction of Gezer Regional Council. In it had a population of . Etymology ...

; Chamberlain gave birth to another child of her husband

Michael Chamberlain Michael Leigh Chamberlain (27 February 1944 – 9 January 2017) was a New Zealand-Australian writer, teacher and pastor falsely implicated in the August 1980 death of his missing daughter Azaria, which was later demonstrated to be the result ...

while in custody; she was held at Silverwater (then Mulawa Women's Prison), then transferred to

Berrima Correctional Centre The Berrima Correctional Centre is an Australian prison, located at Berrima, New South Wales. The Centre was operational between 1839 and 2011 with a number of breaks in between, and was re-opened in September 2016. Initially established as Ber ...

; incarcerated from 29 October 1982 to 7 February 1986. *

Violet Coco Deanna Maree “Violet” Coco, May need to scroll down. (born 1989 or 1990) usually known as Violet Coco, is an Australian climate activist who was briefly jailed on remand for blocking the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2022. She successfully ...

climate activist with 15month sentence for blocking one lane of the

Sydney Harbour Bridge The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge in Sydney, spanning Port Jackson, Sydney Harbour from the Sydney central business district, central business district (CBD) to the North Shore (Sydney), North Shore. The view of the bridg ...

in December 2022. *

Kathleen Folbigg Kathleen Megan Folbigg (Married and maiden names, née Donovan; born 14 June 1967) is an Australian woman convicted in 2003 for killing her four infant children. She was pardoned twenty years later due to serious doubts that had arisen about her ...

convicted of the murders of her 3 infant children. *

Maddison Hall Maddison Hall (born Noel Crompton Hall in 1964) is a convicted Australian murderer. In 1987, Hall shot and killed hitchhiker Lyn Saunders at Gol Gol, New South Wales. Hall was convicted in 1989. Her transition in prison, the support provided b ...

convicted of the murder of hitchhiker Lyn Saunders. *

Katherine Knight Katherine Mary Knight (born 24 October 1955) is an Australian murderer and the first woman in the country's history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. She was convicted for the murder of her partner, John Charles Thomas Price, ...

convicted of the murder of de facto husband John Price. *

Theresa Lawson Theresa Rose Lawson (nee Emmett; 20 February 1951 – 2 June 2014) was a former Woolworths payroll clerk and St Marys Band Club director, who stole more than A$2.7 million over a three-year period from 1999 to 2002. It is regarded as one of the ...

(1951–2014) convicted of the largest fraud in NSW history. * Mélina Roberge and Isabelle Lagacétwo French Canadians incarcerated after a world cruise for trying to import a record amount of cocaine into the country. *

Rachel Pfitnzer Rachel () was a Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first wife. Her aun ...

, convicted of murdering her son Dean Shillingsworth

Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre

The Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (MRRC), an Australian maximum security facility for males is located within the complex. The prison opened in 1997, and has a capacity of 900 inmates. It is the largest single correctional centre in Australia. The majority of inmates are unconvicted or unsentenced. In March, 1999, Russian Australian librarian

Lucy Dudko Lucy Dudko is a Russian-Australian woman convicted of hijacking a helicopter in 1999, which she used in the Prison escape, escape from Silverwater Correctional Complex of convicted armed Robbery, robber John Killick (Australian criminal), John Ki ...

hired a helicopter supposedly to check out the upcoming Olympic site in Sydney. Using a gun, she forced pilot, Tim Joyce, to land within the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre grounds. Waiting was her partner

John Killick Sir John Killick GCMG (18 November 1919 – 12 February 2004) was a British diplomat who was ambassador to the Soviet Union, and later ambassador to NATO. Career John Edward Killick was educated at Latymer Upper School, University College, Lond ...

, who was serving 28 years for armed robberies. He jumped in the helicopter making an escape while being fired on by guards and cheered on by inmates. They landed in a park where Killick hijacked a taxi at gunpoint. The two were able to elude authorities for six weeks before being arrested at the Bass Hill Tourist Park. In 2004, the Independent Commission Against Corruption conducted an investigation at the prison which concluded that mobile phones were becoming a significant security threat in Australian correctional facilities. In April 2012, the facility was inundated with members of

outlaw motorcycle club An outlaw motorcycle club is a motorcycle subculture generally centered on the use of Cruiser (motorcycle), cruiser motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidsons and chopper (motorcycle), choppers, and a set of ideals that purport to celebrate fre ...

s. Segregation between members of the same gangs is enforced in an effort to break member ties.

Notable prisoners

Rodney Adler Rodney Stephen Adler (born 19 August 1959) is an Australian whose family founded the FAI Insurances group, of which he became chief executive in 1989, and which was at one stage Australia's third largest general insurer. Adler became a director of ...

disgraced former director of

HIH Insurance HIH Insurance was Australia's second-largest insurance company before it was placed into provisional liquidation on 15 March 2001. The demise of HIH is considered to be the largest corporate collapse in Australia's history, with liquidators est ...

and businessman. *

Hew Raymond Griffiths Hew Raymond Griffiths (born 8 November 1962, UK) has been accused by the United States of being a ring leader of DrinkOrDie or DOD, an underground software infringement network, using the online identity of "Bandido". Griffiths was living in Berkel ...

British-born Australian alleged software pirate, before his extradition to the US. *

Man Haron Monis Man Haron Monis (born Mohammed Hassan Manteghi Borujerdi; 19 May 1964 – 16 December 2014) was an Iranian-born refugee and Australian citizen who took hostages in a siege at the Lindt Chocolate Café at Martin Place, Sydney on 15 Decem ...

(1964–2014) Iranian-born Australian; convicted "hate mail" campaigner against the families of dead soldiers, faced numerous charges of being an accessory to murder and sexual assault. Perpetrator of the 2014 Sydney Siege, shot dead by New South Wales Police Force Tactical Operations Unit. *

Phuong Ngo Phuong Canh Ngo ( vi, Ngô Cảnh Phương) (born 1958) is a Vietnamese people, Vietnamese murderer and former businessman and politician who was convicted of ordering the killing of Australian Member of Parliament, MP John Newman (Australian po ...

South Vietnamese Australian politician and businessman convicted of ordering the 1994 killing of Australian NSW state MP John Newman. *

Dragan Vasiljković Dragan Vasiljković ( sr-cyrl, Драган Васиљковић; born 12 December 1954), nicknamed Captain Dragan ( sr, Капетан Драган, Kapetan Dragan) is a convicted war criminal and the former commander of a Serb paramilitary unit ...

(aka Captain Dragan and Daniel Snedden), former Serbian paramilitary commander and alleged war criminal. *

Danushka Gunathilaka Mashtayage Danushka Gunathilaka (born 17 March 1991) is a professional Sri Lankan cricketer who plays as a top-order batter in all forms of the game. He has also been occasionally sidelined due to disciplinary issues. He is currently released on ...

,Sri Lankan cricketer

Dawn de Loas Correctional Centre

The Dawn de Loas Correctional Centre, an Australian minimum security work release centre for males is located within the complex.

Major incidents

In March 2021, one of the staff working at the jail committed suicide, just moments after driving a prison van. Paramedics could not save him and he was declared dead. In October 2021, a former prison guard who used to work at Silverwater was sentenced to jail for assault. Before this she was punished for having inappropriate contact with a prisoner at the jail.

References

{{NewSouthWalesPrisons Prisons in Sydney 1970 establishments in Australia Walter Liberty Vernon buildings in Sydney Silverwater, New South Wales

Silverwater Correctional Centre

Notable prisoners

Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre

Notable prisoners

Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre

Notable prisoners

Dawn de Loas Correctional Centre

Major incidents

See also

References