Belconnen Remand Centre, or BRC, was an Australian remand custody facility located in

Belconnen The District of Belconnen () is one of the original eighteen districts of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), used in land administration. The district is subdivided into 27 divisions (suburbs), sections and blocks. The district of Belconn ...

Australian Capital Territory The Australian Capital Territory (commonly abbreviated as ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) until 1938, is a landlocked federal territory of Australia containing the national capital Canberra and some surrounding township#Aust ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

. The centre opened in 1976 and closed in 2009. At times, it held a small number of

illegal immigrants Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwa ...

. When it was first established in 1976, the Belconnen Remand Centre was intended to hold around 16 people. The centre's construction had been considered and approved by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's Cabinet in 1973. Four men escaped the remand centre in July 1988 through a roof in the exercise yard. In December 1992, then ACT Attorney-General

Terry Connolly Terence (Terry) Connolly (14 February 1958 – 25 September 2007) was an Australian politician and judge. Early years The son of an Irish bricklayer, Connolly was born in Adelaide and graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (both ...

flagged that the remand centre should be replaced, due to its outmoded architecture and the high operating costs identified at the time. The ACT Government made the decision to build a new prison, the

Alexander Maconochie Centre The Alexander Maconochie Centre is an Australian prison in the Australian Capital Territory, which detains maximum security, minimum security and remand inmates, both male and female. It is located in Hume, Australian Capital Territory. The f ...

, and to decommission the Belconnen Remand Centre, in 2003. A human rights audit of the operation of the Belconnen Remand Centre and other ACT correctional facilities was conducted in 2007, identifying issues to be avoided in the new Alexander Maconochie Centre, and matters to be improved in the meantime prior to the new prison's establishment.

References

Further reading