Yetta Dhinnakkal Centre
minimum security prison for Aboriginal males located in Gongolgon, New South Wales, Australia
Yetta Dhinnakkal Centre, also known as the Brewarrina (Yetta Dhinnakkal) Centre, Brewarrina Correctional Centre and Brewarrina Prison, and referred to informally as Brewarrina jail, was an Australian minimum security prison for young Indigenous Australian men. It was located in Gongolgon, approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) south of Brewarrina, New South Wales. The centre was operated by Corrective Services NSW, an agency of the Department of Communities and Justice, of the Government of New South Wales, until its closure in mid-2020. Many of its inmates were first offenders, and the centre offered various types of educational opportunities, in particular farming skills.
Yetta dhinnakkal is a phrase in the Ngemba language meaning "the right pathway".
Facilities
In response to the rising number of Indigenous men being incarcerated in New South Wales prisons, Corrective Services NSW purchased a remote cattle station around 2000 and transformed it into an outdoor prison, without walls, bars, armed guards, or electric fences. Located on 10,553 hectares (26,080 acres) and opened in 2000, the centre was a working farming property, maintained by inmates under officer supervision and guided by elders. The centre's behavioural change programs targeted first-time young Aboriginal offenders aged from 18 to 25, through culturally relevant intensive case management. Vocational training courses were offered in information technology, horticulture, construction, visual arts and contemporary craft. Other practical skills, including small motor maintenance, welding, road sealing, building skills, literacy and numeracy and first aid are also provided.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yetta Dhinnakkal Centre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.