EDITORIAL: West Australians will want to know — what is going on in our prisons?

Evalyn Clow lives every day knowing that her sister Karen MacKenzie, nephew Daniel, 16, and nieces Amara, 7, and Katrina, 5, are dead while their murderer continues to draw breath. Karen was 31 when William Mitchell killed her and her children at her home at Greenough. Soon, she will have been dead longer than she lived — a grim milestone Daniel, Amara and Katrina passed long ago. Mitchell is living out his days at Bunbury Regional Prison. Thanks to laws that delay parole consideration for mass murderers, Ms Clow and the community have reason to hope he will die there. Revelations by The West Australian that Mitchell is turning a profit for prison guards — peddling on Facebook rocking chairs the killer made while behind bars — has brought yet more pain to Ms Clow. “The guards are making money, even more so. And to me, it’s disgusting. I don’t understand that. I just don’t see how that could even be right,” Ms Clow said. “People might say that I’m a vindictive bitch, but do these people deserve to keep their jobs who are doing this? “Are they being honest to who they’re selling it to?” Mitchell’s chairs are fetching up to $1700 for guards, who can purchase them for about $400. That’s a tidy profit being made — albeit indirectly — off the massacre of four people. It doesn’t stand up to tests of taste or decency. No one — including Ms Clow — is saying that prisoners shouldn’t be allowed to work. But when there is profit involved, there must be some common sense. This revelation comes just a week after the suicide of a Bunbury prison officer who was a witness in a WorkSafe investigation into sexualised bullying and intimidation at the facility. West Australians will want to know — what is going on in our prisons? Corrections has long been the department of scandals and calamities. Someone has to step up and sort this mess out.