The Ashley Youth Detention Centre near Deloraine will be turned into a 40-bed minimum-security adult prison and farm-based rehabilitation centre, the state government has announced.
Justice, Corrections and Rehabilitation Minister Guy Barnett revealed the plan on Tuesday.
The new prison will stay within the existing Ashley site and use nearby farmland for agricultural training.
“Repurposing the existing facility presents a unique opportunity for the Tasmania Prison Service to accommodate minimum-security prisoners in a setting focused on rehabilitation and education,” Barnett said.
“Establishing a low-security farm prison will support rural training and employment initiatives serving as an important pathway for offender reintegration.”
Ashley has been marked for closure since 2021. The decision followed serious abuse allegations, which were later examined by the Commission of Inquiry into Tasmanian Government Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings.
The inquiry’s final report raised concerns about plans to turn the centre into an adult prison.
It noted many children held at Ashley go on to serve time as adults and warned survivors of abuse could end up imprisoned on the same site – an outcome it called “likely to be retraumatising”.
It recommended no former Ashley detainee be sent to an adult facility at the site unless they chose to.
The youth detention centre will be replaced by a new youth justice facility at Pontville, north of Hobart.
That facility will have 16 residential beds, as well as treatment and orientation beds.
Construction was expected to finish in late 2027, but appeals before the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (TASCAT) could delay the project by up to 12 months.
The announcement follows years of failed attempts to build a larger prison in northern Tasmania.
The earlier $270 million, 270-bed maximum-security prison was first proposed for Westbury in September 2019.
After community backlash, it was shifted to a site on Birralee Road in 2020.
The government later moved away from the Westbury area altogether and turned its attention to the Ashley site.
On August 30, 2024, then-corrections minister Madeleine Ogilvie scrapped the larger prison project, citing a fall in the prisoner population.
Ogilvie said at the time the government would “explore future construction opportunities on the existing Ashley Youth Detention Centre site following its planned closure, including minimum-security facilities”.
Barnett said the government would consult the Meander Valley community as planning continued.
He said the former Labor-Green government made a “major misstep” when it closed Hayes Prison Farm near New Norfolk in 2012.
The closure was prompted by a $4.5 million repair bill. Barnett said that decision diverted all prisoners to Risdon.
“We intend to correct that error,” Barnett said.
