Classification blackboard

This blackboard was used for prisoners' classification at the Classifiaction Centre in D Division and shows each prison’s capacity, current prisoner numbers (muster), and vacancies.

Date of creation: unknown.

Held in private collection.

At Pentridge, the Classification Committee met each week to determine prisoner placement. These meetings took place in the Pentridge Classification Centre (D Division), where a blackboard was used to display the “state” of all 11 Victorian prisons at the time of the meeting.

In 1978, for example, it recorded 1,485 prisoners across the system, in facilities with a combined capacity of 2,007 — an overall occupancy rate of just under 74 per cent. Despite this, maximum-security accommodation was considered insufficient, and plans were being made for a new high-security unit to hold about 50 prisoners.

The Pentridge Classification Centre

By the late 1970s, the Pentridge Classification Centre was widely recognised as inadequate for its vital role in managing prisoner placement. The small, overcrowded facility housed the committee responsible for deciding where offenders would serve their sentences — decisions that shaped both individual lives and the operation of the entire prison system.

A report from the late 1970s noted that the ideal solution would have been to establish a separate, purpose-built classification centre. One suggestion was to convert G Division into this role. At the time, however, G Division was being used as a residential psychiatric unit, and psychiatric services would have had to be relocated before such a change could take place.

Moving psychiatric care to Fairlea was dismissed as impractical: the buildings there were considered fire hazards and unsuitable for male psychiatric patients. The report also stressed the importance of keeping psychiatric services close to the main prison for ease of transfer, day treatment, and specialist access.

While G Division was not seen as an ideal psychiatric centre, the report concluded that if a new psychiatric facility could be built elsewhere, G Division could then be converted into the permanent Classification Centre for Victoria’s prison system.