Ombudsman finds Australia's detention handover to a US prison operator degraded care and safety

The Commonwealth Ombudsman published a 52 page report on 10 March 2026 finding that the handover of Australia's onshore immigration detention network from Serco to a new operator was handled poorly by the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Border Force and both companies, and that safety, healthcare and daily conditions inside the centres deteriorated while it happened.

The report, OPCAT in Action: Onshore Immigration Detention, was written by the Commonwealth National Preventive Mechanism, the inspectorate Australia created under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. Australia became a party to that treaty in December 2017 and was required to have a national preventive mechanism in place by January 2023. Monitors visited centres between November 2024 and October 2025 specifically to watch the transition, and the report makes four recommendations.

Serco had held the facilities and detainee services contract since 2009. Secure Journeys, a subsidiary of the American operator Management and Training Corporation, was announced on 6 November 2024, with a contracted start date of 17 November. A separate healthcare provider changeover, from International Health and Medical Services to Healthcare Australia, took effect on 10 December 2024. Individual centres switched one at a time, Perth and Yongah Hill on 13 March 2025, the Northern Alternative Place of Detention on 17 March, Brisbane on 28 March, Villawood on 16 April and Melbourne on 5 May.

The staggered plan was meant to let lessons from each site be applied before the next. The Ombudsman found the volume of problems at every centre prevented that. The report records that Secure Journeys began with no formal policies or procedures in place, and that the incoming health provider had minimal ones. Monitors found staff at multiple sites working without uniforms or identification cards, and referring to themselves interchangeably by the subsidiary's name and the parent company's name.

The annexed timeline logs twelve escapes and five failed escape attempts between 25 November 2024 and 9 November 2025, across Melbourne, Villawood, Brisbane, Cairns, Adelaide, Sydney and the Broadmeadows Residential Precinct. It also records a fire and riot at Melbourne on 2 April 2025 that took a compound offline, and a fire at Villawood on 23 September 2025 after an attempted self immolation, after which detained people were allegedly left outside overnight. At one facility monitors observed staff rostered to keep a twenty four hour static guard over a light pole that had been used in an escape.

On healthcare, the report says most sites visited after changeover had interruptions to medical care because there were not enough staff to escort people to clinics or to medication rounds. Medical records were misplaced. Clinic staff reported more abuse and aggression, and the health provider was forced into lockdown on multiple occasions, causing further missed appointments. Programs, activities and visits were reduced or suspended at some sites for want of staff.

The Ombudsman also records a national Border Force directive making mechanical restraints the default for all transport and escort movements, subject to medical advice but apparently not to individual risk assessment. Monitors spoke to one person, held for seven years and rated low risk, who had begun declining medical and psychological appointments rather than be restrained. The Commonwealth NPM had recommended against routine restraint for medical appointments in an earlier post visit summary.

The money is large. The report states Serco was paid more than four billion dollars over ten years, and that the incoming provider has been awarded over two billion dollars, contracted to 2029 with options to 2033. A survival clause triggered on 10 December 2024 extended Serco's services for six months under reduced contractual compliance. The incoming provider then received a three month grace period from 11 May 2025 during which abatements for most forms of contractual non compliance did not apply.

The contract itself, released by Home Affairs under freedom of information, already contains a transition regime. Clause 2.5 requires the service provider to fully complete transition in accordance with Schedule 5, the Transition In Plan, to the Department's satisfaction by a completion due date. The Ombudsman's first recommendation nonetheless asks the Department to ensure future contracts carry strict handover provisions and milestones, and that they are complied with.

The parties do not agree. Serco's published response rejects the finding that facilities were poorly maintained or repairs delayed, and says it proposed a whole of network transition rather than the staggered approach, formally raised the risk, and was instructed by the Department to proceed as planned. Government News reported on 24 March 2026 that the Department accepted all four recommendations and acknowledged unforeseen difficulties. The Ombudsman wrote to the Secretary on 21 February, 25 March and 13 June 2025, and says that to date only limited tangible improvement has been observed.

What is not known is what the third recommendation will produce. The Department was asked to review the management of the network's contracts, and no such review has been published. Several escape matters remain before the courts. The Commonwealth NPM has kept visiting, publishing a post visit summary for the Northern Alternative Place of Detention on 4 August 2026, but there is no public dataset yet showing whether escapes, missed appointments or restraint use have fallen back to pre transition levels.