Watch houses repurposed as long-term prison cells as Country Liberal government claims ‘such is the nature of the mess we have inherited’

Police watch houses in the Northern Territory are being repurposed as long-term prison cells as record imprisonment numbers push the system to breaking point.

There were 2,613 people locked up in the NT on Tuesday – more than 1% of the territory’s population of 255,100, according to the NT Department of Corrections.

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