The Prison Officers Association has described conditions in Northern Territory jails as third world, saying overcrowding has reached crisis point, which is putting enormous pressure on prison staff.
Mr Goldflam says overcrowding is so bad that in some cases prisoners are being housed in police watch-houses to cope with the overflow.
"It's a remedy which has to be used at the moment just to manage the crisis," he said.
"But as a long-term solution, it's completely inadequate and I don't think anybody would suggest otherwise.
Watch-houses aren't built to imprison people, they're just built to hold people who are in police custody during investigations and while people are in the process of having their bail situation sorted out.
The figures fluctuate from day to day, but over the Easter weekend, here in Alice Springs, we had the situation where there were a number of people being held on remand who could not be sent to the jail because there was no room for them.
These are people who haven't been found guilty of anything but can't get bail. And then there was another group of people who are actually serving their short sentences, but serving their entire sentence in the watch-house."
The Territory Government will commit $20 million in next month's budget to help solve some of the problems.
It will include funds for 189 more prison beds and a new, 800-bed prison that is expected to be finished by 2014, but Mr Goldflam says immediate action is needed.
"What we need to do, both in the immediate term and as a long-term strategic approach is find ways of avoiding sending people to prison," he said.
"We've got almost five times the rate of imprisonment in the Territory from the rest of the country, it's completely unsustainable."For the full news story and audio click here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-23/nt-prisons-described-as-third-world/3967114?section=nt
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