Wimmera Superintendent Paul Margetts made the comments during Victorian Corrections Minister and Western Victoria MP Gayle Tierney’s visit to the ward’s construction site on Friday morning.

The 20-bed ‘secure facility’ is being built at a cost of more than $32 million and is designed to house serious sex offenders and serious violent offenders after they have completed their prison sentence.

“We have Victoria Police members who are the part of the community advisory group in relation to the development of this facility,” Superintendent Margetts said.

“We are also working with Corrections Victoria in terms of our current divisional response plans that support the current Corella Place facility and this new facility. 

“I’m really confident that we’ll be ready for the new ward when it becomes operational.”

Corella Place is a residential facility beside Hopkins Correction Centre – but located outside its walls – that houses serious sex offenders that are deemed too dangerous for release.

The new ward at Ararat would operate on similar principle but house offenders with a wider range of convictions.

Inmates deemed to present too high of a risk to the community could be kept at the new ward on detention orders after their original sentence was completed.

The detention orders would be reviewed at least every three years.

The new ward project was announced in February.

Ms Tierney said the ward, which will feature a secure perimeter, was on track to open in 2018.

“We’re working to keep Victorians safe and this new 20-bed facility is a part of that,” she said.

“This project is not only keeping people safe, it’s also creating 150 jobs – and boosting the local economy.”