From 1961 to 1974 the Hay Gaol was managed by the New South Wales Child Welfare Department as a particularly coercive maximum security institution for girls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. The Hay Institution for Girls, as it was officially known, was established in response to wide scale rioting at Parramatta Girls' Home in 1961. The aim of Hay was to separate the girls involved in the riots and those whose behaviours generally were considered too difficult to be managed at Parramatta. Girls were sent to Hay for three month sentences. Many of the girls detained at Hay in the Institution were Aboriginal. In its conception, as a facility for maximum security segregation; in its governing according to strict discipline and routine; and in its housing in an old colonial prison, Hay mirrored The Institution for Boys in Tamworth previously established in 1947.