MIRIAM OXFORD: The first time I ever found anything about prison, I had someone known to me through my church who walked into the police station. One day, he confessed to a murder when he was 18. And so, a friend and I used to go and visit him because his wife left him and wouldn't let him have access to the children and all that sort of stuff. So that was the first time I would have been about eighteen or nineteen. It was the first time I even thought about prison.
So, what were your thoughts?
My thoughts were like, he's done the right thing because he wanted to give closure to that person's parents... But he paid a huge price for that, obviously, in the loss of his own family, you know. It was minimum security in New South Wales. So, you know, it wasn't as confronting, I guess.
Prison itself?
Yes, that's right. So, when you visit, it can be quite a confronting experience for people who have not had anything to do with criminal justice before. So that sort of happened, and I didn't really think of prison again until my brother went to prison. He went through a bad divorce. He got involved in using drugs heavily... And just went off the rails. So, he (brother) went to jail, and my mum was just totally ashamed, and it was very difficult for her... She has a Bachelor of Science (degree), so she's a very inquisitive person... When (her son) went to jail, she kept asking me all these questions, you know, like, what is he going to be like when he comes out? What's that like for him now? How are we going to help him? How do I know, Mum... So I started reading, right? And during that time, my son (J) went in for a short stint about six weeks after an altercation. And it was great because my brother was there, and I felt a bit more ...
J went in?
Yes, J went in. He would have been roughly nineteen, I suppose. So, he would have been in his early twenties. So that happened, and J got out, which was all good. We went to live in New Zealand, and then my brother was coming up for parole, so I came back to Australia from New Zealand, and he (J) came out (of prison) to live with me. That was his accommodation.
Required by the parole board...
That's right for parole. See, one of the things J said the other day is that you don't do prison alone. You do it in a community.
In or Out?
Inside a prison community, you create the community. Right?
It is interesting because most people say you don't make friends in prison.
Well, you do.
They rely on each other because they don't have anyone else. So, you know, when Sam, my brother, talked about his prison experience, it's about the people that he was with. So, when he got out, yes, it depends on your background, too. It's interesting, but for a lot of people in Tasmania, (it is in ) Venessa Goodwin (academic paper)... She was going to do her postdoc (postdoctoral research) around familial ties... So, you know, ‘families go to prison’.
I don't like her research, to be honest. It's a bit too eugenicist. (the belief that human character is caused by genes unaffected by environmental factors like education or living conditions).
She was Liberal... She was focusing on the genetic aspects and family, right?
To put it briefly, she focused on seeds but never on the soil.
Yeah. The thing is, the families that are criminogenic in Tasmania come from the soil of intergenerational poverty. They come from a focus on crime as work.
Or Indigenous people with another load of cross-generational trauma.
Right. So yeah, Vanessa's work is interesting... So, a lot of the time, people going “in” 'll be reunited with family members, right? And now we're seeing an upsurge, particularly even more so in the last four or five years, of criminal gangs or family gangs. It started with The Bad Boys, I think, those face-tattoo guys. I call them 'One Direction' because they're all heading in - one direction.
So, my brother went ‘in’, and he came ‘out’ to me, and he had things to do for ‘the brothers’, for the people that he connected with within the prison. And he found it overwhelming. He just found it too much... (Before) He was a very 'successful' drug dealer before he got on with the drugs himself.
Did he owe ('the brothers' from prison) some favours?
No favours. Not it wasn’t even an indebtedness. It's just kind of unspoken... There is an unspoken expectation; it's not necessarily paying people back. Sometimes, it's favours in advance, or just because you're within that traumatic environment and you've experienced it together, you grow bones (together). So, yeah, when (my brother) came ‘out’ and because mum was asking (me) all these questions, I started reading, right, and then I thought, I'll do an Honours year on this, you know, and so I did the case study on Risdon Prison, when it was just Ron Barwick (Minimum Security men’s prison), before they built a new one. So, I spent about a month in Hobart, inside the prison, every day, talking to everybody and meeting interesting people.
What was your focus?
It was called ‘The Learning on the Inside”. So that was very much around the actual curriculum. So, both criminological and therapeutic staff and VET - vocational education and training, and high school- they offered then, but they don't offer it now... All of that... so the formal curriculum... When I did my PhD, I looked at it much more holistically. So, not just the formal curriculum, but what people learned informally. Those little things... you know, like if you get a group of accountants in a room, what are they going to talk about? Accounting. The big problem with prison is that it breaks people's pro-social networks of friendships and work and all those sorts of things and puts them purely in that environment where all they have left is...
Their (prison) subculture.
That's right. Exactly. So, you've got to be in prison. You've got to have at least a six-month sentence before they even touch you therapeutically or educationally. They handed everything over to TAFE, which was a mistake because it was dropped. If you look at the participation rates in education, they have nosedived. Right. So, because they know that good in delivering it works only when they can have small classes.
So they might do some construction or forklift or whatever for minimum (security) people, but no one in max (maximum security) can get anything, you know, so if you're in max for most of your sentence and of course, they shanghaied everyone back to max after that last escape, the guy that got over the wall... because of scaffolding, they pulled everyone that was noteworthy, even if people that had been in minimum for 15 years. If their crime was noteworthy, they pulled them into max.
So, my Honours year... Well, I did a lot of ‘right to information’ stuff towards the end of my thesis to get some more information about things. Well, Rob White (professor of criminology at the University of Tasmania) said; you've made some very powerful people very unhappy... So, be careful.
Have you received any unpleasant reviews?
How do you get to me? You get to me through J... That's what happens.
And that's something probably incredibly difficult to prove...
Of course, because that's just the way it is, you know. But one of the things about me doing this research and becoming very educated in this space was that it gave us something to talk about - because J was to stay there for a very long time. We had something in common, right? Because it's very hard to maintain a relationship with someone inside. Eventually, you've run out of things to say, you know, even with a big family. So, I have five children. Even when talking about that, you eventually run out of things to say. Also, when J went ‘in’, he was the primary carer for his daughter. T., his partner, had had some drug issues, and they lost S. to foster care.... S. has done well; she’s had a stable foster carer. But I wasn't allowed to take her, my granddaughter, to the park because the foster carer wouldn't allow me to even walk up the street with her.
Because?
Because the foster carer thought that S. was her property... that she owned S. and no one else was allowed to her, luckily, her partner was a little bit more intelligent... I went through lawyers, but you've got no rights as a grandparent in the foster care system. Not at all. So, my relationship with S. is not the same as my relationship with my other grandchild.
Then, because of that, F. (the foster carer) actively worked against S. going ‘in’ to visit (J in the prison). So, J's relationship with S. (his daughter) is not a normal relationship, okay? When S. was born, I was down there, I went there every weekend, I bought her first cradle, and you know, I made sure that the house was clean and all that when S. came home, and I was her Nan, that was my name. Right. And that's my name to all of my grandchildren. Well, the foster mother decided that she wasn't going to be a mother or mum, and she took my name... I thought that it was the wrong thing to lie about where J was. Just say the truth, right? That's the way it is. So, she (J's daughter) had to find out (about her father being in prison) at school from a nasty little child whose dad was a corrections officer. I was against lying.
That year, there was a bushfire at Dunalley, and I said so S. , who was spoiled rotten, bought and paid for - I said to her - well, you know, when you go home, it would be really nice if you could sort out the toys that you don't use anymore and donate them to goodwill. No way. She was raised with totally different morals and ethics from her family, totally different.
Big thing.
Yeah. Very big thing. So that's and she's not close to any of her to her cousins or, you know, obviously, she's basically been excluded from the family, you know. And even when J got out (on parole), and my youngest boy got married and, of course, invited S. to the wedding, and so was the foster parent invited? And my son said: No, she's not. And so, S. didn't come...
She is loyal to the foster parent... But it is confusing.
It must be confusing, at least.
He(J) is not part of the family dinners... you know what I mean? Like, he's remembered like a dead person. He's alive, but he's never there... My eldest daughter... her partner is currently on remand (in custody, awaiting trial). So, Paul comes from a criminogenic family, Indigenous, from George Town. And my daughter had a baby to him on Australia Day, this year. And so, he hasn't gone before the courts... they've had the preliminary hearing, but you know, he's still on remand. Essentially, he had a previous criminal conviction, but he was getting himself on the straight; he finished with drugs... And, you know, things were looking okay... anyway, a situation happened and he and his brother and one other fellow got all charged with the murder of a guy in George Town. So, I got him Greg Richardson, the best lawyer... But you know, (P.) tells me a lot of things that go on in the new remand centre, which is absolute shit fun.
Like what?
Um, you know, so it's the little things, right? it's the little things that do my head in now, these are remandees, so they're not yet convicted... and these are their family photos...
(Miriam is showing photos): that's P, and his little boy (and his father) is wearing the fucking suit... so, every single photo that this child will have to remember his dad by is in the fucking suit. He's got two daughters from a previous relationship. He pretty much always went to jail while they were growing up. They're horrible children...
Maybe they are horrible because (their father) was always in prison.
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Oh well, yes, I agree. My daughter has children to her previous partner...
And this lady in the picture...
That's my daughter. Yeah. This one.
The beautiful one.
Yeah, she's beautiful.
So, these are the memories that my grandson will have of his dad. You know, like he wasn't there for the birth, obviously, which was very traumatic for him. This is his son, his first son. And you know how important sons are in the lower socioeconomic scheme of things.
Those people advocating for tough-on-crime would say now...
Oh, he deserves it. Yes, he does. Yeah.
And that ‘we don't want to send a signal (to children) that a prison is a nice place".
No. So, for kids - this is tough. This is. Yeah, well, it's like Vanessa Goodwin’s Cottages that has never been used (within the Mary Hutchinson Women’s Prison, mother-baby unit)
Cottages?
So, there's a wing... I think it's like a home, at a women's prison, where they can have their babies with them, and it was named after Vanessa Goodwin. There was something in the media about it twelve months ago. It's basically never been used.
Why?
Because it's so hard to get an approval that by the time you get approved, you're out. It's basically never been used. Absolute farce. Oh, we have this wonderful mother-child unit. And, you know, women can have their children in that, no, they can't...
Well, (another issue) - we used to have prison rehab, which was a drug rehabilitation unit in there. It’s gone. Visits? If everyone was entitled to two visits a week, how much visit time would you need? Right? I wrote a letter (to Tasmanian Prison Services) and they told me nothing. So, then I rang and said: How many slots do you have? If everybody had two visits a week? They don't even have 5% of that capacity.
In New South Wales, a lot of the new prisons and those retrofitted prisons have got tablets in there, in cells, so they can do that (The digital tablets provided in CSNSW correctional centres offer inmates access to news, games, self-administrative functions, resources for behaviour change and phone services) doing this IT or professional visit or whatever, education, blah blah, you know... we didn't do that when we built our ‘house’ (Risdon Prison). We put bloody phones (landline phones) in there. And when they go to have a Zoom, my daughter says, P. (her partner) will often walk out because you've got all these people crying, or you can hear the conversations of other people. They're so close together that you actually can't have a proper visit because you can hear everybody else's visits, you know.
How can you have a quality visit? In the presence of other people... how can you get to this stage where you can talk openly?
But they (Risdon Prison) just re-designed the visit’s room. It's all 'nice and pretty'. And there must have been a press release... It’s all based on security. It's not run on a therapeutic basis. If security says we have intel, right? If we have reason to believe (that there is a risk), then that's it. That's the law, then, Right? So anyway, they redesigned the whole thing with new tables and chairs, and yeah, it all looks pretty everywhere. Pictures. Yeah...
They're very proud of it.
Oh, yeah, they're very proud of it. You know they have opened the children's area. No one's allowed to use it!
Why?
They're not allowed to go in there.
No!?
Yeah, I'm serious.
Why?
Oh, security. Security. That’s a lovely little area. So, they are outside, in the cage. I was there, you know, I used to visit regularly. This outside cage. It's got a barbecue in it, that staff use... No one was ever allowed to sit out. They used to have chairs and tables. They wouldn't let you use them. (Miriam’s comment: at RPC (Risdon Prison Complex) there is an outside area that is caged with doors, separating from the internal visit area. There used to be tables and chairs when the visit area first opened, but you were never allowed to sit out there. Now they have been removed with the 'remodelling', so there is just a portable BBQ sitting out there. Great spaces are created and look great for the media, but security won’t let them be operationalised.)
(Another issue) They talk about the 'throughcare'. Okay? There is no through-care. None whatsoever. When I did my research, I interviewed a lot of community corrections staff: north, south and northwest (of Tasmania). And the older staff, like the staff, that had been there for a long period of time. So, (recently) the first thing they (the management of RPC) did was take out the requirement to have a degree (for potential employees in RPC). And secondly, they overloaded them. And then there were all these risk assessments, right? Then, they started employing people like loss adjusters and security staff - people who are not interested in or trained in therapeutics. People are not interested in working with a person to make their lives better. They're interested in knowing whether they are going to re-offend and putting them back in there, to prison).
Do you have your own theory – why is that?
Well, a couple of things. One - it's more efficient.
A short-term - efficient.
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. And that's all they're looking for, right? And this whole push towards Risk-Based Assessments and Criminological Needs and, you know, static and dynamic, you know, risk factors and all that sort of stuff... But you can manipulate them. I had a friend who had to have a certain classification in order to get access to certain programs. Right? So, he was given that classification. But then, when he needed to be reclassified to get something else, they did the thing again and reclassified him. So even if it's supposed to be scientific and Risk-Based, you can still manipulate it to get what you want. So, if it can be used for someone, it can also be used against someone.
I have my theory; that’s also an industry...
Of course, it is an industry, absolutely. We're not yet private here. We're not privatised.
When you look at when they talk about the Northern Prison so much, you know, it's going to bring so many jobs in. It's going to bring so much money into the local economy...
Instead of putting a fraction of (this money) into communities.
Yeah, I started visiting Ashley this year (Ashley Youth Detention Centre). I had never actually been to Ashley inside, and I started visiting this year with a Christian Group, and all that was confronting...
Why?
It was like, I've been (before) inside the prison, as in not just in the visiting area, but actually as part of my honours year, I was in prison right in it. So, I saw the yards, saw the cells, right? But this is children... and it's a prison... They're not correctional officers; they are 'youth workers'; they're not inmates; they're 'residents'. So, this is the way we use language to bullshit ourselves. It is not a resident because you're not there voluntarily. I don't like the term 'inmate' because it's a generic term. They're prisoners because they are imprisoned against their will.
I just can't understand. When I am listening to you and you're so progressive... So, what happened that J (your son) ended up in Ashley?
The long history of trauma, okay? I got married when I was 16. I had to get the parental permission. All my children belong to my first husband. I've been married twice... Things were going, you know, normal... sort of. Okay. It wasn't much of a workout, but that was all right. I had a bit of a drug problem, but not significant...
You or him?
He, but not significant. He was very different as a person, right? Not mentally ill, just different, thought differently and was different. Anyway... my youngest boy was born in 1996. We were living at St Mary's on a farm in Tasmania on the East Coast, and I just sort of started entering back into the workforce. So, I was doing the new enterprise incentive scheme, classes to start your own business. Right. So, I was in the process of starting my own business. Consequently, I needed a babysitter to look after my kids for one day a week. So, the babysitter... we had issues with the babysitter, and we ended up... it was a long story, but that started the demise of our relationship. Right? Okay. And then he had a vasectomy, and it was fine, but in his head, it wasn't.
What was the issue with the babysitter?
We got charged criminally. She made this statement that we'd kidnapped her, and all sorts of it were just bogus, and it was dropped. But we had to go to the court every week or every month to have it adjourned... for many months. Like... it was just incredible. And during this time, we split up. He sort of ended up going into the hospital for mental health, and he had a breakdown, basically. He was a narcissist with a personality disorder. I had been looking after him when he was inside, and I went to pick him up, even though we'd separated; I picked him up because his parents were on the mainland; I picked him up to take him home, not to my place, but to his home and the mental health nurse said: a leopard never changes his spots...
Anyway, so we were going through the divorce and conciliation and whatever, and he kept wanting to have custody of the children. So, he would have the children every second weekend.
The two eldest children were very badly behaved. S (father) has always been that authoritarian one in the house, right? And I was always the nice one, you know, and he was pretty straight, but not, you know, there's never any.... you know, I never saw any of that. According to J, there was, but I never saw any of that. Anyway, so the two oldest ones were just so badly behaved and threw a babysitter down the stairs like they were just wild, totally wild. And so I decided it might be best if I go and... ‘Stay with your father’. So, they did. Now, when they first moved up, they were living with his parents.
It was all right. So, I thought they would be fine. And then they moved to their own place. It was just around the corner from their grandparents... still fine. And then they moved to Medowie, which was a distance away, and I thought I'd start having questions, you know? And anyway, it turns out that, you know, he was using a lot of drugs... he sexually abused the children. And he was violent towards them. Anyway, I had a house fire, so my house burnt down, and I didn't have any place to live, and I have the other three younger children. When my house burned down, I was living in a motel room... I sent the three young children up there to stay. I was really bad with the conciliation... he would ring me a hundred times a day, and I am not exaggerating, and I worked at my mum and dad's motel, so I couldn't answer the phone... Just before Christmas that year, October, maybe that year, he (husband) arrived at my aunt's place in Sydney with all the children, right? And then left and then never came back.
Unbeknownst to us. It took us a few days to work out that he had been in King's Cross in a shop acting erratically. The cops were called. Cops didn't believe he had five children, so they just knocked him out. He was out for two days, went to Vincent's Hospital, and, you know if you are psycho, they just knock you out for two days. So anyway, we eventually found out where he was, but I'd made moves with the Department of Community Services... up there to get custody. And the children were returned to me. And that's when it all started coming out. You know that my daughter, the eldest daughter, was crazy like she was just in fits of anger. And she would say: "You've ruined my life." "How can I not have ruined your life? Get your grip... " You know, anyway, we ended up... he was still having phone contact with the children, and I started to record it. Record the contact. And then, because you know it, we'd been in conciliation for such a long period of time to move towards a divorce. We ended up going to full family court, which is not a very common occurrence. And I handed all the recordings to the child’s psychologist. I went through full court and remarried. By the same year, 2002 we finally got divorced. And the judge revoked his parental rights... And those phone conversations... oh, he made threats towards me in the court where a court officer overheard the threats he made.
And so, then I had the police around my place looking at exit strategies... it was just full on, it was really full on. So, the children came back to me very damaged, and I tried to get them help. You know, that was somewhat futile as they refused to go, you know, they didn't want to talk about it, and there was shame.
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What kind od shame?
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Shame around the abuse. The children. Yes. So, when they started to talk openly and around the time of the psychologist and the court proceedings, and all that, and... it's come out like it's taken me this long to put it all together for them to actually start telling me pieces of what went on. So, you know, all this happened... When they came back (all children), my partner, the guy that I was with, left. So, a single mum with five children, that was very difficult. They were, you know, severely damaged.
I got married, and he was bipolar but very stable and very straight. He and J didn't get on. The reason he and J didn't get on was because J was doing things that weren't right, like he was having sex with girls in front of his youngest siblings. He was smoking dope. He took his bedroom door off. Right... So that, you know, no closed doors... to see what's going on. But, you know, he was not dealing with the trauma at all. So, in the end, X (the stepfather) would never have had a fight in his life, like he was totally not that way inclined... but they (with J) had a physical altercation. The cops were called. And I didn't know this until the other day when J talked about it. Apparently, there was never any family violence order because the police didn't have those powers back then. Not like they have now. Right. Which they abuse totally. But that's a whole other story about that. Police family violence orders should be scrapped because they're not trained to do so. You know, they agreed that my 11-year-old grandson should stay with his father, who abducted him... (the police said) that he should stay with his father because that's what this child wanted. Right. About the simple fact that M, who's better now but was chaotic then, was taking him out and showing him how to steal things. Right. But according to (the police), they didn't have any orders in place. And so, the police just decided whatever they wanted to do, just ridiculous. They're not social workers; They're not investigators... And I mean, that's coming out a lot more now where a lot of women are saying, well, I was actually kicked out of my home. I was actually told I had to leave my children with my partner, who was the violent one. But I was seen as aggressive because by the time the cops were there, it was, you know (messy) so they just don't like that. They don't know how to do things right. It's unfair. They're not trained. It's just not for the police. It's not their job.
So, you have four young ones, and J is the eldest...
He was on an apprenticeship at Stillwater Restaurant, a nice restaurant. But they (apprentices) were treated very badly... like the whole hospitality industry does to apprentices and that's a whole other story. Don't get me started on Gordon Ramsay... Okay. And what he perpetuates in terms of bullying and harassment in the industry. But anyway, he had some altercations with some not-so-great kids...
Anyway, because of what happened with X (his step-father), he left home, he was couch surfing, he was getting with the wrong people and eventually went to Ashley's.
And that's where he met... the mother of his child.
So, whose decision was it to send him over there?
Well, obviously, he committed offences...
This was his first kind of prison.
Yeah. Yeah, it was. Ashley. That's right.
How old was he?
Maybe 17.
Do you remember what were your expectations at that stage?
My expectations were, I thought, well, I felt like my parents, thinking he would go to school... Have some therapy; they'll get him counselling; they'll get the support that he needs. But that's not what happened.
What happened?
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He was exposed to violence. He was abused himself... It was a very unhealthy environment, very unhealthy.
Was he reporting about this?
I don't know.
So, once the kid is 17, a young teenager, is there, he is not actually in contact with his parent?
Not really... not very much because he was angry at me. Right? Because I remarried. In my eyes, I was always putting the welfare of my younger children first because what can you do? You know, you've got an antisocial person at home who's doing things in front of his younger siblings; there are ten years between the older and the younger, right? So, I made the choice that he had to go because he couldn't obey the rules. And they weren't RULES... they were simple things like, you know, don't do drugs in the house and don't have sex with girls in front of your brothers and sisters. Not like I was brought up... these were basic things, you know? And if you can't do those basic things, then what do you do, really? You know? And it was his choice as much as anything else. But apparently, the police officer told him that he wasn't allowed within a hundred meters of X, which was not great... I think that line didn't help things either because it stopped any possibility of reconciliation.
I just see this incredible exposure to external forces (Ashley) that can cause many things to go wrong.
Oh, I know...
So, they charged J, you know, he killed Adrian... If there had been a video camera operating in the store on the day, I think he would have been let go in self-defence. Two guys on one person, and the whole reason that he grabbed the knife was because of his experience of victimisation as a young boy. Right. And knowing that there were two tougher guys than him. Adrian had been in and out of prison. He was a known drug dealer and a drug user and was tougher; he was much more street savvy than Jayden, you know. So, I think it was fear that drove him to get the knife... that drove him to stab him. There were five witnesses, and they saw completely different things. It was just a bit of a shit fight, really.
Did you attend all hearings?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I knew I was the only one there for Jayden. I was on one side of the courtroom, just me. Then, there were all Adrian's family and all the boys with face tattoos. And now M (the person in the court) was very good in regards of making sure that, you know, no one verballed me or assaulted me or spoke badly to me or whatever, you know, which was good. But yeah, it was just me on one side and then all the others on the other side.
Why was it just you? What about your partner?
We separated by then. So that really was just me.
How long was the trial?
I lived in Melbourne at the time, so I flew over. It was a week, and then we had a break because it actually occurred on the anniversary of the incident. The anniversary of Adrian's death would have been very distressing for his family, obviously. And then it went on for another almost a week, I think. Then there were a couple of weeks, and then there was a sentencing.
How did you feel?
Oh, it was devastating. You know, like, and it was very, very, very upsetting. And my photo was taken coming out of the courthouse, and it was in the papers. And, you know, it was really quite difficult to deal with.
Did you have someone to help you out at the sentencing?
One of my girlfriends...
You also have a community; you belong to a church.
I do now. Yes. Not then. Two of my best friends came for the sentencing. And so it was nice to have some support. They come in. Mum and Dad might have been on the mainland... Um, but it would have been truly distressing for them to cope with. You know, it was bad enough for me. A couple of times when I think, I mean, I look back on it now, and I know that they had me doing things because they didn't want me in the court listening to a certain person's testimony. I guess it would be too painful. It was painful for one of the jurors. There was a young man on the jury. And then after the sentencing, after the conviction, he actually was crying his eyes out, and I just, I often wonder... he would have been like twenty years old, and after what happened in that jury room... I believe he was probably intimidated to give the guilty verdict. And because he was the only one, I think he would have been dragged out by the older people on the jury. And I often think of him. And yeah, it would have been a very traumatic experience for him, I think.
Did you get anything like psychological help?
Oh, no, no.
So it's like a hit in the head with a hammer.
Yeah, yeah. And he was not violent; he was never a violent person. You know what I mean... Like I could have understood if he had been a different type of person, but he wasn't, he was just a damaged boy, really frightened, you know.
Do you have the feeling of.... I am sorry for the question...
That's all right.
... Did you get it in a sense of the failure?
Personally? Look, when the kids first came out from their dad, they blamed me. Right. A lot. And for a lot of time, I felt guilt, you know, and then I don't even know how it happened, but I just realised, well - I didn't do any of those things, I didn’t. What I thought at the time was in their best interest. I did what I did because I loved them. There was no dereliction of duty, or I mean, every day I cried when they were out every day. It was one of the reasons my partner left me because he couldn't cope with it.
So, there was no sense that I was doing this to have fun for myself, or I was doing this to abdicate my responsibility, or I was doing this because, you know, I've we can cope or whatever. It was none of that. So, I just suddenly realised that it wasn't me. I didn't do anything bad. I and it was the same with J. See; my mum felt a great sense of shame when Sam went to jail. I didn't feel any shame whatsoever at all. I think generationally... See, Sam was the first one in our family to ever go to prison, right?
The family? (any issues with the law)
My dad, maybe... there have been some things along the way, you know, but they were small business owners. They were upstanding members of the community. My grandfather saved a boy's life from drowning, and there was an award by the queen, you know what I mean? We came from a history of positive middle working-class background. My dad was British, my brother was born in the UK, and we lived over there when I was in primary school. So, I lived most of my primary school days in the UK.
10 Pound Poms?
My dad was, he came over when he was eleven years old and settled in Sydney, and that's where I was born. Mom is an Australian, multi-generational Australian. Her grandfather was actually a Polish Hasidic Jew; his family left Europe during the pogroms and came to Australia. Jewish on my mother's side, so it was my grandfather who was a Jew, and he married a ‘goyim’ (a person who is not Jewish). And because they were very Hasidic, very orthodox. They wouldn't accept her... So, you know, our family background was not any of those things (criminogenic background). J had been raised that way, you know. It was a shock to my mom, I think. But for me, I didn't feel any of that sense of shame or anything like that.
The day that it happened, I was living in Melbourne, and it was actually my youngest boy's birthday. I got a phone call from J, and the first words out of his mouth were: “Mom, I think I killed someone”. And my immediate thought was, “Oh my God, there's a mother out there whose son has died.”
And I said, “What do you mean?”. “It was on the news, Mum”. He knew that he'd stabbed Adrian... So, the knife, the kitchen knife. Right? It went between two of Adrian's ribs and punctured both bottom parts of his heart. J ran away from the scene.
(Adrian) didn't even know... he'd taken his Methadone dose that morning, the victim, Adrian. So, they really wouldn't have felt it. It wouldn't have been felt the knife. Right? And then he ran out of the Target store, but he didn't get out of the store because he bled out, and that was it. So, he wouldn't have even known.
How old was Adrian?
I think he was in his early twenties. Yeah. He was with another fella called M. I think his name was, yeah. And, of course, M survived. You know, he was there, and he just lied on the stand and, you know, just it was just...
You said that you are trying not to involve yourself in J’s story anymore...
I try not to.
Why?
Because I don't think it helps. And since he's had A... (J’s partner)
I had this feeling when I went to A’s home that she lives in a kind of prison. She's just really confined by the whole overwhelming situation with this monstrosity of a dog.
I know.
Lovely dog...
This is a dog.
It’s like Baskervilles’ dog... And she is just with those folders and letters from prison.
She's done an amazing job in terms of standing by J...
It's like a job.
It's like a job. And she's lost her parents because of it. Apparently, her mum and dad moved; they were living in Tasmania. They moved interstate because they had enough. Yeah, they couldn't cope with it... She really loves him... (J)
I know, and I think she's a very, very special person, but she is just so immersed...
Consumed, and that's how I used to be. You don't do my type of PhD for fun, and you don't do it for your career unless you go into academia. I did it for J. I did it so that we would always have something to talk about. I felt passionately that the place (the prison) was wrong, you know? And you know, I am a little bit too much of a realist to be an abolitionist. But I'm not far away... When you allow people to put the label of an offender on you... when do you stop being an offender, according to the system? Never. You don't call a person - a child because it once was, right?
So, Labelling Theory, all that sort of stuff. Words matter, you know, and this constant need to replay your crime and look remorseful - they want this type of personality. Right. This attitude. But that doesn't make you a criminal if you stand up for yourself. I said, J - you have every right to question things in there; you had every right.
(After the experience of incarceration) it becomes confusing for people to choose a box of cereal. You know, my second husband was bipolar. He couldn't make decisions and struggled with it. Right? It was part of his illness. That's what prison is like. Not being able to open a door for yourself. How can you ask someone to be proactive when you have told them that they cannot... Those were the things about my thesis... that you lose skills in prison, you lose the ability to do daily basic things like function in society, never mind the struggles... only just functioning in society.
What changes do you see in J?
What changes do I see after 11 years (in prison)?
It's a long time.
That's a long time. I know.
He was so young. He is still young now.
Yeah. I think the biggest change... So, you know, obviously, I've known him since he was a little boy, so he was always very tender-hearted and compassionate. And I think because I became quite an activist, I suppose. Right. That enabled him to keep those parts of himself. But he can't be soft in prison. Any sort of weakness and vulnerability is going to get attacked either by other prisoners or by the staff. The staff are no different to the prisoners that they control. There's no difference. There's lots of politics in the game. And it's a boring job... until it's exciting. A bit like with policing, right? That's why you end up with 70 police guys when something happens: they all sit around, bored out their brains, right? When something happens, it's all adrenaline, you know? And the studies show that, like in the States, you get six coppers, and someone's going to pull a gun, and then everyone's going to be shooting, and then someone gets shot 25 times for picking out a mobile phone in the pocket. Right? This is human behaviour, you know, and being a corrections officer is no different...
You develop a certain type of ‘persona’ and ‘correctional cynicism’. So, when they have a fight in prison, it's not like they start yelling. It's not like a normal fight. Right? It's quiet... and the next minute, it's all over, and someone is lying on the ground, bleeding to death. That's what it's like, right?
We talked about changes in J. That he is more sealed...
It is almost like a split personality in some respects. You know, you can't show who you really are in there and the moment you're vulnerable, you are likely to be attacked and associated not just by other prisoners but by actual guards? So, I think because of the way that I was, it sort of helped him to be able to stand up for not just his own rights but other people's rights...
So, the art exhibition that they have every year - when J was given the opportunity to go to that, he is also well presented, he is articulate, you know, so he spoke to the ministers. Like, he can present himself well. So, I think it gave him an avenue that he could keep that part of himself because I think so many people lose that. And I think, you know, (prison) brings out the macho, it brings out, which he never was. But you have to do that to survive...
I saw, even with my brother, the same sort of thing that impacted (prison) on his life. He became harder and tougher, and it's taken him a long time to get back to being able to be more vulnerable, you know, and be able to express itself.
I had a conversation with the mother of an incarcerated person. She is in Devonport, and because she knows her son very well, she knows that her son is taking drugs in prison.
Of course. Yeah. The prices are swimming; the dogs can't detect Suboxone. (Miriam's comment: the primary drug that is trafficked these days is Suboxone strips, as these can't be detected by dogs and are small and available to people on prescriptions in the community. The prison uses the injection version of the drug, which is a replacement therapy for opiates. There are very few opiate users, ice/meth and speed, along either marijuana, are the most commonly used drugs. Opiate replacement therapy has little to no efficacy for people who use drugs other than opiates (heroin and painkillers).
So, the drug replacement therapy, which we work with, really works well with nicotine to anyway replacement therapy so that they try to push them onto the needle, which is bleeding out of the ass they're putting on weight.
(Miriam’s comment: They move them from the Suboxone strips (if they are on them) and onto the injection version. The side effects are very bad, including anal bleeding and weightlessness, swelling etc.)
The primary focus of drug treatment is now pharmacology. These drugs cause excessive side effects such as anal bleeding, fluid retention, extreme swelling of legs and feet resulting in a lack of mobility and many other health issues. These medications are being given to a cohort who are already in poor health. There are drug and alcohol workers (about 2 or 3 for 500+ prisoners) but no classes, so its all-individual work now. The issue with pharmacology is that it needs to be combined with other therapies in order to be effective, and the drug replacement therapy is focused on heroin (opiates) – not ice, speed, or marijuana. We have very few heroin issues here in Tasmania; the biggest issue is ice, and the most commonly used drug is marijuana. So, by placing prisoners who do not have an opiate problem on an opiate replacement treatment plan, we are just creating opiate addicts and not treating the issues of ice addiction, amphetamines and marijuana. I argue that this approach is completely ineffective and causes significant health issues).
J got massive oedema. They are their guinea pigs. (M's comment: Using drug replacement therapy for non-opiate users is not a valid or proven treatment. The prisoners feel that they are being experimented on). It's not proper anyway... to get started on the Suboxone program. But they have Suboxone strips right now; They inject them, and they smoke them.
Do you remember the old methadone programs? Hot fluid to drink. Right? So, this is a strip. You're taking it in your mouth, it's like a like a chewing gum, like a juicy fruit, you know... So, they get it from the chemist, and they use plastic in their mouths, and then they just put the strip up there. (M's comment: The strips are like gum or plasticine. Dispensed by the chemist. They can be put onto clear plastic to traffick and put in the mouth or anywhere else). So then, they can take it out later and could smoke and inject it, apparently. So obviously, there is not enough coagulant in there, and it’s small. It's very small; it's easy to smuggle in.
There is an internal market for those... $500 (per one strip). The officers don't mind the drugs because it makes them all happy and acquiescent and easy to manage.
Officers do not; they do not get drug tested, and they do not get searched before they get to work. Who wouldn't want an extra couple of grand in their pay packet every day?
So, you can't call it Correctional Services.
You can’t. Well, now they're calling it Justice and Rehabilitation. That's the department's name now. And I'm like: are you fucking kidding me? I do listen to the budget estimates.
?
It’s when politicians all get around and have an argument about the budget, right? So, one of the opportunities that the Opposition has to question government staff is the Budget Estimates Committee... They have to defend why they're spending money on what they're spending money on, and they are streaming it online. Yeah, well, you can download the paper... I was reading through that, and you know, I've emailed Ella a couple of times about a few different things and, but you know, they promoted Gina Webster, who I met when she was at the prison before she moved over to Community Corrections, and now she's the secretary of the Department of Justice.
And she's a nasty woman. And they are just... I think if they're working through justice, they are losing all compassion. They become arrogant and righteous.
J. became a much bigger drug abuser whilst he was incarcerated than he had ever been on the outside. The prison is not a therapeutic environment. How can you be vulnerable (while being there)? You need to be in therapy when people (around you, in the prison) want to use (your vulnerability) against you. This is the lesson that we've learned with community corrections. Like the training to be vulnerable, there is this punitive response instead of a therapeutic response. It's the whole thing. It's, it's like what we used to do with people with disabilities, the medical model - shut them up in an institution, don't look at them. And then we worked it out, well, maybe that's not so great for them... Maybe they can live a normal, good life. Maybe their quality of life can be good. Oh, let's bring them all into the community and use a social model, bring some behavioural support plans to support them in the community and actually give people quality of life. We managed to work that out. The penny's dropped there. We need the penny to drop in the criminal justice system. Because we should not be employing a punitive model, right? We should be employing a therapeutic model.
I went to the conference, a prison conference three years ago, and I'll never forget what they said – that most prisons have more pilots than Qantas because they're always doing a pilot program, the pilot research pilot. Right? But a lot of programs hang around a person, you know, the person that does the program, you know, and it's this person's skills and competencies that create that dynamic that allows for transformation. And then when it (that person) goes, then that just falls apart quickly, particularly in a small, you know, small state like Tasmania.