Sky Pilot

He’s here to help them all that he can
To make them feel wanted he’s a good holy man
Sky pilot, sky pilot, how high can you fly
You’ll never, never, never reach the sky.

The lyrics of Eric Burdon and the Animals echoed a message of hope throughout the 1960s while the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones carried a thundering vibration of social revolution into the streets.

In Australia the social revolution came to a grinding halt with the decision that Ronald Ryan would be another casualty of a legal system that embraced the death penalty. He was hanged in Pentridge Prison on February 3, 1967.

One of the many outspoken critics of the death penalty in relation to Ryan’s execution was Fr John Brosnan, a ‘sky pilot’* who ministered to Ryan during his last hours.

Fr Brosnan was a prison chaplain. A man of the cloth. A sky pilot. And to those who walked the yard in Pentridge he was affectionately known as Broz, the priest with compassion.

His fight against social injustice left a lasting impression inside Pentridge as it did on the streets of Melbourne but those impressions blended with a decade of change that ended in 1969, the year I went to jail for armed robbery.

My reflection of the 1970s was in stark contrast to the previous decade. There was still change and upheaval but the changes were occurring behind the walls of maximum security prisons.

The NSW State Penitentiary at Long Bay, as it was known in those days, was a volatile pressure cooker waiting to explode. Prisons elsewhere had already erupted like festering boils. Attica, Folsom and San Quentin in the US went up in smoke while British prisons at Durham and Parkhurst felt the brunt of the changing revolution behind the walls. The body count rose as the insurrection spread.

Inside Australian prisons the keeper and the kept eyed each other suspiciously waiting for some indication of the other’s intentions. Time became an acid. Slowly dripping away ...

The only calming effect during that turbulent period was the presence of two sky pilots, two nuns dressed in their conventional “penguin suits” who regularly visited Long Bay and radiated a serenity and peace that seemed out of place inside that seething cauldron. They listened to the anger of caged men. And they soothed that anger by simply listening.

The sight of those two nuns ministering to a prison population in tense and strife-torn times was one of the rare spectacles I retained in my memory from the prison carnage of the 1970s.

During the summer of 1971 I was classified as an “intractable” prisoner for attempting to escape and assaulting prison guards. They transferred me to the Alcatraz of the NSW prison system. HM Grafton Jail. At the time I was serving 28 days solitary. Nothing ever changed in solitary at Grafton. Oatmeal mush for breakfast. Oatmeal mush for tea. And silence. Total silence. Punishment for breaching the silence was brutally extreme.

One day the screws (prison guards) opened the solitary confinement cell and a brown paper bag was thrust inside. Just as quickly as the cell door opened it was slammed shut again.

A bag of fruit with a card attached rested against the wall. I looked at the paper bag for what seemed an eternity before I crawled over and read the card. It said: “Merry Christmas from the Sisters of Mercy.” It was Christmas Day 1971. That brown paper bag filled with fruit was one of the most memorable Christmas dinners I have ever eaten.

In the spring of ’75 we were transferred to a brand new super-max prison called Katingal Special Security Unit and once again it was a sky pilot who had a profound effect on the guys confined inside that concrete tomb -

Sr Julianna, a little old nun who was a regular visitor into the Blockhouse and adopted as “her boys” the men a prison system had classified as no-hopers.

Katingal was consigned to the pages of history in 1978 as a Pavlovian experiment gone wrong but the memories of a little old nun who cared still remain.

I was released in 1980 to confront a strange new world outside the walls. But every so often the memories of prison were rekindled by a sky pilot.

Like the time in 1986 when the strained face of Fr Peter Norden appeared outside Pentridge to tell the world that five prisoners had died in a fire in the maximum security block Jika Jika.

Or in 1987 when rioting prisoners inside Boggo Rd Jail refused to negotiate with authorities until they could speak with their sky pilot, Sr Bernice, who climbed a ladder to speak with them as they perched on the roof.

In a matter of minutes Sr Bernice’s negotiation with the prisoners peacefully accomplished what tear gas and the sophisticated weaponry of a prison system had failed to do.

In retrospect, it does seem ironic that those unassuming men and women of the cloth achieved more with their compassion and caring than was ever achieved by the full brutal weight of any prison system. Perhaps that is why poignant memories of the sky pilots linger long after the prisons have gone.

[*A ‘sky pilot’ is Australian prison slang for a priest, nun or prison chaplain.]

i anxiously await part 2

Some Memories Never Fade.

It was the Spring of '75 when they came to get me. I could hear voices from the Gatehouse. The clicking of handcuff ratchets. My escort had arrived. One thing about solitary as an intractable prisoner - you develop acute hearing. If nothing else.

I had one last look around my cell. The timber log I had used for my table. The plastic jam and salt containers. And the two coir mats neatly rolled against the back wall -- laid on the floor the two mats had been my bed since the Summer of '71. The spartan conditions of Grafton tracs (admin seg for intractable prisoners) had made every item special and each had their own specific place in the regimented confines of my cell. Even the toilet paper and library books had special allocated positions. I tried to remember how many times I had copped a serve (physical beatings by prison guards) for having one item out of its designated place. Countless. The floggings were routine and didn’t require a reason. Everything at Grafton was a routine. A mindless automatic routine that was punctuated by a screw’s baton, boot or a fist. It was the system's way of rehabilitating intractables. Australia's answer to Alcatraz.

My thoughts drifted back to ‘72 when Apps got flogged unconscious for having contraband during a fall-out (strip-search). He had forgotten the two cigarette butts he left in his shirt pocket. Contraband. The Breed, Footballer and Brown flogged the shit out of him and then dragged him into the pound (solitary confinement cell) unconconscious. They left him there bloodied and unconscious to recuperate. Then The White Alsation knocked Mitchell ass over head for having a button undone. He ended up with a busted jaw and a black eye.

Dugan, Smith and Harbecke got flogged for talking in the yard. The silence rule was unbreakable. Talk, even a whisper, was a punishable offence. Dugan, Smith and Harbecke suffered the extreme consequence.

When McCafferty came unstuck for talking on the telephone (The sewrage pipe link-up between cells that allowed prisoners to converse between cells once the water was pushed out of the toilet bowl) our communication link between each other was put on hold. It took a couple of weeks before McCafferty's eye healed and the bruises started to fade but he learned a valuable lesson. The "No talk" rule was non negotiable. Irrespective of where and how the conversation was conducted. We had been sent to Grafton for rehabilitation not socialisation.

Then there were the "reception biffs" the initial flogging of a prisoner by four or five screws (prison guards) to welcome them to Grafton. The reception biffs were usually conducted inside the cell-block or in the pound yard. We all knew the sound of a reception biff. The distinctive and cacophonous sound of batons hitting bare flesh. It was a sound you never forgot. Then the scream. The agonising grunts. Or the blood curdling yell. Most men handled their reception biffs differently. Some suffered in silence. Some suffered stoically. And some suffered snt (stark naked terror).

Billy Baldry was a ringleader in the '74 Bathurst Jail Riot. It earned him a trip to Grafton tracs. Baldry's reception biff coined the phrase snt. His blood curdling screams broke the silence rule. And some! Then there was Peter Schneidas. A kid doing time for fraud. A non-violent offender. They sent him to Grafton in the Summer of '75 for assaulting a screw in Cooma Jail. His reception biff bruised his psyche as well as his body. Three years later he murdered a screw in another jail and they kept him in solitary for the next 20 years.

Then there were the 'hijackers' of '69 - Heatley, Barben and Foster. A trio of intractables that were being escorted by plane to Grafton after trying to escape from Goulburn Maximum Security Jail. Somewhere over the central coast they tried to overpower the screws and hijack the plane. The attempt was doomed to failure and the prisoners were eventually subdued. On arrival at Grafton airport they were met by The Hun, Imbo, The White Alsation, The Breed, Footballer, Humpty Dumpty and The Mechanical Mouse who baton-whipped the trio across the tarmac from the plane to the escort van. At Grafton Jail their reception biff continued and spanned a six month period before the screws eventually eased off.

It seemed strange that as I waited to leave that place in the Spring of '75 I vividly remembered incidents and people that spanned a five year period of isolation and solitary punctuated by the rehabitative processes of Grafton. It is stranger still that thirty years down the track I still maintain that vivid recollection. Some memories never fade.

Postscript

John Apps died from a heroin overdose after his release from prison.
Gil Mitchell also died after his release from prison.
Darcy Dugan suffered a stroke in 1989. He died in the Autumn of '91. He had done over 40 years jail time for armed robbery and escapes.
Neddy Smith was convicted of multiple Sydney underworld murders during the 1980s. He is currently serving life NTBR (never to be released). He has Parkinson's Disease.
Freddy Harbecke was released in 1981 and deported to Germany. He returned to Australia and was convicted for armed robbery and a shootout with police on Queensland's Gold Coast during 1983. He served another 13 years and was again deported to Germany. At the age of 65 he committed a series of bank robberies in Germany and was returned to prison where he is currently serving 15 years.
Archie McCafferty was released from prison in 1971. In 1973 he led a drug indiuced gang of teenagers on a killing spree that earned him the tag of Australia's answer to Charlie Manson. He was returned to prison with 3 consecutive terms of life imprisonment. He received another 10 years on top for a jailhouse murder in 1981.
Peter Schneidas was released back into mainstream population in 1978 when he killed PO John Mewburn at Long Bay Jail. Schneidas had no excuse for the murder apart from what the prison system had done to him during the preceding 3 years. It was not a defence at law and he received a life sentence.
Earl Heatley was released from prison in 1981. He returned to prison for murder.
Tommy Foster was released from prison and returned for crimes of violence.

The Breed retired on a full pension as a productive member of society.
Footballer retired on a full pension as a productive member of society.
Brown was promoted to a positon of seniority within the NSW prison system before retiring on a full pension as a productive member of society.
The White Alsation was promoted to the position of Superintendent of Long Bay Jail. He retired on a full pension as a productive member of society.
The Hun was promoted to a position of seniority within the NSW prison system before retiring on a full pension as a productive member of society.
The Imbo retired on a full pension as a productive member of society and began a milk delivery business.
Humpty Dumpty was promoted to a position of seniority within the NSW prison system before retiring on a full pension as a productive member of society.
The Mechanical Mouse was promoted to a position of seniority within the NSW prison system before retiring on a full pension as a productive member of society.

i have nothing to say except it reads like a script have you considered producing a book or movie???******{hugs}}}}
chrisitine

wow. I'm speechless.

Hi samiam158, No. there's not enough time. A book or a movie would not capture all the memories and stories from behind the walls. There are so many. And they need to be told so the public understand what their prison systems really stand for and what they continue to create. Forums like this are ideal to ventilate the other side of the wall. Words and stories that so many prisoners and ex-prisoners immediately relate to irrespective of what country they are in. Not all prisoners can express themselves to adequately describe the other side of the wall. I hope I am doing that for them. The mainstream media avoid prison stories like the plague. So to hell with the mainstream media - PTO is the appropriate forum. And I am studying journalism?!? I have had other stuff posted at PTO mainly at Australia prison news but I will continue with The other side of the wall on this forum because prison life knows no boundaries or country borders. You will find some more of my writings at www.onlineopinion.com.au thanx for reading. Hope it has broadened your perspective. cheers bernie oz ex-prisoner.

Abu Ghraib one day, Queensland the next.

The following article was published at www.onlineopinion.com.au on 24 may 2004. It is part 1 of a 2-part series I wrote on the Australian prison system.

To know prison you have to experience the finality of a cell door slamming shut behind your back. You have to realise the futility of hope and experience the humiliation of having to spread your buttocks for prison guards during a strip search. Then you mentally switch off to the kicks and baton blows that rain upon you as you try to breathe through the blood that flows from your nose and mouth. If you have experienced these things you will understand the world of Abu Ghraib.

It is a world where elfin faced women like Lynndie England are photographed leading prisoners around on a dog leash or humiliating nude prisoners by pointing to their genitals with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. A place where men like US Army Specialist Charles Graner, a former US prison guard in civilian life, was placed in charge of the military police in Abu Ghraid’s Section 1A where the torture and abuse occurred and is photographed standing over a pile of naked prisoners. Graner is also accused of using a baton to bash a prisoner who had been shot and was handcuffed to a bed. On other occasions he is accused of using attack dogs on prisoners and sexually abusing them.

The actions of Graner and England coincide with other photographs depicting similar abuses that brought international condemnation and resulted in the pair being court martialled along with five other MP’s. All seven applied the Eichmann defence - they were only following orders from their superiors to ‘soften up’ prisoners prior to interrogation. (Adolph Eichmann was the architect of the gas chambers that resulted in the Jewish holocaust during WW2. On 11 May 1960 he was kidnapped from Brazil by Israeli agents and made to stand trial for war crimes. Eichmann maintained he was only a clerk following orders from his superiors. The Israeli court found him culpable for his actions and he was hanged at Ramie Prison on 31 May 1962).

Abu Ghraib is synonymous with the indiscriminate use of brutality, humiliation, sensory deprivation and psychological torture used as a control mechanism for those in charge. A place where the catalogue of abuse was allowed to continue unchecked until the media breached the shroud of secrecy that enveloped it and made the public aware of what really happens on the other side of the wall. These are truly rare glimpses of the incarceration process where the full horror of man’s inhumanity to man are finally revealed but if the Australian public thinks that such a litany of abuse is confined to Abu Ghraid then they are sadly mistaken.

Occasionally the Australian public received rare glimpses of the brutality, humiliation, sensory deprivation and psychological torture that occurs inside their tax-payer funded prisons but unlike Abu Ghraib Australian prison authorities have managed to circumvent public scrutiny by shrouding the prisons in secrecy under the guise of maintaining security. In Queensland the prisons are protected from unwanted media attention by legislation that forbids media access to prisons under threat of legal sanction.

In 1996 former Courier Mail journalist, Ms Ella Riggert, was fined $1050 for conducting an interview with Tracey Wiggington, Queensland’s alleged ‘vampire killer’, at Brisbane Womens Prison. Two other Queensland journalists, Ms Lou Robson and Channel Nine ACA reporter, Margueritte Rossi, also suffered the same fate when they conducted ‘unauthorised’ telephone interviews with prisoners from the Woodford and Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centres. Both journalists were fined $300 but no conviction was recorded.

Riggert, Robson and Rossi were constricted by law to accept the sanctions of Section 104 (10) of The Queensland Corrective Services Act 1988 No.89 which carried a maximum penalty of $3000 or two years imprisonment for anyone who;
(f) without the authority of the Commission, interviews a prisoner (within the meaning of section 10) or obtains a written or recorded statement from such a prisoner, whether within or outside of a prison commits an offense against this Act. The Queensland Corrective Services Act 2000 reinforced the previous Draconian sanctions with harsher penalties for those who tried to penetrate the veil of secrecy that surrounds the Queensland prison system.

The legislative power routinely bestowed upon Queensland’s Department of Corrective Services allows the prisoneaucracy to indiscriminately reinforce and perpetuate censorship policies that restrict media access to prisons and prisoners for their own self-serving interest. The threat of that legislative power is regularly employed by departmental lawyers to contain scandals that could be politically sensitive in the public arena. It also increases the difficulty for Queensland journalists to be impartial when reporting prison related incidents because independent corroboration or dispute of any facts from prisoner sources is not available under threat of punishment or arbitrary sanctions.

The current Queensland legislation also allows prison officials to be selective when responding to media requests for interviews with prisoners.

Queensland journalist Robert Reid requested an interview with lifer, Ernie Knibb, to confirm details he wrote in an article about Knibb’s conviction that was subsequently published in Australian Penthouse during 1996 (pp34 -126). QDCS refused Reid’s request because; ‘Knibb was a very difficult inmate. One of 2999 out of 3000 inmates who claim they are innocent. The courts have told us he is guilty of a horrific crime and I support any move to keep him away from the media, any move whatsoever.”

QDCS was not so reluctant to grant permission to another prisoner, former Queensland Police Commissioner, Terry Lewis, who was interviewed by Rod Henshaw on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair program during 1997. Lewis claimed during the program that his imprisonment had resulted from a ‘set up’ and that he was innocent of all charges that had been leveled against him which had caused his subsequent 14-year term of imprisonment.

The ABC Catalyst program made a formal request in 2002 to interview another prisoner, Marc Andre Renton , after claims that he had been wrongfully imprisoned for bank robbery and that DNA evidence used to convict him was scientifically flawed. The request was refused on the basis that Renton was a dangerous prisoner – a convicted bank robber who had participated in a prison riot.

“Renton was convicted primarily on the DNA evidence,” Catalyst researcher Robyn Smith recalled. “Renowned forensic scientist Professor Barry Boettcher later investigated that evidence and felt that the interpretation by the Queensland forensic scientist was flawed. And there was a good chance that Renton had been wrongfully convicted. We wanted to do an interview with him but we were denied access.”

Undeterred by QDCS’s refusal the Catalyst team went ahead with their investigation into Renton’s conviction and uncovered further evidence that pointed towards his innocence. The program ‘A Shadow of Doubt’ went to air in June 2002 and subsequently won both national and international awards for investigative scientific journalism. Despite the media investigation and the evidence of Australia’s foremost DNA expert Renton remains in prison.

The official double standards employed by QDCS highlights their attempt to contain or filter all information flowing from the State prisons. Places where men like Brenden James Abbott (The Postcard Bandit) has remained a political prisoner in solitary confinement and sensory deprived since 1998 because he embarrassed Queensland politicians by escaping from the supposedly escape-proof B Block inside the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre at Wacol. Places like the $120 million Wolston Correctional Centre built especially by the Queensland government to house male prisoners convicted of child sex offences and male prisoner/criminal informers before they are fast-tracked through the system.

But, more importantly, it is places like the killing fields of the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre where over thirty men have died unnatural deaths during the last decade that draws a chilling parallel to Abu Ghraib. (An unnatural death is suicide, drug overdose or murder. They are termed unnatural deaths inside prison because prison murders can also be staged to look like suicide or drug overdoses). They are deaths that have been swept under the carpet of Queensland’s prisoneaucracy because the media are refused access and have to rely on the information drip-feed supplied QDCS Media Liaison. Until the information tourniquet is removed from the Queensland prison system incidents like those that occurred inside Abu Ghraib will continue to occur inside Queensland prisons.

Author's Note: Marc Renton is still confined inside the Maximum security block at Townsville Prison PO Box 5574 Townsville Australia 5574 and Brenden Abbott is still confined in solitary confinement at the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, PO Box 1300 RICHLANDS, Queensland Australia 4076. Please show your support by dropping these men a line or a postcard.

This article printed from: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2243
ON LINE opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate
Abuse within prisons makes prisoners more violent upon release.
By Bernie Matthews
Posted Monday, May 31, 2004

Reports of brutality and the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib caused the US government to go into denial until confronted with irrefutable evidence such as photos and digital images of the abuse revealed by the US media. The government’s damage control phase of the scandal sought to circumvent further political embarrassment by quickly apportioning blame to seven US army reservists; Private Lynndie England, Specialist Charles Graner, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, Sergeant Javal Davis, Sergeant Ivan Frederick, Specialist Sabrina Harman and Specialist Megan Ambuhl.

With the exception of Sivits, who pleaded guilty and received a one-year prison sentence on the proviso that he testify against the others, the remaining six accused have all claimed they were following orders from senior intelligence officers and private CIA contractors. Those claims indicate that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not the isolated actions of individuals but rather a deliberate policy of US intelligence officials to soften up detainees and make them more cooperative during questioning.

The Australian public was confronted with similar accusations during 1978 when the NSW Royal Commission into Prisons headed by Justice Nagle found that the NSW Department of Corrective Services and its Ministers of both political persuasions had unofficially sanctioned the systematic brutalisation of prisoners at Grafton Jail from 1943 to 1976. A former Grafton prison guard, John Pettit, testified to the extent of that brutalisation:

"There was a reception committee procedure for all intractable prisoners received at the jail. The committee comprised of select officers who would wait in a Wing to receive the prisoner. I was mainly on patrol duty and was not chosen for the job. The usual procedure was that the prisoner was first stripped and searched. He was then assaulted by the reception officers.

Sometimes three, four or five of them would assault the prisoner with their batons to a condition of semi-consciousness. On occasions the prisoner urinates and his nervous system ceases to function normally. After the flogging he was assigned a cell to recuperate. When he has recuperated he was then marched back to A Wing and there, depending on what he was sent to Grafton for, he is placed in the Special Yards or taken back to his cell and beaten again. This reception procedure for intractables was standard in the three years I was at Grafton Jail. I had frequently seen "tracs" in the showers after their reception and I frequently observed multiple bruises from neck to knee and also numerous welts and abrasions. I also observed the occasional black eye.

During the time I was at Grafton the doctor (I think Prentiss) would not examine these prisoners until the bruises had healed. Sometimes it was about a week or so after the man had been received into the jail before he saw the doctor. (Evidence given by ex-Grafton prison guard, John Pettit, to the NSW Royal Commission into Prisons. Transcript page 3147)."

I was transferred to Grafton as an intractable prisoner on four separate occasions during the period 1971-75 for escaping from prison and assaulting prison guards. Apart from the systematic brutality I personally experienced as an intractable prisoner at Grafton (outlined in my evidence to The NSW Royal Commission into Prisons on March 1978) I also chronicled my observations of the Grafton rehabilitation process and how it impacted upon society outside the walls.

The first significant result of Grafton’s rehabilitation processes was the death of 15 people inside Brisbane’s Whiskey-Au-Go-Go nightclub in March 1973. The men accused and later convicted for that crime were James Richard Finch and John Andrew Stuart. Both were Grafton alumni.
My next observation was how young non-violent offenders turn into crazed killers upon their release from prison after the Grafton experience.

Men like Kevin Crump who teamed up with Alan Baker to commit what a trial judge termed the worst murder in the annals of Australian criminal history. Both men were convicted of the 1973 murder of Virginia Morse, a pregnant grazier’s wife who was raped and butchered in northern NSW.

Archie McCafferty became Australia’s answer to Charlie Manson after he had experienced Grafton and returned to the world outside its walls. During 1973 McCafferty led a drug-crazed gang on an indiscriminate killing spree that resulted in the deaths of three people. McCafferty was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment and served 23 years before he was deported to Scotland in May 1997.

Then there was the young non-violent Russian immigrant, Peter Schneidas, who was so affected by the Grafton experience that he did not wait until he was released from prison before killing. In 1978 Schneidas killed prison guard John Mewburn by pulverising his head with a hammer at Long Bay Jail. Schneidas spent the next 20 years in solitary and isolation inside some of NSW worst prisons until they released him in 1997 and he died from a heroin overdose eight months later, having becoming addicted in prison.

As the years melted into each other my initial observations during the 1970s began to take on significant proportions that indicated an alarming trend – men who had been brutalised by the prison system extracted a shocking revenge on society once they were released. It was a trend that the NSW Department of Corrective Services has never bothered to statistically report. Maybe it would reinforce previous assumptions that physical or psychological brutalisation during the incarceration process was counterproductive beyond comprehension.

Instead of men leaving prison with some degree of rehabilitation they became pressure-cookers of rage and revenge ready to explode on an unsuspecting public once the prison gates opened. It is a trend I have observed over the past 30 years and is not confined to NSW.

The 1971 Jenkinson Inquiry in Victoria revealed how prisoners were brutalised inside H Division at Pentridge and the 1988 Kennedy Report revealed similar abuses inside the Queensland prison system. The Australian public remains blissfully unaware of how its prison systems are a catalyst that contribute to some of the worst violent crimes ever perpetrated in this country.

The most chilling aspect of my 30-year observation of prison’s catalytic contribution to violent crime is that the trend is extending to the next generation. That observation comes from a young man who is presently incarcerated inside the Queensland prison system but due to the QDCS practice of applying a tourniquet to any information flow from its prisons under threat of legal or arbitrary sanction the prisoner must remain anonymous. Here is what he has to say:

"I often wonder what made me such a violent young man by the age of 26. In the real world I over react and have violent thoughts to situations that normal people negotiate in everyday life. I remember being in a fight at school once but apart from that incident I hardly remember having a violent thought in my life - that is prior til I hit the Queensland juvie institutions and kiddies jail.

The day we turned 18 at Sir David Longland CC we were placed into mainstream with some pretty serious, sex-starved, violent-looking dudes. It was sink or swim time. If you knew someone in mainstream and you were lucky enough to be housed in the same unit you had a chance but you had to expect the worst. I knew a lot of kids that got raped as soon as they hit mainstream. The idea was to be accepted as one of "the boys" and blend in or your ass was grass.

One kid, Morris Fisher, hanged himself in his cell. The anticipation of the unknown was too much for him. Another two kids had a fight in our yard. One ended up going on protection. He was placed in K Block with adult protection inmates. Days later he was taken to hospital after being raped and bashed so severely he had to have a facial reconstruction. He was only 17 in the mainstream at SDL CC.

It was around tea-time when we were transferred into B Block. Twelve sets of eyes stared at us. A young guy I had seen before in the boy’s yard came up and asked me if I wanted something to eat. I said, "No, I’m not hungry" but I was starving. “I’m Brendan, Brendan Berichon. You’ll be okay come and watch a bit of telly.” I was so glad he remembered me from the boy’s yard. I knew another guy in the unit from the boy’s yard, Wade Watter, and I felt a little better knowing some familiar faces. About six of the 13 guys in the unit were lifers and all the other adult prisoners were doing long sentences.

I had to learn how to walk the walk and talk the talk or I was going down. I kept to myself and just watched what other prisoners were like and I mimicked them. If someone had an argument with a screw you had to back him up all the way this is how one got accepted and it was also how one survives.

I looked up to the long-timers and modelled myself around them - a survival tactic that works. I started getting into trouble with everyone else. You end up sympathising with the cause and become a product of your own environment. A prison culture derived from despair, thriving on hatred, loneliness and constantly nourished by corrupted administration.

I served five years of my six-and-a-half-year sentence, most of it in B Block and Woodford. I was released but within four weeks I was arrested for unlawful wounding and was sentenced to another five years imprisonment. The following people were products of the boy’s yard at SDL CC that also returned to prison for violent crimes. They are ones that I personally know but there are many many more:
 Tommy got out and committed suicide.
 Brendan Berichon got out and was accused of freeing Brenden Abbott and four other prisoners. He was convicted of shooting two police officers in Melbourne and was returned to prison.
 Wade Watter got out and returned for murder.
 Chris Richards got out and returned for armed robberies.
 Sean O’Loughlin got out and returned for armed robberies.
 Shawn Burdon got out and returned for armed robberies.
 Ryan Higginbotham got out and returned for armed robberies.
 Vance Summers got out and returned for grievous bodily harm.
 Andrew Fraser got out and returned for armed robberies.

Ninety per cent of the kids that went through the boy’s yard at SDL CC have returned for some type of violent crime." (The observations of Christopher from inside a Queensland prison in 2004).

Bernie Matthews is a convicted bank robber and prison escapee who has served time for armed robbery and prison escapes in NSW (1969-1980) and Queensland (1996-2000). During the periods of incarceration he studied journalism and received scholarships to study as an external student at the University of Southern Queensland. His insider's account of Brenden Abbott's escape from Sir David Longlands Correctional Centre, "The Day Cassidy won the Cup" is published in Justice in the Deep North: A Historical Perspective of Crime and Punishment in Queensland.

Disclaimer: The opinions in On Line Opinion are those of the contributors and are not necessarily shared by the editor. All materials, except those from other sites © On Line Opinion 2000-03 ISSN 1442-8458

The Killing Fields of Australia

In Australia the Queensland courts mete out justice but that justice system ends at the gates of the Queensland prison system where a bureaucratic and politically expedient doctrine of ‘out of sight – out of mind’ takes control.

Scott Lawrence Topping, 22, was serving time for $1200 worth of unpaid traffic fines when he was raped and murdered inside Woodford Correctional Centre, Queensland, on 12 September 1997. Topping had three weeks left to serve before his release. Another fine defaulter, Linda Jane Baker, 28, was found hanged in her cell at Townsville Jail on September 9, 1999. She had been serving 11 days for failing to pay an unlicensed driving fine.

Circumstances surrounding the unnatural deaths of Topping and Baker are symptomatic of the secrecy that envelops the Queensland prison system. A self-serving secrecy the Queensland Department of Corrective Services has persistently fostered by applying censorship tourniquets that suppresses politically sensitive information ever reaching the media. The Queensland Corrective Services Act 2000 has been specifically designed to reinforce that process by restricting the media’s access to Queensland prisoners. It is those restrictive practices that have allowed the killing fields of Queensland to flourish under different governments of both political persuasions.

Lee Picton, 26, had served ten months of a 4-year sentence when he was transferred into B Block at the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre during 1999. He was released from SDL CC in a body-bag.

“14 June 1999 and the stretcher went up the Spine of B Block again. The smell of death accompanies it. Word filtered down and by Lock-Up we all knew Lee Picton was dead. They found him laying on the floor of a shithouse in B6. There is an air of expectancy. An urgency. This place is like a morgue. Everyone wants to get away from it. Back to the solitude and safety of their own cells. Then they came in and locked us away. At 2.45am the noise of the screws unlocking and slamming the grates outside the cells in B6 woke me from a deep sleep.

The screws were searching for weapons or evidence. So much for the crime scene protocol. They rumbled around like a herd of elephants playing Sherlock Holmes. And then the collective punishments began. All prisoners in B6 were placed on Section 39. One set of clothes. Only bare essentials. The Squad came in decked out in their Ninja Turtle suits expecting trouble as they began strip-searches and cell ramps. The result of another unnatural death in B Block.” (Extract from personal diary notes smuggled out of the Queensland prison system).

SDL CC has the highest prisoner mortality rate for unnatural deaths than any other Australian maximum-security prison. It is the new-age gladiator’s school of survival where over twenty-eight prisoners have died unnatural deaths during the last decade. It is a place where young prisoners have learned that murder and heroin addiction are accepted norms of prison life because the people who run the system have become immune from outside scrutiny.

SDL CC is the place where David Smith, 21, begged prison guards to place him in protective custody on 28 September 1994 because he feared for his life. Prison guards refused Smith’s request and then revealed his intentions to other prisoners. Smith’s body was found a short time later in his B5 cell with multiple stab wounds. His murder remains unsolved.

Another prisoner, Wayne David Woods, 28, was already on strict Protection inside 5KA at SDL CC when he was found dead. Woods had expressed fears for his life on 23 October 1997 and was locked away in his cell during the afternoon.

The incident was recorded in the Minutes of an SDL CC Management meeting and a memo was circulated to all SDL CC staff working in the Protection Blocks: “Anyone loitering around fishbowl (The cell-block observation points) may need a counsellor i.e. fears for safety.” Three days later Woods was found dead. His death was recorded as suspected suicide.

Michael James “Micky” Adams, 23, was found hanging in his B7 cell on 12 September 1997 shortly after he had received a visit from his family who claimed he had been in good spirits. There was no indication Adams had been contemplating suicide. His death remains questionable because of the methods employed to commit murder inside the killing fields.

Prison deaths fall into two categories - natural and unnatural death. An unnatural death can be defined as murder, suicide or drug overdose. All deaths by drug overdose and suicide by hanging remain questionable because prison murders can be staged to look like suicides or drug overdoses. The term “unnatural death” is more appropriate than the official version of suicide or drug overdose.

The ‘sleeper hold’ which cuts off blood to the brain by exerting pressure on the carotid artery is a legacy that resulted from practices employed by guards to control unruly children in Queensland juvenile institutions.

The products of State run juvenile institutions carried the practice into the adult prison system where it is now used as a weapon for murder - a technique employed to render victims helpless before they are strung up to give the appearance of suicide by hanging.

In the pursuit of election issues Queensland politicians have consistently embraced law and order policies but the end result of those policies, the juvenile and adult incarceration process, has been generally ignored because prisoners don’t vote. Legislative power that has been routinely bestowed upon the QDCS has allowed that bureaucracy to reinforce and perpetuate censorship policies that restricts media access to prisoners for its own self-serving interest and shrouds the entire prison system with a veil of secrecy. The threat of that legislative power is regularly employed by departmental lawyers.

In 1996 former Courier Mail journalist, Ms Ella Riggert, was fined $1050 for conducting an interview with Tracey Wiggington, the alleged ‘vampire killer’, at Brisbane Womens Prison. Two other Queensland journalists, Ms Lou Robson and Channel Nine reporter, Margueritte Rossi, also suffered the same fate when they conducted ‘unauthorised’ telephone interviews with prisoners from the Woodford and Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centres. Both journalists were fined $300 but no conviction was recorded.

If the Queensland government remains steadfast in its determination to support QDCS policies that restrict media access to prisoners then the time has arrived for a Royal Commission to make those tax-payer funded institutions transparent. The unnatural deaths of Scott Topping, Linda Baker, Lee Picton, David Smith, Wayne Woods and Mickey Adams combine with a growing list of unsolved murders inside the Queensland killing fields that reinforces the proposition.

The families of the victims from the killing fields of Queensland are owed no less. :angry:

Christmas in B Block.

There was an air of expectancy inside B Block at the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre. It was Christmas. Yuletide. The festive season. A time of peace and goodwill to all men.

In the week before Christmas nothing had stirred in our house. The contractors had already sprayed for roaches, fleas, flies and mice but the roaches were guaranteed to re-emerge once the effect of the watered down spray lost its potency. The heat and muggy conditions inside the cells helped to breathe life back into their tormented existence. It was an existence that meant dodging a flying thong or the slap of a wet towel as they scavenged through the cells during the night searching for crumbs and other morsels of leftover food that might be lying around.

Televisions in B Block fluctuated between Christmas savings at Michael Hill Jewellers and the bombing of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq while the screws (prison guards) geared up for their usual round of parties and beery cheer.

The prisoners contented themselves with private thoughts of parole, remission and release that mingled with hazy dreams of a family and friends. At home. At Christmas. In another place.

It was about that time when old Merv hobbled into the Education Block. I hadn’t seen him for nearly two years since the Remand Centre in ‘96.

A spinal operation had left Merv with an awkward limp that made it hard for him to walk but he had managed to master a crab-style gait that enabled him to get around without the aid of a walking stick. His tenacity and perseverance was a credit to every step he gained without falling over.

“Hello mate. What’s ya doin’?” Merv said with a cheeky grin.

“Ten years mate.”

The cynical reply was lost on Merv but his obvious pleasure at seeing an old familiar face was apparent.

“Ya know where the Education Officer is? He asked. “Gotta get some courses done to get me classification points down.”

The Education Officer wasn’t around, as a matter of fact he was never around, so I invited Merv to sit down and have a cuppa. He didn’t need a second invitation. There’s nothing Merv likes better than to reminisce with another old crim. Especially about days gone past.

The Road. The Bay. Parramatta and Pentridge. He had been there and seen it all. The time when they had shit tubs in Two Jail. And the riots of ’87 in The Road. The escapes that succeeded. And the escapes that had come undone.

“Remember when they drove through the front gate at Boggo Road in the garbage truck?” Merv chuckled.

“Who was that bloke . . . McHardie? . . . McWilliams? . . . McSweeney? That’s him. McSweeney.”

Merv’s face came alight at his own ability to remember a name from over a decade ago.

“Yeah that’s the bloke. McSweeney. And they pinched him up in Toowoomba. Channel Seven was there with their helicopter when he got pinched. That Frank Warrick. The tv broadcaster. Yeah . . . I remember . . . and McSweeney escaped again. He ended up getting shot the next time.”

Merv was an accomplished jailyard raconteur with a treasure trove of memories. Some reckon he could talk under water with a mouthful of marbles. And maybe he could.

Merv recounted jailyard stories about incidents and legends that have been handed down through generations of jail time in a place where years are only remembered by the events that happened inside the walls. Some are funny. And some are not so funny. Some are true and some are not so true. Merv knew them all.

Old Merv has rubbed shoulders with some of the hardest men on any prison exercise yard but his memory of those men and their exploits sometimes got blurred with his own pain.

It was the pain of a man with acute myeloid leukaemia. Terminal cancer. A pain that complemented the mind altering chemotherapeutic drugs that forced Merv’s memory chip to go on the blink every now and again.

Once the fog lifted from his tortured mind the crystal clear clarity of yesteryear returned with another story. And they all have the same unmistakable ring of truth to them. The truth of man who knows what he is talking about. It was all that Merv had left. Jailyard memories.

Old Merv was not a killer. Or a serial rapist. And I don’t think he’s ever robbed a bank. Merv was just an old knockabout. A ‘boob head’. Part of the regular flotsam and jetson that float through Australia’s prison system every year. He was a ‘boob had’ who had notched up a few receiving charges (thirty two in fact) and was faced with a terminal sentence that a Court of Criminal Appeal could not reverse.

Merv’s life expectancy was terminal. Some said he had less than a year. He had become another statistic in the law and order game that dominated Queensland politics. He was the human face on a roulette wheel of prison policy that claimed an unfettered mandate to protect the community from violent offenders even though “receiving stolen goods” has not reached the Public Enemy Number One stage yet -- at least not by Queensland standards.

Merv’s voice interrupted my critical analysis.

“Got emptied up to Woodford last year.” He said. “I got self-bail on the receiving blues in April . . . they date back to ‘95 . . . and got paroled in May.”

Merv had been on parole for seven months and had reported to Police three times each week as part of his bail requirements. During that time he had registered for a bone marrow transplant at The Brisbane Mater Hospital.

“I fronted Brisbane Magistrates Court but ‘the beak’* took my bail.” Merv complained. “Said he had reasonable doubts about whether I would appear on the receiving charges. Five fail to appears and an escape in ‘79 put the lid on it.”

“For Chrissake mate, I couldn’t piss off if I wanted to.” He chuckled. “I’d chuck a wobbly. Look at me . . . Steady Eddy could run a mile before I’d walk a yard.”

I had to agree. Merv’s chances of pulling a Skase were not realistic by any stretch of the imagination. The leukaemia was evidence of that. Nevertheless, courts and prisons are unemotional precincts that base their assessments on past history -- and Merv’s history was not exemplary in regard to court appearances and the odd escape or two even if it was twenty years ago.

“They sent me back to the Remand Centre and a bloke on Sentence Classification over there told me I was High Security. One hundred and thirty point High. I nearly wet meself laughing.” Merv chuckled uncontrollably. “One hundred and thirty points! Fair dinkum mate, they tried to say I was Darcy Dugan, Russel Cox and Brendan Abbott rolled into one ‘cos I ran away in ‘79.

Merv’s uncontrollable bout of laughter depleted the remaining oxygen supply in his battered lungs as he wheezed for another breath.

“This system . . . this system is stuffed . . .” Merv gasped between breaths, “ The system is ratshit mate . . . I’m telling ya it’s stuffed these days.”

Nobody knows why they dumped Merv in B Block. A place where fresh air and sunlight had become a privilege since the Melbourne Cup Day escape of ‘97.

Merv wasn’t there then but he had seen it all going down on tv. The news flashes. The drama. And the political grandstanding. Then slowly . . . one by one . . . The recaptures. The stringent security with extra cladding over cell windows and the exercise yards in B Block had become a legacy of the escape.

B Block had become the dumping ground for men that other Queensland prisons did not want and I wondered what Merv had done to achieve the dubious honour of being on B Block’s nominal roll.

“Over at Remand they said I would have to do some educational courses to get me points down”. Merv explained after his breathing returned to normal.

“Get me points down! I told them I would be probably dead before I could finish any of his bloody courses and that shut him up. Next thing I know I am on the van to Longlands. Too hot to handle”. Merv said philosophically. “No jail wants me in case I croak it. So I get to spend Christmas at SDL”

Merv stood up to leave. I slipped him some coffee and a few teabags. He immediately shoved them down the front of his jocks. The jailhouse snooker. Old habits die hard.

We said our goodbyes and Old Merv hobbled away in his unique crab-like style.

I watched a couple of the young crims hold the door open for Merv as he hobbled through. They followed him up The Spine of B Block to their Units. I watched their receding backs and I pondered about old Merv, Christmas in B Block and the upcoming generation of young crims . . .

They expect us to learn compassion but they show no compassion to those in their control.

They want us to learn the value of life but they devalue life by throwing a dying man into B Block.

They claim that B Block is for hardened crims. The no-hopers. The intractables. Then they fill it with the sick, the infirm or the young.

The hypocrisy of a system that is epitomised by law and order policies that only result in more people coming to prison for lesser crimes.

And politicians still beat their breasts about tougher laws and longer terms of imprisonment.

Inside the cladded surrealistic world of B Block at SDL CC old Merv struggled with his terminal sentence and fought the shadows to find a bit of sunlight or fresh air.

The system is doing an admirable job of shaping the upcoming young minds of the next generation. Christmas? Bah! Humbug!


* the beak - a magistrate.

Hey Oz, your keeping me busy with these stickys :) I appreciate all your input in the aussie forums as well, it means alot to me.

THE LEGEND OF DARCY DUGAN.

Born to a world of prisons
outliving a life of strife,
They called him gunman
and gangster
and labels equally concise.

In a world of grog shops
and bookies
with cockatoos on the fence* -
his pockets overflowed
with pounds, shillings and pence*.

There were trams
And Trocaderos*
and shootings up the Cross;
when the Darlo beak* full-stopped him
and hit him with the lot*.

He escaped the tram
And the cells
And the prison on the Bay*.
Then they moved him up to Grafton*
and bashed his sins away.

With spirit unbroken
he led the riot of sixty-three
then tried to do a runner
but they smashed him
to his knees.

Served up with batons*,
and boiling water too,
he took his lumps
without a whimper
as they flogged him black and blue.

I miss the old man
and our walks upon the yard
it was there,
deference got paid,
to the hardest of the hard.

A success among failures,
in that place of the living dead.
His caged memories,
stifle reality,
in a seventy-five-year head.

A decade has passed
since they put him in the ground
but the legend that is Dugan,
now roams freely,
all the prisons of this land.


 *the Darlo beak is NSW prison jargon for a judge at Darlinghurst Criminal Court in Sydney, NSW, Australia.
 *the lot is NSW prison jargon for a life sentence.
 *the Bay is the former Long Bay State Penitentiary in Sydney, NSW, Australia.
 *cockatoos on the fence is prison jargon for somebody who is the lookout.
 *pounds, shillings and pence was Australian pre-decimal currency.
 *The Trocadero was a Sydney dance hall circa 1940s & 1950s.
 *Grafton Jail was the Alcatraz of the NSW prison system 1943-1976.
 *Served up with batons is NSW prison jargon for a baton-whipping by prison guards.



Darcy Ezekial Dugan was a Sydney bank robber and jail-breaker. He was the last man sentenced to death in NSW after being convicted of shooting a bank manager during the armed robbery of the Ultimo Commonwealth Bank in 1950. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and he served over 30 years inside NSW prisons.

Darcy Dugan was a serial jail-breaker who escaped from the prison tram, escort vans and NSW prisons. He was sent to The Alcatraz of the NSW prison system at Grafton during the 1960s where he was brutalised by prison guards for his repeated escapes. He led a mutiny inside Grafton Jail and tried to escape from the jail. Dugan suffered a stroke in 1987 and was released from prison.

Darcy Dugan died in a nursing home in August 1991. He is buried in Sydney’s Rookwood cemetery.

The Prison/Crime Movie Genre

The release of Pauline Hanson from Wolston Correctional Centre on November 6, 2003 rekindled a vicarious interest in prisons and the criminal justice system. When Ms Hanson attended a special screening of Getting’ Square, a movie written by Gold Coast lawyer Chris Nyst, her rave reviews were accorded credibility from an insider’s perspective although she had only spent eleven weeks in prison.

Getting’ Square is a humorous approach to the criminal milieu that closely resembles another Australian movie Two Hands. Both movies portray criminals as whacky characters that conduct business with dialogues liberally dosed in slang and expletives and plots that undermine the realism of established career criminals.

Chopper, based on the self-promoted life story of Mark Brandon Read, gave a rare glimpse of criminal realism and the bloody-minded violence that accompanies most career moves within the Australian criminal culture. Blue Murder dragged its audience through the Sydney gutters of crime and corruption to where demarcation lines between police and criminals blurred with organised crime. The story of Neddy Smith’s rise to power in the Sydney underworld, inextricably linked to the sale of heroin and a green light (permission to commit crime free of police interference) given to him by notorious Sydney rogue cop Roger Rogerson, was graphically delivered from the screen in a no-holds-barred expose.

Getting’ Square fails to deliver any social messages. It is light-hearted escapism whose characters are molded in a similar winning formula set by US lawyer/author John Grisham whose books; The Pelican Brief, A Time to Kill and Runaway Jury, have all been successfully adapted to the screen. Like Grisham, Chris Nyst draws on his legal expertise to deliver fictional characters based on past clients and events drawn from the archives of his criminal briefs.


(Some Getting’ Square characters have a striking resemblance to real-life Gold Coast career criminals Edward ‘Chicka’ Reeves and Ronny ‘The Fat Man’ Feeney who have both departed this world – Feeney from cancer and Reeves from a bullet delivered by a Sydney contract killer. His underworld murder remains unsolved.)

Getting’ Square has strong audience appeal but the title remains a misnomer. ‘Getting square’ or ‘squaring up’ has distinct implications in Australian criminal jargon of which Chris Nyst should be aware. It has no bearing on the movie’s implication of trying to go straight or giving up a life of crime. Getting square is the primeval act of revenge. Revenge on an informer or somebody who has transgressed the protocols and proprieties of criminal boundaries.

The inevitable consequence of crime depicted by Getting’ Square, Two Hands, Chopper and Bluer Murder is prison. Not the celluloid prison of Ronnie Barker’s Porridge but real prison laid bare by Pauline Hanson’s emotional 60 Minutes interview which revealed a tearful insight into what it is all about. The reality of squat and cough strip searches, cell doors slamming shut, body-bags containing the corpse of young prisoners and the coldness of an incarceration process that doesn’t give a damn. It is an emotive reality that few Australian movies have been able to effectively capture.

British and US film companies have continually explored the prison movie genre from different angles in an attempt to deliver realism to an impenetrable world contained behind the walls, guard towers and razor wire of the prison system. Different aspects of the system have been graphically and realistically captured by movies such as; Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, Papillion, The Hurricane, McVicar, A Sense of Freedom, and The Shawshank Redemption.



Some movies are more incisive in their examination of prison sub-cultures than others. The Defiant Ones (1958) revealed an inherent racist culture that pervades most US prison populations when Joker Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Pottier) escape from a southern chain gang manacled together. The movie explores the black and white relationship of two men forced to work as a team if they want to survive.

Survival on a southern chain gang is the main theme of Cool Hand Luke (1967) in which Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) is the prolific escaper who pits himself against authority in a constant test of wills. Adapted from the book written by Don Pearce, who served time on a Louisiana chain gang for safe cracking, the movie explores the oppositional forces of individuality and authority. The portrayal of Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward) as the prison guard who never speaks but constantly surveys the chain gang through reflector sunglasses epitomises the sinister pervasiveness that is prison.

The complexities of the southern chain gangs where prisoners were elevated to the role of trustee and earned freedom by stopping others from escaping was a concept imported into Australia and employed at the NSW Mt Penang Training School for Boys at Gosford. It allowed privileged trustees to chase ‘runners’ or ‘dingoes’ and forcibly drag them back to the institution where they were punished for escaping. The concept instilled a ruthless manipulation of authority but was abandoned by US prison authorities following the discovery of murdered prisoners buried in unmarked graves at Tucker Prison Farm in Arkansas during the 1970s. The scandal became the theme for Brubaker and explored how politicians allow cover-ups to perpetuate a corrupt and evil system.



The warehousing system of segregating the worst of the worst, the intractables or the ‘Dirty Thirties’ of the US prison system, resulted with a Federal prison on Alcatraz in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz set the scene for many prison movies designed to exhibit a deterrent value with underlying messages of good triumphs over evil where Alcatraz was the end of the line. The underlying message, like the prison itself, dismally failed society in that regard.

Burt Lancaster’s portrayal of the convicted killer Robert Stroud in The Birdman of Alcatraz illustrated the futility and counter-productivity of isolation by solitary confinement. The movie also reveals the frustration of trying to rehabilitate behind prison walls. Escape from Alcatraz and Alcatraz The Whole Shocking Story reveal the failure of a system designed to brutalise men by isolation and solitary confinement. The end product of that brutalising system is graphically captured by the true story of Henry Young in Murder in the First (1995).

Young (Kevin Bacon) was sent to Alcatraz after he stole five dollars from a convenience store/post-office resulting in his arrest for a federal offence. An attempt to escape from Alcatraz earned Young three years in solitary confinement (a stark reminder of the days when The Hole at Boggo Road Jail was used for the same purpose). Within hours of his release from solitary Young murdered the prisoner informer responsible and was charged with murder in the First Degree. The State requested the death penalty. In a riveting journey through the incarceration process that creates men like Henry Young his subsequent murder trial became a social indictment against the entire US prison system and resulted with the subsequent closure of Alcatraz in 1962.






The story of Henry Young and Murder in the First has a chilling parallel to the current Maximum Security Units inside the Arthur Gorrie and Sir David Longland Correctional Centres at Wacol where survival in the new-age gladiator schools of the incarceration process also change young prisoners forever. Ghosts of the Civil Dead and Scum reinforce those observations of a prison system rarely revealed to the public.

In Queensland the prison movie genre has suffered from legislative restrictions designed to stop media access to prisons and prisoners while continuing to envelop the system in a cloak of bureaucratic secrecy. The determination of prison bosses not to allow any repeat exposes of their incarceration processes is evidenced by the embarrassment caused with the 1988 award winning ABC tele-documentary Out of Sight – Out of Mind when it revealed how Australian prisons are also failing their obligation to society.

Despite Queensland’s legislative restrictions the Victorian and NSW prison systems have been successfully and critically dissected in Every Night Every Night and Stir.

The iconoclastic Stir written by ex-prisoner Bob Jewson explores the lead up to the February 1974 Bathurst Riot that resulted in total destruction of NSWs most brutal maximum-security jail. Jewson’s first hand experience of life inside Bathurst Jail during that period has been successfully transposed onto the screen with devastating realism.







Every Night, Every Night adapted from a stage play written by Ray Mooney, unveils the story of H Division inside Pentridge (the Alcatraz of the Victorian prison system), where systematic and institutionalised violence was an everyday occurrence used to rehabilitate prisoners. Mooney served eight years inside Pentridge and was transferred into H Division for being a spokesman during a riot. When he refused to break rocks in the labor yards he was subjected to intolerable brutality at the hands of prison guards led by a Chief Prison Officer dubbed ‘Hitler’.

Mooney’s experience of H Division has been captured for posterity in the movie but the title reveals an underlying anger and hatred that illustrates the pressure cooker syndrome slowly bubbling away until the gates of freedom are opened and it explodes on an unsuspecting society.

Mooney’s explanation of the connection between H Division and the movie title reinforce the counter-productivity of Australia’s incarceration processes:

“I coped (inside H Division) by resigning from the human race and dreamed every night of what I would do to the bastards when I got a chance.”

Mooney never returned to prison. He failed in his H Division ambition to get square with society and the prison system. Today Ray Mooney is a successful Victorian director with more than fifty plays to his credit. His most recent film script The Truth Game explores the 1988 murder of two Victorian police officers in Melbourne’s Walsh Street.

I can understand you "oz ex prisoner" when you say you don't want to make your experiences into film or books. I'm 21 and have been in and out of prison since I was 17 and am awaiting a court appearance at the moment.

People either don't give a .... or don't want to believe what goes on inside. And whatever abuse your dealt with inside is acceptable. What I learnt is you can never beat the system - all you have inside is your pride. If I believe something is right nobody's telling me different no matter the consequences.

I recently watched "Stir", not many prison films show realism like that. I've never experienced anything as extreme as the riot in that film but the personality and posture of some officers must be stereotypical world wide.

My best friend Davey has just been sent back to prison for violation of probation - we were both sent down for robbery and posession of firearm in '99. We were Both foolish teens who were promising young boxers. Prison for the majority is a place that fuels anger and violence.

Still, prison life today must be a hell of a lot easier compared to the time you spent inside. I probably would be looking for those officers you wrote about who retired! How do you deal with the anger?

Hi 197, good to see you are out - my advice. Stay out! I agree that prison fuels anger and violence. I have watched the trend over 30 years. The only thing that changes in that regard are the names and the faces. How do I deal with anger? I try to not let it consume me. cheers. It is a good life out here. enjoy it. Oz ex-prisoner

This is an edited version of 'DNA and The Justice Game' first published in the June 2004 Winter edition of The Griffith Review-Making Perfect Bodies published by ABC Books Australia and Griffith university Queensland Australia.


There Ain’t No Sympathy in a Queensland Prison
by Bernie Matthews. (Approximate Word Count 6250)

I had just received double digits for the Brisbane National Australia Bank robbery when they transferred me into B Block at the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre. A jail with the fearsome reputation as the killing fields of the Sunshine State. This new age gladiator school of Queensland’s prison system had spawned a breed of violent younger prisoner I had never encountered during my years in southern prisons. They were fueled by a mixture of heroin and an insane desire to reach the top of the prison pecking order by killing each other. Their ascendancy was symbolised by the tattooed abbreviation NBK (natural born killer) which reinforced the reality of jail time becoming a terminal sentence inside SDLCC. In that feeding frenzy of reputation building I met Marc Renton.

Marc Andre Renton is no choir boy. A man in his late twenties who had already achieved a career criminal tag for armed robbery Marc walked the hard yards after he led the 1992 Townsville prison riot in a quest for humane treatment and better conditions for prisoners. It cost him a few busted bones and more years on top of his sentence but it also earned him respect in the yard. Not a respect fuelled by heroin, jail murders or NBK tattoos. It was a healthy respect for a stand-up bloke who would not take shit from the screws or the wannabes.

Older crims took the young Queenslander under their wing. He was a reincarnation of their heydays. A man with principles who cannot be bought or sold with a fifty dollar shot of heroin is rare in today’s maximum-security prisons. They showed their respect. Marc returned that respect by listening to the elder statesmen of the prison yard. He learned from their mistakes and benefited by their wisdom. Now it was his turn to ask for their help and advice.

I was one of the privileged to hear the story of a young man sent to prison for a crime he had not committed. A young man unskilled in the intricacies of a legal system that relied upon forensic scientists and their interpretation of DNA evidence to convict him. Marc simply said he had not committed the bank robbery he was in jail for. And I believe him.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the most effective weapon in the arsenal of Australian law enforcement agencies. It is the human blue-print that determines eye colour, height, blood type and inherited disorders found in the genetic structure of human cells. It is an individual genetic code and, like fingerprints, cannot be duplicated.

DNA profiling and the introduction of DNA-based evidence into Australian courts first occurred in 1989 with the convictions of Desmond Applebee for sexual assault in the ACT and Gerald Kaufman’s conviction on 16 counts of rape in Victoria. The Queensland criminal justice system embraced DNA profiling after the 1998 conviction of Lloyd Clark Fletcher for the July 19, 1987 rape and murder of 15-year-old Janet Phillips.

A vaginal swab taken from Phillips during the 1987 post mortem contained sperm samples that were stored and finally matched Fletcher’s DNA after he was arrested in 1997. Ken Cox, a forensic scientist from Queensland’s John Tonge Centre gave evidence that; “the probability of finding someone in the community with the exact DNA would be about one in 6.4 billion.” Fletcher was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Marc Renton’s introduction to the forensic interpretation of DNA evidence also resulted from the testimony of Ken Cox. This was the turning point that put him in prison for 14 years on April 25, 1997 after he was convicted of robbing the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point National Australia Bank branches in May/June 1996. Brunetta Festa, 35, was also charged in relation to the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point bank hold-ups in what the Queensland media dubbed “The Bonnie and Clyde Robberies”.

Police arrested Renton at Runaway Bay on June 16, 1996 while he was unlawfully at large. He had been released from Borallon Correctional Centre where he was serving time for armed robbery but failed to report to a parole officer upon his release and an apprehension warrant was issued for his return to prison. He was charged with three bank robberies that occurred at Morningside, Biggera Waters and Paradise Point while he was free.

Police claimed distinct similarities existed between the three bank robberies that was consistent with a proposition that one offender had been involved in all three robberies. They targeted Marc Renton as that offender.

Detective Sergeant Peter Gray reinforced the proposition when he later testified that he had not encountered a similar modus operandi of bandits breaking into a bank for the purpose of committing an armed robbery when the premises was closed to the public with staff still inside. Gray claimed he obtained the evidence from an inspection of armed robbery records contained on a police database dating back to April 1995.

The contention that distinct similarities existed between the three bank robberies fell short when Renton was acquitted for the Morningside robbery. The similar fact evidence linking the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point bank robberies fell into further disrepute with the arrest and conviction of ‘The Postcard Bandit’, Brenden James Abbott, who specialised in the bank robbing modus operandi described by Detective Sgt Gray.

Although not available at the time of Renton’s 1997 trial, Abbott provided a sworn affidavit on October 31, 2000 that disputes the similar fact evidence of Detective Sergeant Peter Gray that was and offered by the Crown to link the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point bank robberies:

“I have been made aware of the circumstances of the District Court trial in
relation to Mr Marc RENTON. In particular I have been familiarised with the evidence relating to the alleged modus operandi of Mr RENTON in the manner in which he conducted the robberies.

“I disagree with the evidence of Detective Sergeant Peter Gray that these robberies exhibited a unique modus operandi in the manner in which entry was gained to the bank and whilst staff but not customers were within the bank. For example the robbery in January 1995 of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia at the Pines Shopping Centre at Elanora of which I was convicted. The modus operandi used in this robbery was entry through the roof whilst staff but not customers were in attendance.

Dark clothing and balaclavas were said to have been used and police frequencies were said to have been monitored.

I was also convicted of the robbery of the National Australia Bank at Springwood on 16 April 1992. The facts of this robbery were that the branch had just closed and staff were still conducting activities within. Entry was gained by breaking through the back door, police frequencies monitored and attention was paid to the branch’s main safe.

I was also convicted of the robbery of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia at Pacific Fair on 24 December 1993. Again entry was gained through a door before opening time it was alleged disguises were worn. Police frequencies were monitored and again the bank’s central sections were targeted. I am able to provide evidence of further similar modus operandi’s in bank robberies in other parts of Queensland and in South Australia. In some instances in relation to robberies of which I have been convicted it has been alleged that I have had co-accused that have never been arrested.”

The establishment of similar fact evidence linking the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point bank robberies, discredited by Renton’s acquittal for the Morningside bank robbery and later by Abbott’s October 2000 affidavit, relied upon DNA evidence that allegedly linked Renton to the Biggera Waters bank robbery.

The trial of Renton and Festa began on April 2, 1997 but was marred with controversy from the outset when Festa jumped bail and fled interstate. Festa remained a fugitive until her 1998 recapture in Sydney, but her absence from the dock did not compel Judge Hangar to abort the trial and it continued with Renton as the sole accused.

Renton’s jury was allowed to witness the most stringent security precautions ever show-cased by the Queensland Police Department, despite a lack of evidence indicating Renton also intended to abscond. The security overkill included permanent manacles and leg shackles on Renton and use of the elite Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) to sweep courtrooms and visitors with metal detectors. Outside the Southport court complex police snipers displayed a presence from the roof for the remainder of the trial.

In that highly charged atmosphere Ken Cox testified he completed a second examination of a blue balaclava found inside the stolen white Ford Laser allegedly used in the Biggera Waters robbery and isolated a stain that yielded a DNA sample. Cox had originally conducted an examination of the same blue balaclava on August 21, 1996 and during that examination he tested two areas of fabric in the balaclava in an attempt to isolate DNA that could originate from mouth cells via saliva but found none.

Although Cox’s second examination on April 17, 1997, two weeks into Renton’s trial, did not correspond with his examination of the blue balaclava eight months earlier, he swore that the newly found DNA samples belonged to Renton, Festa and a third unidentified person.

The Crown’s circumstantial case was bolstered by the interpretation of the DNA evidence delivered by Ken Cox and the timing of its inclusion restricted Renton’s defence counsel from conducting independent tests. The trial judge allowed the DNA evidence to go before the jury untested. As a result Renton was convicted.

When Marc Renton came back to prison with a 14 year sentence the Queensland Department of Corrective Services (QDCS) was determined to make him serve every day in the most punitive sections of the State prisons. It was easy to see this as payback for his participation in the 1992 prison riot. Queensland prisoneaucrats take their revenge options very seriously and Renton was not legally or politically connected so they acted with impunity. They had no reluctance to make a man do hard time for a crime he claimed he didn’t commit.

Marc and I walked the yard inside B Block at SDLCC where I listened to his story. His sincerity had a ring of truth to it. DNA was the stumbling block I could not get my head around. Wasn’t DNA set in concrete? Irrefutable proof that tied an offender to a crime? So why would an obviously intelligent young prisoner persist in his claim of being innocent knowing that DNA evidence conclusively established guilt? You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise something didn’t gel.

I vaguely remembered a similar situation of faulty forensic evidence being discredited in the Lindy Chamberlain case. I was doing time inside Parklea when independent examination of the forensic evidence cleared Chamberlain. I realised that that was what Marc Renton needed: independent scientific examination of the DNA evidence to either prove or disprove his claim of innocence. Thus began the quest for the identity of the scientist who conducted the independent forensic testing. The prison library gave up the name and address in the appendix of a book written about the Chamberlain case.

Barry Boettcher, Professor Emeritus of Biological Science at the University of Newcastle and a Member of the Order of Australia for his work in the field of reproductive immunology, was the man. The foremost DNA expert in Australia.

Professor Boettcher practiced and taught the principles of scientific method involving DNA structure and its use in forensic work. He also taught courses on forensic biology including the use of variable DNA sequences that resulted in collaboration with overseas scientists to publish studies of variable DNA sequences suitable for use in forensic work.

Marc Renton wrote to Professor Boettcher and asked for his help.

Eighteen months after Renton was convicted Professor Boettcher reviewed the evidence presented at Renton’s trial: trial transcripts, DNA profile collation sheets, gene scan analysis print-outs and two statutory declarations sworn by Ken Cox on October 14, 1996 and April 17, 1997. He concluded that the DNA evidence used to convict Renton was scientifically incorrect and that the methodology used by the Crown’s DNA expert was wrong.

“It is apparent that, at the trial of Mr Renton, the court was given wrong scientific opinion about the possible presence of DNA originating from Mr Renton being found on the balaclava.”

Although Professor Boettcher’s interpretation of the DNA evidence cleared Renton of bank robbery the Queensland government was not convinced it was sufficient to release him from prison or institute an inquiry into his conviction. The options for Marc Renton were running out because he had already lost an appeal to the Supreme Court based on points of law and Queensland law only allowed one appeal against conviction. The fresh DNA evidence that established his innocence remained in limbo while he remained in prison.

When the ABC-TV Catalyst program began to examine the interpretation of DNA evidence used in Australian criminal trials they also discovered further discrepancies in the DNA evidence used to convict Marc Renton. Catalyst researcher, Ms Robyn Smith, made a formal request to interview Renton in the maximum-security block of Townsville prison after he had been transferred from SDL CC in 2000.

“Renton was convicted primarily on the DNA evidence,” Ms Smith recalled. “Renowned forensic scientist Professor Barry Boettcher later investigated that evidence and felt that the interpretation by the Queensland forensic scientist was flawed, and there was a good chance that Renton had been wrongfully convicted. We were featuring Renton’s case in our June 27, 2002 program. We wanted to do an interview with him but we were denied access.”

QDCS refused permission on the grounds that Renton was a dangerous prisoner – a convicted bank robber who had participated in a prison riot. The connection between the 1992 prison riot and Renton’s pursuit of justice was not relevant. It was clear that Queensland prisoneaucrats continued to take their revenge options very seriously and they were not about to let any possible miscarriage of justice circumvent them.

The ABC-TV Catalyst program was undeterred, and went ahead with its investigation into his case and the scientific interpretation of DNA evidence used to convict him. When the controversial program “A Shadow of Doubt” was broadcast on June 27, 2002 Catalyst presenter, Karina Kelly, interviewed both Barry Boettcher and Ken Cox. It revealed a chilling insight into how the interpretation of scientific evidence can be tilted to favour the prosecution.

Professor Boettcher explained there were four peaks of DNA in the forensic analysis that was presented during the Renton trial. Those peaks were best interpreted as DNA coming from two people and excluded Renton because his DNA was not present. The evidence presented in court assumed the four peaks came from three people because that interpretation favoured the prosecution case against Renton.

Cox was asked why he had concluded there were three people present in the DNA profile, but he denied that he came to that scientifically incorrect conclusion. Karina Kelly dropped a bombshell when she confronted Cox with the transcript of his evidence in the Renton trial to which he had testified; “well in the DNA isolated from the balaclava, it was obvious that it was a mixture of more than two people.” (transcript p. 748) Again on page 754 he testified; “I can only say that there were more than two donors. I mean there were only more than two donors to that DNA.”

While the DNA interpretation and testimony of Cox was accepted by the court that put Marc Renton away for 14 years, the Catalyst program uncovered another disturbing factor – the DNA evidence presented at Renton’s trial could implicate 94 percent of the white Australian population who would have DNA that would fit into those four peaks.
(The credibility of the Catalyst program “A Shadow of Doubt” was reinforced when it won a prestigious US television award for investigative scientific journalism. In Australia the program also became a finalist in the 2003 ATOM awards.)

The interpretation of DNA evidence used in Queensland criminal trials became a matter of concern when Professor Michael Moore, the then Director of Queensland Health and Scientific Services, revealed to the media in May 2002 that the John Tonge Centre had not received accreditation by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) until 1999, two years after the Renton trial. Despite that accreditation the JTC continued to bungle DNA evidence used in other serious cases.

Charges in the 1997 Arnott's biscuit extortion case were dropped as a result of flawed DNA testing procedures at the JTC. Tweed Heads great-grandmother, Joy Ellen Thomas, 72, was accused of threatening to poison the company's biscuits unless four Sydney detectives took lie-detector tests concerning evidence they gave against her son, convicted murderer Ronald Henry Thomas. The prosecution against Mrs Thomas relied heavily on evidence from forensic biologist Barry Blair who conducted DNA testing for the Crown at the John Tonge Centre.

Blair testified that DNA extracted from a stamp on one of the extortion letters matched the DNA of Mrs Thomas but the stamp had not been tested for saliva so it could not be determined if Mrs Thomas had licked the stamp or not. Blair claimed that although such testing would have identified the source of the cells it would have ruined any chance of recovering the DNA profile.

During the pre-trial hearing on April 24, 2002, Blair changed his opinion about the key DNA evidence after another forensic biologist hired by the defence, Lazlo Szabo from Tasmania’s Forensic Science Laboratory Centre, revealed the existence of a second DNA profile from an unknown person also present on the stamp. Szabo’s report, detailing the second DNA profile, was given to the Crown two months before the pre-trial hearing. Although the presence of the second person’s DNA was indicated within a table in Blair’s reports it was not mentioned in the text.

When questioned about the second DNA profile during the pre-trial hearing Blair testified; “I’m not disputing the fact that there could be a weak profile present,” but he claimed the second profile was a “stutter” – an anomaly in the testing procedures.

The presence of a second DNA profile was evidence that could have freed Mrs Thomas months earlier but the Crown opted to remain silent about its existence until they were forced to concede the legal significance of two DNA profiles being present during the pre-trial hearing.

Prosecutor, Paul Rutledge, claimed the Crown’s silence resulted from a difference of opinion between the two experts but District Court Judge Michael Shanahan warned him that he would be forced to tell the jury; “it would be dangerous to convict on this material,” if he pursued the prosecution.

The five-year campaign to prosecute Mrs Thomas collapsed when Rutledge, who had successfully prosecuted Ronald Henry Thomas at his 1994 murder trial, was forced to discontinue the Crown case and withdrew the charges in Brisbane Supreme Court on April 26, 2002.

The withdrawal of charges averted a potential miscarriage of justice and revealed the presence of faulty or inadequate DNA testing in Queensland. It also highlighted the reliance placed on DNA evidence by some Queensland prosecutors that included the acceptance of inconclusive or questionable DNA evidence in their pursuit of criminal convictions.

Another bungle at the JTC forced Frank Alan Button, 32, to serve ten months of a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 13-year-old intellectually impaired girl before independent DNA testing also established his innocence.
The young girl claimed she had been assaulted during a party at her mother's home at Cherbourg, southern Queensland, on February 17, 1999. The girl was taken to the local hospital and subjected to a full examination during which internal swabs, nail clippings, pubic hair and blood samples were taken.

The swabs and samples were sent to the JTC for analysis. Although the sheet and pillowcase from the crime scene were not tested for DNA, the vaginal swabs revealed semen that resulted in a DNA profile of the victim. The swabs were tested for male DNA but no male DNA was obtained.

Despite the lack of DNA evidence Frank Button was convicted and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. At the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre he became the target of violence by mainstream prisoners. Prison authorities placed him in protective custody but the violent abuse continued because he was classed as a 'rock spider' - a prisoner accused of sex crimes against children. When Button maintained his innocence and refused to do a sex offender's course the Queensland prisoneaucracy told him he lacked remorse and they would force him to serve the entire seven years without remission.

Button’s legal team began preparing an appeal and requested further DNA testing of the vaginal swabs and the bed linen from the crime scene. When scientists at the JTC re-tested the semen taken from the young victim, a male DNA profile was finally discovered. That discovery resulted in the DNA testing of the bed linen, which revealed traces of semen matching the profile on the swab. The DNA profile from the swab and the bed-sheet was then entered into a database of DNA samples taken from prisoners and a match was recorded.

The DNA profile on both the bed-sheet and the swab from the victim was not Button's. It belonged to a prisoner doing time for another rape. He was a youth from the girl's community who had been convicted of a separate assault.

The biologist who did the DNA testing was cross-examined by Button's counsel and asked why he hadn't tested the bed linen prior to the trial. A forensic examination would have clearly established Button's innocence because the semen on the bed linen did not contain Button's DNA profile. The biologist answered: "The tests were directed to try and implicate your client."

On April 12, 2001 the Queensland Court of Appeal ordered Button's release from prison after the new DNA evidence established his innocence. The court's judgment contained a blistering criticism of the Queensland criminal justice system: “Today is a black day in the history of the administration of criminal justice. What is of major concern to this court is the fact that that evidence was not available at the trial. This court can do little so far as compensation to the appellant for the fact that he has had to suffer the ignominy of a conviction for rape which now proves to be entirely false.”

A striking similarity to the Button case occurred in New Zealand in October 1992 when David Dougherty was charged and convicted for the abduction and rape of an 11-year-old West Auckland girl.

Although Dougherty also maintained his innocence he served over three years of a seven-year prison sentence in some of New Zealand’s toughest jails where, like Button, he suffered the brutal sanctions of an unwritten prison code.

Dougherty’s conviction became the target of Auckland Sunday Star-Times journalist, Donna Chisholm, who questioned the DNA testing procedures at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research when forensic scientist, Dr Peta Stringer, discovered DNA from semen in the rape victim’s underwear did not match David Dougherty. Stringer’s evidence was heavily weighted in favour of the Crown when she testified that stains on the complainant’s underwear were not enough to exclude Dougherty even though the DNA did not belong to him or the complainant.

The prosecution tried to discount the unidentified DNA by claiming it was consistent with the complainant’s boyfriend. That proposition failed when the complainant testified that she had not had intercourse with her boyfriend for twelve days and the rape was the only other incident of intercourse at that time.

Chisholm’s investigations revealed the bias of Stringer’s evidence when notes of a 1994 telephone conversation with the Crown Prosecutor indicated that Stringer had an interest in the outcome of the case after she asked “if it will all be enough to get him off?” referring to the unidentified DNA.

Together with forensic scientist Arie Geursen and NZ lawyer Murray Gibson, Donna Chisholm began a relentless pursuit for the truth that resulted in a campaign by Auckland Sunday-Star Times to free Dougherty.

Gibson successfully petitioned the New Zealand Governor-General in June 1996 and Dougherty was granted an appeal against his conviction. Two months later the NZ Court of Criminal Appeal quashed Dougherty's conviction and ordered a retrial stating that the interpretation of the ESR results by three independent scientists was materially different from Stringer’s interpretation. Dougherty was finally released from prison after three years and nine months pending retrial. In April 1997 a NZ High Court jury acquitted Dougherty on all charges. He was later compensated by the NZ Government for wrongful imprisonment.

Chisholm and the Auckland Sunday Star-Times were vindicated in their pursuit of justice for an innocent man and the newspaper editorialised: “The David Dougherty case raises serious questions about New Zealand's justice system. An innocent man spent more than three years in jail. He was finally released, not by the efforts of those who run the system, but as the result of a campaign by a scientist, a lawyer and a journalist. The campaign revealed serious errors of judgement by a state forensic scientist. It also exposed a worrying official culture which appears to favour the prosecution rather than the defence.”

In response to an allegation by NZ prosecutor Mark Woolford that Donna Chisholm and the Sunday Star-Times were guilty of irresponsible reporting the newspaper responded: “Prosecutor Mark Woolford has accused the Sunday Star-Times of irresponsible reporting. Journalist Donna Chisholm, he claims, has acted as a campaigner, not as a journalist. Woolford is hopelessly muddled. This newspaper reported the flaws in the prosecution case and the prosecution, naturally enough, did not like it. It revealed the shortcomings in Stringer's evidence and the misguided attitudes of the ESR and neither Stringer nor the ESR liked that either. Exposing injustice and campaigning for the truth are not irresponsible acts, Mr Woolford: they are the greatest glories of the free press. We are immensely proud of our role in the campaign for justice for David Dougherty.”

Unlike Thomas, Button and Dougherty cases Marc Renton’s conviction for a bank robbery he claims he did not commit still rests on the suspect DNA evidence used at his trial. Professor Barry Boettcher’s scientific conclusions support Renton’s claims, but as the legal processes have been exhausted he enters his seventh year of walking the yard inside the maximum-security block at Townsville prison, Queensland, Australia. Renton’s case reinforces the jailyard philosophy that there’s no sympathy for an innocent man doing hard time inside the Queensland prison system. If you want sympathy - it’s in the dictionary. It’s between shit and syphilis.

I left the Queensland prison system and was paroled back to NSW in October 2000. I continued my journalism studies but the Renton case and the interpretation of DNA evidence in criminal trials kept niggling my brain like an itch you can’t get at. An innocent man doing hard time. I could relate to that. They fitted me up* for an armoured van robbery in ’91. I wasn’t good for it but they kept me in prison until they arrested two other blokes and then told me: “whoops, we made a mistake. Sorry about that” before letting me out again.

That’s how the game was played in my day. If they didn’t get you for what
you did then they put you in jail for what they thought you did. As a career criminal I had experienced the fit-ups*, the verbals*, the pay-offs and the jail time. It was all part of the game. Like playing cops and robbers when you’re a kid – someone has to be the goody and somebody has to be the baddie. But when you’re a kid the game ends after your mother calls you in for dinner. The game never ended for Marc Renton. They are still playing with his life in the greatest game of all. The game they call justice and the scientific interpretation of DNA in Queensland. :angry:


*fitted up – prison jargon for being put in jail for something you didn’t do usually by corrupt or illegal police methods.
*verbals – prison jargon for fabricated confessional evidence usually as a result of police officers falsely testifying in court that the suspect made a confession.
*pay-offs – prison jargon for buying your way out of a charge. Corrupt dealings with the arresting police and/or prosecutor.

well G'Day there Oz Ex..
dam, do memories come flooding back as i read all these names you mention from different prisons here ozex, i go back a generation before you mate...and these old fella's were just boys then..
I went from the the 60's on, from Turana boys home to pentridge to long bay to....and so on,
But i gave it away after my last stint of 5 years and 2 months and 13 days 11 hrs 12 minutes till i got out that front gate...in the early 70's...there were too many bullets flying loose around the burbs between idiots trying to takeover mobs.

Now as I look back...there are not many of the 'old school tie' mob left...most have a bullet in them...or their in a river somewhere..

the smart ones pulled out and grew old with their family....like me...sit back and shake their head in disgust at what we see.

But my autobiography has been done of all the horrors i saw and went through....guys i came across that i wish i never.....

But, glad i found this place....not many people out there can relate to us that have been there...and some not through any fault of their own...anyway...g'day everyone...I prattle on a bit...take care....
729

Glad you found us 729. You sound like my generation too - the 1960s, The Beatles, flared pants, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, hippies and all that. I did the next decade (the 1970s) behind the walls for being a financial adjuster to the Sydney banking industry - I adjusted their money into my bag before running out of the bank. Got out in 1980 and flirted with freedom until they loaded me up in 1983. Did a fe more stints in nick and then returned to my former stock in trade during 1996 and got another brick of years. Finally realised i was getting too old for the soft shoe shufflle along the top of a bank counter and settled into a uni degree. Now I am a journalist. I too prattle on when reminiscing. cheers for now.

Hi oz,
I want to thank you for sharing your time, knowledge and life experience here. You offer the people the opportunity to learn about what has been hidden (some thngs never change), it's been a wake up call for me into a world i knew very little about. I can only hope that in time with input from people like yourself, this inhumane treatment of "people" stops and brings about change to the system. Sorry not good with words.......
aussiefriend

Hello,

Im new to this site, and i wasen't supposed to spend all my time on here either, but i have to say that this guy has got me reading all day.. I want to thank you Ex-prisioner, for taking the time to try to help us all with such articles, you're great at it and you got me really impressed.. Thanx again, and God bless you..

Mel