Weeks later, a Long Bay security squad arrives unannounced at my cell. The officers say they are moving me to an unscheduled court matter. They scan everything I want to bring with handheld metal detectors – me included – conduct a strip search, and then dress me in their own overalls.
Now there’s half a hacksaw blade hidden in a cardboard box full of legal papers, but if I want to bring it they’ll scan it and if I leave it here it will get found when they ramp my cell in my absence.
So I leave it and when we reach the prison’s reception, I feign that I forgot the box of legal documents and I need it for the case. An officer goes back for them but now we’re running late and the officer isn’t subjected to metal detectors as we hurry for the court appearance.
Unfortunately, a search conducted in my absence reveals that someone has been cutting my cell to pieces and I’m rushed back to the prison. Stepping up their thoroughness, they find the balance of the hacksaw order.
*
During my term in NSW there were claims of another two escape attempts somehow linked to me, and countless finds of plastic cuff keys. Once, during a squad escort, I use a piece of plastic for a bit of a fiddle of the leg-irons but they seize up, yet again causing ALARM to my correctors.
1997–98
Realising I am a man who values liberty and initiative, staff at the high-security unit scatter spies around me, hoping that I’ll discuss matters with them.
So, for a laugh, I make matters up, quietly telling the snitches that a ‘high risk kamikaze plan is in play’. It’s on for the big exercise yard, I say – the area closest to the wall. What’s going down is the escape team knows the rubbish truck schedule and after the yard roof bars have been cut, certain parties are going to hijack the truck and plough it through the front gates. It’ll be huge, I tell ’em.
Goulburn prison is ringed by barricades within a week.
*
I’m kept in isolation for years, while over in the mainstream population there’s a fucking killing spree. Bosnia, they call it. Seven murders in three years and dozens of people seriously injured.
In my unit I have people getting plucked on the jail murders, coming in here to isolation for two weeks, a month, three weeks, and going back out. I’ve never killed anybody but I just stay here forever, watching murderers come and go. I don’t get to mix with these hardcore elements ’cos we’re in solitary, but I get familiar with ’em; we can communicate.
They’re saying, ‘Why the fuck are you here?’
‘’Cos I’ve escaped,’ I tell ’em. But it’s four years or more since I pulled one off.
They can’t understand. They’ve actually murdered people and they get out of isolation. And there’s people here who come in pinched on escapes that maybe get a couple of months in the pokey and then they’re back out. The hardcore inmates respect me; I respect them. They can’t believe it, and the screws just give me a fucking hard time, a really fucking hard time, man. Trying to break me.
They’re concerned that in the last robbery no proceeds have been recovered; there’s a lot of money outstanding. They think I can finance another escape and I don’t know what the fuck the information was that Victorian intel forwarded on but they know that I was involved in two escape attempts from the high-security unit there, so they’re on eggshells. And they know that I’d used a firearm before when escaping from hospital. So they are paranoid to begin with and then Victoria just feeds them a whole heap of shit.
So I am put down. Not even Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox who escaped from Katingal served anywhere close to fucking three and a half years in a management unit, in a high-security unit, for an escape.
Solitary, man. Lock a dog in a laundry. For years. See how well it develops.
ISOLATION COUNTERPRODUCTIVE, SAYS PSYCH REPORT:
Chris stages a hunger strike in 1998 to protest against his long-term isolation in Goulburn’s amusingly named Additional Support Unit.
After interviewing Chris, ASU staff, and other mental health professionals who worked there, a senior psychologist writes a July 1998 report advising that Chris be let out of the harsh conditions of the ASU that he has so far endured for over a year and a half.
The psychologist notes that Chris has been given no specific reasons for his placement in the ASU, no indication of when he might leave it, and no access to programs running in other sections of the prison.
The psychologist recommends that Chris is moved to a setting that, while secure, is more conducive to rehabilitation.
Keeping Chris in isolation is unlikely to teach him any constructive or desired lesson, the psychologist reports.
Rather than being a deterrent, Chris’ subjection to prolonged isolation creates a sense of heroism and is emotionally damaging - compounding feelings of frustration, helplessness, anger and distress - the psychologist reports.
Furthermore, the possibility exists that Chris will become a hero or martyr to others as well.
CHRIS:
Meanwhile out there they’re stabbing each other like there’s no tomorrow. Not that there is any fucking tomorrow in this Groundhog Day world. But really, it’s hardcore and the damage isn’t just to the dead and wounded. Hundreds of men live in a permanent state of fear and trauma, of action and reaction. This venomous environment takes them over – its rules are so immediate and so harsh that they displace and replace the decent ways of being that some prisoners still had when they arrived.
*
The inmates here strut around showing no weakness but that’s all it is: a show. I thought I was bad after being wound up tight at Pentridge and then released, but God help the people unlucky enough to be near this lot when they get out. Physically they might then be free, but their minds, their souls, will still long be jerking to the strings of Goulburn and its ugly little killing cages.
58. LITHGOW ICEPICK
2001: INCIDENT IN COMPOUND YARD
CHRIS:
I am at Lithgow, a maximum-security facility west of Sydney’s Blue Mountains, along with a Koori inmate that I bonded with in difficult times at the Goulburn ASU.
He asks to lend a good pair of runners to wear on a contact visit, because his family are due to come and see him and his shoes have holes.
‘No problem,’ I say.
Three days later his unit and mine are both in the compound yard and when I ask when he is going to return my runners, he says someone stole them from his cell.
Not believing this at all, I talk to some senior Koori elders that I get along with. They pretty much run the jail, bullying everyone – Lebanese and Chinese included. ‘It’s not good to steal from me like this,’ I say. ‘If he wants them, let him fight for them instead of being sneaky – that’s the coward’s way.’
The inmate’s brother is a senior solja in the field – he’s killed more than once – but I’m not going to get walked over. For many reasons, one important factor being that if an inmate lets anyone get away with stealing from them or standing over them, then it turns into open season. It might cost you a bashing or worse, but you have to draw a line and retaliate. These are the rules of the jungle.
So I said, ‘Let’s be fair: you control the jail but why do this to me? He should fight for the runners, one on one, and the best man keeps them.’
*
I finish up a shift at the tailor shop factory, exit through the metal detectors, get patted down by staff, and thus walk out unarmed into a reception party of the Kooris’ group.
One of them blind sides me with a cheap sneak shot and when I return fire the shoe thief’s brother rushes up to show me his knife.
Prison staff on patrol intervene and escort us back to our separate pods.
Later, however, when I am in the compound yard that is about 70 per cent Koori, I stand up for myself and fight a mob of them, losing a tooth but holding to my principle.
*
Months later a group of seasoned murderers attack me in the compound yard, cutting me and worst of all stabb
ing me in the chest with an icepick, the metal puncturing my left nipple directly over my heart.
Bleeding profusely, I have no illusions about what they intend. I argued about the runners; I won’t back down on theft. So I am to die.
In the stand-off after the initial attack, outnumbered 60–1, I put serious pressure on the wound and stem the bleeding. A mate loans me a clean t-shirt to try to keep the incident from the knowledge of the staff, but someone else reports it and it becomes an ‘incident’ – albeit one I deny ever happened.
*
This is prison life: a factory of fear and resentment, hatred and dominance, us versus them, me versus you. When society dispatches a convicted criminal – who is already no doubt disturbed or messed up – into a ‘correctional’ facility, whether they are then sent into the arena or placed in isolation, the real lesson that’s taught is that we’re all in a war for power and that the weak have it coming.
*
My fear goes off the charts and I refuse to leave my pod. I just can’t do it.
I have read many times in the media how I am one of the ‘most dangerous prisoners in the country’; how I am one of the ‘worst of the worst’; how whatever prison regime I am subjected to is not harsh enough for scum like me.
But when the staff order me out I won’t go. I’m shaking. I’m breathing rapidly. I’m a man in my early thirties who has done wrong but I won’t walk out into an arena for a mob to kill me.
‘Fuck off!’ I roar at the staff, flinging my stuff at everyone, not budging. Guards wearing gas masks and carrying riot shields enter the pod.
They threaten to blast my cell with CS gas and I tell them to do what the fuck they want – I’m not leaving. But the other inmates in my unit implore me to go, go anywhere, go to segregation, just don’t get their pod and everything in it stinking of that fucked up chemical weapon.
So I’m placed in isolation and then, as the staff correctly felt that my life was at risk, transferred back to Goulburn.
59. RACE HATE CAGES
2001: GOULBURN
CHRIS:
Goulburn is now racially segregated: the authorities hoping this will prevent a relapse into the Bosnia situation.
To stem the kills down, the rabid packs have been separated: there’s a cage for Aborigines, a cage for ‘Lebanese’ (and others that the racial purity geniuses at Corrections NSW deem to be Lebanese), a cage for Pacific Islanders, and a cage for Asians. ‘Aussies’ like me have the choice of running with the Islanders or running with the Asians. I go with the Asians.
The memories of Bosnia are still vivid to many, and the stench of death and hate is still strong and obnoxious.
The security units are on a knife edge to intervene in the yard and there have been no more killings yet. But the state of mind is the same, and sub-lethal stabbings and bashings are flourishing, indeed. The state of mind is the same.
I’m now in the general population here, which by its approximation of a society – even if a twisted, sick, distorted society – is better than drooling and playing with my poo in solitary.
But to get by here you have to be in a state of constant vigilance. While the yards are segregated you never know when someone or a few people will just fucking show up, and, as the warring groups have issued attack-on-sight orders, things are tense. Combat mode in the red zone.
The Kooris have their own wing and a yard adjacent to a bigger area into which inmates are herded to collect their canteen which is issued on Sundays by a lone officer. The gate between the Koori yard and the canteen-issue yard is secured only by an old Jackson lever padlock.
When we line up for the canteen issue, the Kooris hurl missiles through the yard bars, and to get out again means walking through a storm of spit, sometimes other bodily fluids, and even a hot-watering.
The segregation breeds enmity, if you ask me. There’s no incentive to get to know each other and get along. Us and them.
Our yard gets wind from another yard that the Kooris are big-noting that they’re going to storm the canteen yard whilst our group is in it and turn it into a bloodbath. Apparently they have prepped for it by manipulating the old lock.
This sparks a crisis council among inmate groups, and I order an emergency call to bear arms and have various inmates report to me about our stockpile of weapons for defence against the impending onslaught.
Our cache of perspex and wooden shivs is wrapped in a plastic bag with porridge poured over it and then placed in a freezer for the oats to form a solid cover. Weapons secured.
In what is almost a religious ritual, on Sunday morning I remove the bag from the freezer, flip the container upside down, peel out the items from the mould and issue them to those who feel the need to protect themselves.
I make it a point not only to make myself safe, but to provide for the entire yard, and give them a chance to defend themselves, as otherwise many would not have been in a position to at all. It’s important to me that, on my watch, everybody is provided for in combat.
I don body armour: a turtle neck jumper tailor-made with double layers, between which I slot books that function as protective plates. I slide on my beanie and fit my sunglasses tight, ready for war.
Yet, like the others, I feel sick in the stomach to see that a bedsheet has been draped over the fence, blocking the staff’s view of the yard.
As we draw close, their most seasoned killers gather at the gate, waiting for the staff to secure and leave the yard.
Unsupervised in the arena now, we split into small teams and position ourselves in strategic defensive locations – although a lot of us simply clustered at the far end of the yard and others simply shit themselves and won’t leave the cells – that’s accepted, too; it’s understood that not all are soljas.
I walk up and down the yard, stopping three metres from the gate as they fiddle with the lock. In the horizontal pouch of my jumper, each of my hands holds a perspex shiv. If they want to enter – not a problem at all.
There are headphones over my beanie and I’ve been feigning grooving to music but they’re silent and now near the gate I taunt the killers, walking just short of them and then turning my back.
Rarely have I felt so exposed, so expectant of a savaging, so finely balanced over death. And it excited me: truth.
Every Sunday for five weeks this jaw-clenching drama plays out – all of us suffering from the sheer anxiety of not knowing if the murderers gathered on the other side of the gate would finally simply push it open.
Over the weeks, many inmates known as staunch, tough and solid, bail: not just joining our noncombatants back in the cells but giving the screws reasons they should be sent to the bone yard.
But the solidarity of those of us who stick it out in the yard, our standing firm week in and week out, neither bailing nor telling the screws, outlasts the Koori death squad and they abort.
It’s a victory for us but for all the coming generations – maybe not. Many good blokes have been bashed, stabbed, raped and killed by these inmates and no doubt more will suffer in the years to come. If they had done their charge, we could have eradicated them and done so legitimately in a field of war.
One of the Kooris is the multiple killer who tried to stab me in the heart with the icepick at Lithgow. I wanted him to come in. Do enough time in prison and just about everything gets personal.
I am in a state of constant vigilance. My world is guerrilla war.
*
Even at the yard delegate meetings at which we discuss inmate issues and grievances in the presence of prison staff, all-in-brawls occur with people getting chairs smashed over their heads and inmates fleeing the circle only to be run down and bashed by their foes. It’s a spectator sport, with crowds of other inmates watching from the yards, roaring and cheering at the violence. Yes, this is how it is here.
*
The prison says I’m to be transferred to Bathurst, an Aboriginal stronghold full of the icepick man’s friends and kin.
I’
m blasted with the terror of being in the heart of enemy territory.
I’ll do it but I must always be tooled up. I must never relax. I must watch every person, every corner, every movement, every shadow, every screw. And even that’s doomed when mobs hit deep and fast and move on, leaving a man on the concrete, blood bubbling out of his mouth.
The screws find me with perspex shivs and plastic cuff keys and cancel the transfer. The parole board want to know why I had these items. I write back: ‘For defending myself – nothing more.’
*
A crazy thing about Goulburn’s race war segregation is how the prison staff say the hate is too extreme for us to mix but on transfers they pile us unsegregated into the back of meat brawlers where countless assaults occur. I think the staff get off on these handcuffed cage fights. Although when it seems like the transfer officers might get in trouble because someone in their charge is being so seriously bashed by another inmate, or by a group of inmates, they pull to the side of the road and halt the bashing.
2002
Rumour has it that there is a fatwah out on me from the Lebanese yard – this coming in a time of plenty of verbal abuse, exchanged at the yard gates, between me and the Lebanese leadership inside NSW prisons.
I hide and remain in C Wing until an entire Lebanese yard-full comes in: convicted killers and hardcore gang members known for extreme acts of violence in and out of jail – including shooting up the Lakemba police station. I’m unarmed and alone but sometimes this is about who is the maddest cunt on the jailhouse floor.
Eight of them mob-attack me and I’m in the storm when the Special Response Group break it up. I’m bleeding from a split above the right eye but I don’t want any stitches; I don’t want anything but to stare down these fuckheads.
Mayhem Page 20