5
SUPERMAX
Dry, Flaky Skin
To whom it may concern,
We of the HRMU [High-Risk Management Unit] are writing this letter in a last-ditch effort to have the allegations regarding mental and physical abuse investigated by an independent body before the damage inflicted upon us by this regime is irreversible. There is no fresh air, there is no natural light, and our reading material is sometimes removed for months. Visits are cancelled with no justification, and under-age visitors are being subjected to unreasonable and illegal strip searches. The air-conditioning is constantly set on cold throughout winter when the temperature is already below zero, and the stale air causes dry, flaky skin. Safe cells are used as a form of torture, and many inmates have been placed there on the justification that they threatened self-harm. Once in there, they have headbutted walls for hours on end or punched at the door, clearly in a state of distress. They have been left in there to make fools of themselves for the officers’ personal amusement. These cells are the equivalent to the cool rooms used by the Nazis as torture during World War II.
Yours sincerely,
Lindsay Rose, Ronald Priestly, Rabeeh Mawas, Leith Merchant, Konstantinos Georgiou and Dudley Aslett.
This is a condensed version of the letter a group of men serving a total of seven life sentences plus 137 years smuggled out of Goulburn Jail in 2007 to complain about, among other things, brown bread, small underwear, green fruit and cold meals served in the prison they call Supermax – a 75-cell ‘jail within a jail’ that holds the worst prisoners in the country.
The first batch of inmates included gang rapists, psychopaths and men like Ivan Milat, the serial killer who murdered seven backpackers and has spent his whole time in prison both plotting to escape and mutilating himself.
‘They were not impulsive hotheads but cold planners of violence,’ former Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham said, ‘some of whom have no respect for law enforcement and, in some cases, no respect for human life. We needed somewhere to put them where they could no longer harm others.’
‘I worked in there for 18 months,’ said former Supermax guard Kevin Camberwell. ‘The original concept of the place was just to house inmates that were a problem in all the other jails. Before 2001, all the tracs [intractables] were skipped around the country. They dealt with them by never allowing them to settle. But it didn’t really work, so they built the Supermax to house them all in one place, but now it has grown to become a dumping ground for terrorists who are classified as AA inmates.’
With a price tag of $22 million, the Supermax prison was the culmination of a four-year planning process prompted by the Killing Fields. Former New South Wales premier Bob Carr opened the facility on a crisp winter’s morning in June 2001, but not without controversy.
‘It’s not an electronic zoo like Katingal,’ Ron Woodham said, referring to the last purpose-built Supermax-type prison within the Long Bay Jail complex. Katingal was closed in 1978 after recommendations from the Royal Commission into New South Wales Prisons. ‘There is no sensory deprivation. And the prisoners won’t get bashed like they did in Grafton Jail [during the period when it housed the most intractable prisoners]. There are no tiger cages – the solid steel cells they had in the front yards of Goulburn Jail – and the jail can be run as a tight or a relaxed regime, although both will be secure.’
But Carr was forced to issue a dare to opposition MP Andrew Humpherson, who felt the facility more closely resembled a luxury hotel: ‘Anyone who’s silly enough to say this is five-star accommodation, we’ll book you in for a week, but only when the interesting guests are here as well.’
Humpherson had criticised the Supermax facilities for including basketball and tennis courts, TVs, microwaves, toasters, an outdoor walking track and a personal counsellor.
And yet Milat and his men complained? Letters about overripe fruit? Brown bread? Dry, flaky skin?
Cry me a river.
The Harm(U)
Officially called the High-Risk Management Unit (HRMU) when it opened, and later the High-Risk Management Correctional Centre (HRMCC), Goulburn’s Supermax prison is not the type of facility that strikes fear into the heart of a criminal. In fact, the prison, with its cream walls, kitchens and gardens, looks more like a clinic than an institution of punishment for Australia’s worst men.
‘It was all pretty modern and nice to look at, a self-unit type thing where they had their own kitchen and yard. The cells are extremely clean; nothing is grim,’ said former Goulburn supervisor Dave Farrell. ‘When people build a jail they think it needs to be stark and horrible, but that is not the case. You need to think about the staff who are going to work in the building. They need to work in a nice place because they are not working with nice people. The aim in building a place like this isn’t to punish the inmates; it’s to control them. They have established themselves as the most difficult inmates in the state, and the building is about making them as easy as possible to manage. They are not going to be rehabilitated or let out, so you are just putting them in an environment where they can’t kill any other inmates or staff.
‘The HRMU gave us better control. A lot of thought went into it and the design. The structure and policy of the place gives staff and management greater control when it comes to prisoner movement. Prisoners are restricted in associations, moved under heavy escort, and they spend a lot of time on their own. But they are also given enough to keep them moderately happy. You have to make sure you give them the prospect of reward and access to things that they can enjoy in their daily life. It’s all very good and well to say, “Throw them in a hole and feed them meals,” but what happens to the person who has to bring them their meal when the prisoner is mad as hell?’
But don’t be fooled by fresh paint and kitchenettes. As Bob Carr said, this ain’t no resort. Supermax is situated on a third-of-a-kilometre square plot on the north-west corner of the Goulburn Jail complex. Inmates would have a nice view over the historic town if it wasn’t for the almost impenetrable and windowless white masonry walls lined by five-metre-high fences topped with razor wire.
‘And then there is the eight-metre exclusion zone that is guarded by officers with high-powered rifles and state-of-the-art video surveillance,’ said a current Supermax guard. ‘And the two towers that overlook it, and also the six-metre outer-wall. There would be a nice view, but these blokes will never see it. They are not getting out of here.’
While the officers in the two towers might not always be looking, the cameras are. The 24-hour surveillance includes a camera mounted on the top of a 12-metre pole looking down at all that moves on the ground, and there is another pointing towards the sky, just in case anyone is thinking of hijacking a helicopter and trying a Silverwater-type John Killick escape.
Inside, things are certainly sterile but not serene. Inmates spend most of the day locked inside a two by three metre cell that is completely bare except for a toilet, a shower (to prevent them from stabbing each other to death), a bed and a little table, all of which are fixed to either the walls or floor. The bed is a concrete slab with a not-so-comfortable but fireproof 25-centimetre-thick piece of foam that serves as a mattress. Each inmate lives alone in his cell – or ‘one-out’, in jail speak – and, depending on their behaviour, they have access to a kitchenette and a 250-square-metre grassed exercise yard, all green except for the striking orange of the looping running track.
‘The cells are all one-out, but they have their own day room,’ said Kevin Camberwell. ‘The day room is connected to two, three or four cells, depending on what stage or program the [prisoner is] in. The whole system is set up into stages. They will start in segregation for 21 days and then progress to another section from there, and so on. The inmates in those cells will share that one day room, although they may never see each other because they are given access at different times. They have a toaster and a kettle in that day room; that is where Ivan Milat likes to spend most of his time.�
�
This system of rewards gives prisoners access to basic kitchen appliances and TVs if they behave and progress through the prison program. And those things are taken away if they regress. Food, of course, cannot be taken away … even if it is sometimes overripe.
‘Breakfast was at 8am,’ said Camberwell of the day’s first meal, after it has been X-rayed. ‘All their meals were delivered to them in their cells. Lunch was at 11am and dinner at 4pm. They couldn’t choose their food. The only exceptions were made for allergies or a religious diet, like halal meats for the Muslims. They just got whatever was on the menu that day. It was normal stuff, like sausage and vegies, chops, potatoes. Sometimes they would get a full piece of steak; other times it would be curries or stews.’
The Supermax inmates, who have killed more than 40 people between them, also get pizza, spinach-and-ricotta burgers, Streets Blue Ribbon ice-cream, Tim Tams and popcorn.
‘It was pretty good food, actually,’ Camberwell continued. ‘And they could use their buy-up to purchase soft drink. They had coffee and tea provided; it was rationed every day. They also had a fridge in the day room. They would label their drinks if it was shared with any other inmates. Most of the time it didn’t create difficulties. You wouldn’t sip out of a can marked “Ivan Milat”, would you?’
Inmates in Supermax are given a packet of breakfast cereal, 300 millilitres of milk, seven slices of bread, coffee, tea and sugar each morning. For lunch they get sandwiches – turkey, chicken and mayo, lettuce, cranberry and ham, roast beef … pretty much whatever they fancy – served with fruit and a side of yoghurt. So again, Ivan …
Cry me a river.
Surprisingly, inmates wear white – no prison green, none of the bright-orange jumpsuits popularised by TV.
‘They only wear the orange when they are going on visits or escorts,’ Camberwell explained. ‘Orange is for extreme high-risk inmates in general population, so you would know to keep an eye on them. They wear white overalls the rest of the time.
‘They all wore the same thing, and everything they had was given to them by us. As they progressed through different sections they got things, even their own shoes and clothes.’
Some residents are allowed to associate with other inmates, but most lead a lonely existence, their best friend a toaster or a TV. Camberwell went on to describe a typical day in Supermax:
‘They don’t spend much time out of their cells. And it really depends on who it is and how they behave. They are out of their cells in the morning after breakfast and a security check. They are left in their own yard to do as they please. The yard is outside their cell, but it is most certainly not a football yard or a botanic garden. It’s about ten foot by eight foot and completely bare. They would either spend the morning in there or in the day room if they were allowed.’
The behaviour-based system also determines how much time they spend out of their cells, how much contact they are allowed to have with other inmates, and when, how often and from whom they can receive visits.
‘At this present stage all the cells are full,’ Camberwell said. ‘Supermax is set up in a way that you can just lock them in their cell and leave them there all day if they don’t behave. There is no reason they need to come out, but they can if they earn the right.
‘We chose [which other inmates] they associated with if they’d earned that privilege. We did have problems where inmates had issues with each other, and to get at each other they would ask to associate with them. They ended up punching on, so we stopped that by taking away the option of letting them choose their associations. Later we also had terrorists associating, and we would also have blokes coercing to try and change their stories for court appeals.’
Prisoners also earn the right to make phone calls – screened, of course – and they can rent things like radios and TVs, but never ‘own’ them.
‘They had to book in for phone calls,’ Camberwell continued. ‘They could not have them whenever they wanted. They were all approved by the commissioner’s office, so they just couldn’t talk to Joe Blow. Same with their visits; they had to be approved by the commissioner’s office. If they wanted to have someone visit them, they would have to apply.
‘We controlled everything they had and everything they did, and it was a tactic used to keep them in line.’
Despite a list of residents that included such violent creatures as Milat, Camberwell described the jail as ‘boring’ – at least as far as work went.
‘I was in there from 2010 until 2012,’ Camberwell recalled. ‘I didn’t really fit in because a lot of people in there had already been working there for ten years or so. I didn’t enjoy working in that jail, to be honest. Nothing much happened because of the way it was set up and the amount of control we had. I suppose you could say the prison did its job. A lot of the guards wanted to get back out into the “real” jail because there was much more action outside of Supermax.’
‘Take someone like Milat,’ Camberwell continued. ‘His average day was completely controlled and he couldn’t cause any trouble. He wouldn’t associate with anybody and no one wanted anything to do with him. He was a complete loner. The only reason he would go into the common area was so that he wasn’t stuck in his cell. There would never be anyone in there with him. He just read the paper, books and magazines. He was never involved in anything because wherever he went there were four staff with him and he would be handcuffed and shackled.’
Conditions were also strict for guards in a bid – a sometimes unsuccessful bid – to stop dodgy officers from smuggling in contraband.
‘They have searches on staff in three separate locations before going in,’ Camberwell said. ‘Different people and different locations. There are also metal detectors.’
The prisoners were always watched, cameras and officers studying their every move. They had to.
‘The whole [Supermax] area has its own intelligence officers,’ Camberwell said. ‘The cameras are in the day rooms and the external rooms, but there are none in the cells. The only cameras in cells are in the safe cells, and inmates are only put in the safe cells if they threaten to kill themselves, or we think they are going to. A lot of the guys would get in the safe cell and then use it as a bargaining tool. They would say, “Give me a TV or a radio and I will have something else to think about and I won’t want to cause trouble.” It was very popular around grand final and State of Origin time. Sometimes they were given a radio, sometimes a TV, just to get them out.’
Mr Milat’s Mail
The officer picked up the chunky envelope addressed to the High Court of Australia.
Bit heavy for a bit of paper – better have a look.
The officer slowly, carefully sliced open the package that a Mr Ivan Milat was attempting to send to Australia’s final court of appeal.
He shook the envelope over a table.
Plop.
A blood-splattered tissue hit the desk.
What do we have here?
The officer, wearing protective gloves, slowly pulled away tissue. One layer, another layer, a third.
And there it was …
A bloody finger inside a tissue.
Ivan Milat had cut off his finger and tried to mail it out of Supermax.
‘Help!’ the officer cried over the intercom. ‘Come here. Come here now. I need help.’
Frantic officers burst through the door and into Milat’s cell. The serial killer, now a serial self-mutilator, was sitting on the edge of the bed, his left hand holding his right.
‘At first he looked calm,’ an officer recalled. ‘Even relaxed. But he wasn’t being tough or anything like that. He was so placid because he was about to pass out. He was turning white.’
Milat pulled back the tissue, exposing a bloody stump.
He was missing the little finger on his right hand … from the top knuckle up.
‘They get issued a BIC razor blade every week to shave. They have to hand the old one in before they get the new one,’ said a G
oulburn Supermax full-timer. ‘The officer is supposed to check the old razor to make sure it is all there. The guys obviously didn’t check to see if [Milat’s] BIC still had the blade in it. They put it in the tub and just issued him with a new one.’
Milat wasn’t showing great genius when he prised the steel from the shaver.
‘You just break the plastic surrounds of the BIC and you produce the blade,’ the veteran continued. ‘It’s easy to do. So he used the blade to hack into the finger, but he couldn’t get through it, not all the way. What he did next was just gruesome. He got to the bone with the blade and stalled. I’m not sure if it had become too blunt or had broken, but [the razor] couldn’t finish the job.’
Look away now if you are squeamish. Seriously … skip a par.
‘So he broke the bone,’ the officer continued. ‘Not sure how. Maybe he jammed it into a wall and stomped on it, maybe he just snapped it with his other hand, but he broke it. It was broken most of the way through, but not all the way through.’
Enter a plastic picnic knife he had smuggled into the room … the kind designed to cut through a T-bone steak.
‘He used that to finish the bone,’ said the officer. ‘He sawed his way through the rest.’
A report published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 January 2009 said the 64-year-old ‘did not exhibit any signs of shock’ when found by guards.
‘He was nearly passed out when we got to the door,’ said an officer. ‘He was struggling big time. The door was open and he was sitting on the bed. He looked calm for a second, but he suddenly went lethargic and all limp. He had lost a heap of blood, but he must have drained it in the toilet or the shower because there was only a bit of blood in the room. Not as much as you would expect, and I’ve seen a lot worse.’
Australia's Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail Page 8