Abuse within prisons makes prisoners more violent upon release

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).