A journey through the 'belly of the beast' - Part 1

A recent report commissioned by the Uniting Care Centre for Social Justice revealed that public safety is being put at risk by Queensland's failed prison system. The five-month independent study found jails have become nothing more than a warehousing process, where inmates are brutalised and denied rehabilitation programs before being dumped back into society. The report recommended a full-scale inquiry into the Queensland prison system

In response the Queensland Police and Corrective Services Minister, Ms Judy Spence, dismissed the damning report as unsubstantiated allegations based on interviews with ex-prisoners and the views of some service providers. Ms Spence told the Queensland media:

The report - with its questionable methodology - focuses on the rights of criminals and contains many old and recycled claims about the treatment of prisoners, which have already been independently investigated and found to be without substance.

I was one of the ex-prisoners who compiled a 40,000 word submission to that Inquiry. It was called A Journey Through the Belly of The Beast - Social Indictments Against the Queensland Prison System. It will be the responsibility of the Queensland public to determine whether my observations, not only as an ex-prisoner but also as an accredited journalist, are unsubstantiated allegations without substance or not.

The fact that the author of the Report, Ms Tamara Walsh from Queensland University of Technology’s law faculty, had been blocked by Queensland Department of Corrective Services from interviewing current serving prisoners is indicative of the secrecy that the Minister and QDCS try to perpetuate.

That secrecy is reinforced by Queensland legislation that restricts the media from having access to the prisons or its prisoners. Any information flow is sanitised by the Minister’s departmental heads before it is released to the media. Queensland journalists have to rely on departmental media handouts and press releases to report prison issues. I have never had the opportunity of receiving one of the Minister’s press releases - perhaps I am persona non grata with the department? But I do know what they don’t contain and that was the substance of my submission.

Does the Minister contend that over 30 unnatural deaths inside one of her prisons is unsubstantiated allegation? If my submission did focus on the rights of criminals in that regard I make no apology because I believe every Queensland prisoner has a right to life while serving their terms. These are not “many old and recycled claims about the treatment of prisoners, which have already been independently investigated and found to be without substance”, instead they are matters of gross incompetence that have been hidden from public view far too long.

QDCS not only failed in a duty of care to the 30 deceased prisoners but also failed in a duty of care to the families of the dead prisoners. Perhaps the Minister might like to explain to the families how they actually died in her prisons during one of her next departmental handouts to the Queensland media.

When the Queensland Minister for Police and Corrective Services, Ms Judy Spence, claimed that Queensland has a prison system second to none in the world is she “handling” the truth or telling it how it is? More importantly, are Queenslanders getting value for money, or is the prison system perpetuating the cycle of crime, prison, parole and more violent crime?

Years of incarceration have made me a successful failure. After 18 years imprisonment for crimes of violence (armed robbery) I have successfully survived the prison process in two states (NSW and QLD) but still remain an abject failure by society’s standards. I have served time for crimes I committed and I have also been twice wrongfully imprisoned for crimes I did not commit. I have gained a rare insight by travelling the incarceration process both as a guilty felon and an innocent person. Those experiences have widened my perspective of the criminal justice system.

Like most ex-prisoners I have been tagged, bagged and neatly compartmentalised as a convicted felon whose views and observations are irrelevant or inconsequential but my observations are the raw material that may assist with an understanding of a process that is shrouded from public view because it serves no useful purpose to society. When Norman Mailer published the prison letters of Jack Abbott in the US he called his work In the Belly of the Beast. It is my intention to take the reader on a journey through the belly of the beast so the formulation of prison policies can be appreciated from the perspective of a prisoner and an ex-prisoner.

Here is an edited version of my submission. 

The belly of the beast - inside Queensland’s prison system

Society expects its prisoners to take their punishment unflinchingly after they have been consigned to the incarceration process. At the same time they expect prisoners to return to society somewhat chastened and rehabilitated by the experience. Society is uncaring as to how that transition should occur and relegates that responsibility out of sight and out of mind to Queensland prison administrators.

Queensland prisons have become society's garbage can: places where unwanted rubbish is dumped. They have become places where ministerial portfolios are gauged by the amount of adverse publicity generated. Responsibility is delegated to somebody with a shotgun and a roll of razor wire, who has a mandate to ensure the streets are not sullied by the unwanted presence of a felon before he has done his time. Rehabilitation has become a four letter word that is alien to a system that relies on revenge and retribution in answer to the public's perceived notion of what they want the incarceration concept to accomplish.

Queensland prison administrators are repudiating the idea that they're responsible for rehabilitation because the growth in prison populations, the reduction in prison programming and the warehousing concept of the incarceration process makes the idea untenable. They have limited their mission to the security and custody problems of their institutions (no escapes, no drugs and less violence). The performance evaluations of prisons or prison administrators are rarely tied to rehabilitation, lowering recidivism, or the relative success of prisoners so it is difficult to measure these outcomes. Prison administrators now devote their budgets to cement, bricks and steel to build more facilities to house Queensland’s growing prisoner population.

The abandonment of prison as a last resort was replaced with the "get tough on crime" approach that Queensland politicians unashamedly used in a vote-grabbing exercise to woo the electorate. Cynical observers regarded the exercise as being an elaborate smokescreen to mask the real intention and purpose of imprisonment in Queensland.

Zero tolerance incarceration became the buzz word of Queensland “prisoneaucrats” who oversee the new-age prison system of the 21st century - a warehousing process where sensory deprivation labours under the masquerade of security and containment. Fresh air and sunlight is a privilege and not a right in some Queensland prisons. Retribution has replaced rehabilitation. And education is at the bottom of the priority list. It is a system where maximum security prisons are seething cauldrons of anger, frustration and discontent that belie an underlying current of tension and raw violence which can explode without warning.

There is no privacy in prison. Random cell searches, strip searches, body searches (squat and cough) and lock-downs are an integral part of prison life. All activities within a prison are geared to the security restrictions enforced within the prison and there is no control whatsoever as to what prison authorities may dictate as being policy on any given day.

A prisoner has no control over his own life. Helplessness and vulnerability have become prerequisites of the incarceration process that disempowers and totally crushes any initiative or individuality. Everyday prison life becomes one continuing battle to retain a dignified sense of balance between institutionalisation and subservience.

By the same token, correctional officers operate facilities that exclusively focus on prisoner management and control. They do little more than control the movements of prisoners through the institution, directing them to enter or exit cells, stand in line, or walk through metal detectors. Their fundamental role within the incarceration process of the 21st century is that of an electronic gate-keeper.

Queensland's prison population has increased by 142 per cent over the past decade and 60 per cent of inmates re-offend after release: The highest recidivism rate outside the Northern Territory.

Former Supreme Court judge and Community Corrections Board chairman, Bill Carter, said that, given the state of the system, the astonishing thing was not that most ex-prisoners re-offend but that some did not. Only 11 per cent of prisoners who take part in rehabilitation programs re-offend but the report says thousands are unable to access programs in jail.

Without completing programs, prisoners cannot go through gradual-release schemes or gain parole. They serve their whole sentence and are released straight on to the streets without ongoing supervision or support through post-release programs.

Part 2 will be published next week.