2004 Award - Best Online/News Wire Report - Electronic Media

Abuse within prisons makes prisoners more violent upon release

By Bernie Matthews - posted at www.onlineopinion.com.au Monday, May 31, 2004

Judges’ Comments: 

Bernie Matthews is a remarkable story teller with a unique perspective on something most Australians will fortunately never experience. As a prisoner who studied journalism while doing hard time for armed robbery and prison escapes, he has a passionate interest in open and fair reporting. He became the first Australian journalist to be admitted into the MEAA without tertiary qualifications or conventional work experience. In a gritty account about life inside  the prison system, published at www.onlineopinion.com.au he reveals some unpalatable home truths about the violence that explodes behind bars. It was a compelling read made more engrossing with the knowledge that the author had himself experienced much of the misery. 

Abuse within Prisons makes Prisoners more Violent upon Release.

by Bernie Matthews

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). He is now a journalist.