Bathurst Correctional Centre is ready to explode. The enforcement of archaic deprivations has created a level of tension not felt for years.

In a single week last December, there were two bashings, one hanging, three stabbings, one inmate setting light to himself and two escapes. The air is thick with violence and standover problems.

The gaol’s reactions to all issues at Bathurst seems to be to withdraw more from prisoners until they yield.

Problems started when the workers in the Upholstery and Electrical Departments staged a strike on 19 November after staff were advised that cooking equipment was to be withdrawn from working areas, leaving only a toaster and kettle. The inmates were given the excuse that an inmate was suing the Department for food poisoning resulting for using an electric frypan whilst at work. (No evidence of this was offered and no inmates were aware of any such recent event.) The strike was handled in a most authoritarian and demeaning fashion by the Governor. In true Bathurst style, the workers were locked out – on the coldest morning for months.

Those who chose to remain in their cells to avoid the confrontation had their electricity supply cut off. Extra staff were evident from Goulburn and another escort truck was located in the reception area. A delegation was elected and three delegates went to see the Governor, but “no cooking, back to work now or no work again” was the dictum. No negotiation, no trade relations, no compromise. No acknowledgement of the universal right to deny one’s labour as available to all other workers in Australia.

Later in the month, a lockdown for a whole day was enforced to allow the screws to attend a medal presentation with the Minister. We were allowed out for showers (Bathurst has showers on the ground floor).

Then another lockdown for a training day. Then another lockdown because the screws wanted to go to a funeral. This lockdown was for 39 hours and denied all the inmates shower facilities.

The impact on everyone’s income of two to three days without work is able to be felt in the yards. The average inmate cannot afford even a modest purchase of tobacco or Christmas cards. After all that time locked in, you don’t have to be Einstein to know that something is going to happen. Two inmates are seriously assaulted at the buy up with their purchases. No custodial staff are anywhere near the buy up shop for the entire period. The ruckus involves ten inmates and various implements are used in the stabbings.

The whole gaol is locked down again immediately and for the next day. That night, another inmate hangs himself in his cell using his sheet. Another burns himself.

On the weekend, the exercise yards are open, there is another fight. The gaol is locked down again for another day.

Two escapes from young offenders who cannot handle the stress, and we are locked down for another day.

When will the authorities learn that much of the tension comes from the very deprivations that they cause. Bathurst is an old gaol, the cells are hot (or cold in winter), there are a few showers with an inadequate supply of hot water. That’s if you can get a shower with a shower rose: The showers in one wing have not had shower roses on them for at least six months; the Ombudsman was invited to look at the shower facilities, but would not do so for fear of Hep C. (What about the inmates?) There’s nothing in the yards, not even one chair. The cells have few chairs and no desks. There is no covering for the windows and the electrical circuits are adventurous in the extreme.

The lack of legal resources at Bathurst has reached an all time crisis point. After visits from the Ombudsman and the Inspector General, undertakings were given that anyone who needed legal assistance and library access could obtain it via the welfare staff. This was a lie told to inmates in order to quell their disquiet.

Phone calls to solicitors from Bathurst cost $5 each. Three phone calls equals one week’s wages. Bathurst CC’s library doesn’t even lend out the Prisoner's Rights Handbook (it is locked up). Page 169 of the Handbook says: There is no limit to the number of legal papers relating to current maters that prisoners can have in their possession. If a prisoner needs legal resources for matters concerning their detention and/or other legal matters, governors must make sure that they (prisoners) have access to this information. This includes access to their lawyer, prisoner legal services … This is the law but what happens at Bathurst? There is no prisoner legal aid. There are 30 inmates on remand at Bathurst. There are no legal resources at all, no books, no access to computers, no legal education, and not even a copy of the Bail Act so they might explore the opportunities of Supreme Court Bail.

There are no wing delegates, no work delegates. Education is almost nonexistent, work supply has almost run out and wages are low.

The Governor and the Deputy Governor refuse to see inmates with issues until it becomes a major strike or protest. Recently an inmate made over 30 requests to see a Deputy Governor about important legal matters, only to be refused. When he complained, he was shifted to another gaol.

Is it really any wonder that the gaol erupts?



Justice Action got these reports last December and has been trying since then to get some action on them. We brought it up with the Bathurst Governor (no response worth noting) and then with the DCS Head Office, which referred it on to Assistant Commissioner John Klok (yes! the Bathurst basher! the very same!), who referred it on to Regional Commanders.

We’ve been promised a written reply, but we’re hardly holding our breath.


THE JAILS ARE THE CRIME!!

 

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JA Coordinators Report

Happy New Year folks and we look forward to a brighter 2002, despite the fact that it is likely to smell of fried scapegoats and farting politicians. With a NSW election on the horizon for 2003, we can expect the usual distortion of law, order and security issues, increasing police powers, and further erosion of civil liberties that the pollies think they have to go in for if they want to win votes.

The wheels are already in motion, with brand-new ministers in police and corrective services and frightening new developments in their portfolios (see pages 4 and 10).

The expected hype of the upcoming election campaign will conveniently fall alongside an increase of 1800 cells to the NSW prison system. This increase reflects the global trend to an expanding and profitable prison industry, driven by corporate interests and characterised by the silencing of community voices. The atrocities of September 11 have already been redesigned to favour and further the interests of those in power. Antiterrorist laws include increased ASIO powers of arrest and detention for up to 48 hours and the removal of the right to silence under questioning. There’s been an upsurge of interest in the security and prison market as a result of these events and their expected consequences such as greater immigration control and detention centres. In this climate, JA is keen to place the daily struggle of prisoners and against authoritarian abuse in a broad global perspective that includes an analysis of war and the plight of refugees.

The summer just ending was marked by extreme bushfires and extreme calls for juvenile punishment. We had Kerry Chikarovski baying for blood (“throw the book at them”), and letter-writers to the Sydney Morning Herald suggesting young arsonists be displayed in cages at Taronga Zoo or burnt at the stake. Carr first went for custodial sentences, then for restorative justice measures such as having the boys visit the burns wards of hospitals and make reparation. It was rare and strange to hear the term “restorative justice” coming out of Carr’s mouth but no, no magic transformation had taken place: he promptly went on to undermine a key restorative justice principle by presenting the measures he had in mind as punitive rather than rehabilitative: “Jail’s too good for them, they should have their noses rubbed in it, etc.” Another chance passed up to show some real political leadership and differentiate Labor from the slathering Libs.

On the flip side, we’d like to congratulate the new Greens Senator, Kerry Nettle, on an election campaign won on issues of social and environmental justice!! (See – it can be done!) Kerry worked for six months as the Coordinator of Stop the Womens Jail and we confidently expect her commitment on prison issues will carry through to the Senate.

Framed has now been placed in prison libraries all around Australia (except NT – still working on that!). We’ve sent out black folders, with vibrant pink stickers on them, for the reference section of libraries so the issues can be stored together and you can’t miss them.

Prisoners and library staff: Are the folders in your library? What do you think of the format? How useful are they? Give us feedback, please write to us.

We had a meeting with DCS and the Office of the Minister for Corrective Services on 24th January, at which DCS undertook to report to us on the process that led to Brett being banned from NSW prisons (see Framed #41). The Department has acknowledged that the fact he wasn’t issued a notice informing him of the decision to ban him was a breach of Departmental procedure.

We’re not letting go of this one, or other issues related to community access to jails, which remains a major issue for JA.

Finally, this is the last coordinator’s report I’ll be writing before Alecia Simmonds, a highly energetic activist with experience in community law, joins the team as the new JA Coordinator.

Noha Go strong, Noha! We will miss your vitality, pride, hard work and global perspective. Hope you’ll send us postcards from your travels and that you’ll be back soon. Meanwhile, a big welcome to Alecia; we hope you like it in the new JA office just set up in the revamped Breakout premises.
Ed.

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CIVILISATION?
The September 11 attacks, we’re told, were not an atrocious act of rage at US support for Israeli state terrorism (as we might have thought) but an attack on civilisation itself. But alleged/suspected/ imagined al-Qaeda prisoners now at Guantanamo have been bound, drugged, hooded, shackled and placed in open-air cages. (Sensory deprivation, let’s remember, is a form of torture.) The US apparently thinks this will convince the rest of the world of the superiority of its way of life. Good on those other Americans who’ve shown the true strength of their traditions by filing a habeas corpus writ on behalf of the prisoners on the basis of breaches of the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution.

REFUGEES STRIKE
The Australian Government has shown no interest whatsoever in protecting Australian Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks from torture and caging.

Meanwhile it is still holding Afghans who fled the Taliban (who should therefore supposedly be our friends?) in concentration camps at Woomera and elsewhere. The horrors of these camps (which are run by ACM, an offshoot of notorious US prison profiteer Wackenhut) have been highlighted by a recent heroic hunger strike by detainees.

Again, good on those citizens of the Lucky (or should that be the Lonely?) Country who’ve initiated hunger strikes and other actions in support. Close the camps! Set them free!

REFUGEES DEPORTED
In past issues of Framed we have reported on Australia's indefinite detainees – permanent residents who arrived in Australia years ago as refugees, who are being held in prison after the expiry of their sentences because Minister for Racism Philip Ruddock has cancelled their residency.

In mid-January three of them were deported to Vietnam. They were given 48 hours notice in which they were meant to prepare for life in a new country and make arrangements to leave the one they had called home. The rest are still in jail here; the latest report is that Vietnam has not agreed to take them back. Some are asking that if they’re going to be deported, get on with it (some finished their sentences as long as three years ago) and are demanding to be given at least three weeks notice.

SA WINDS BACK ON POT
The criminalisation of cannabis has been an issue in the recent South Australian elections, where the “legal” plant limit was recently cut from ten to three and more recently still from three to one.

James Dannenburg stood (unsuccessfully, we’re sorry to say) as a HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) candidate. He deplores the windback (naturally) and says that the relaxed laws brought in in SA in 1987 allowed users who had previously bought from dealers to seize the means of production and grow for themselves and a circle of mates: “It is far better from society’s point of view, from the police corruption point of view, from a criminological point of view, to have lots and lots of Mr and Ms Smalls, each making a little bit of money, than Mr Big making squillions.” We couldn’t agree more. Drug prohibition is filling the prisons, as we know. The law is the crime! DUMB DOGGIES As we reported in Framed #41, sniffer dogs are one of the newest weapons deployed in the aggression against communities that goes by the name of the War on Drugs. Sniffer dogs have been in action for the last 15 months, in localities as diverse as Nimbin, Cabramatta and inner Sydney nightclubs. Legislation to legalise them was passed by the NSW parliament late last year after a magistrate found that the use of the dogs constituted an unlawful search. There have been numerous incidents where the police have subjected non-drug users to humiliating public searches after dogs have mistakenly identified them as carrying drugs. The US Customs and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, we note, have been recruiting their sniffer dogs from the drop-outs at the New York Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind.

Maybe the 14 NSW dogs are not the brightest either. Another reason to let the poor mutts – and us – live in peace.

RYAN IN THE SHIT
Finally, let’s hear something about Peter Ryan, the NSW Police Commissioner: “Until he can clean up the sewers of corruption in his own service, about which we are reminded every day and which even the Royal Commission couldn’t fix, then that will be over my dead body – although one should perhaps not make jokes like that in New South Wales”. That’s Chris Puplick, NSW Privacy Commissioner, commenting last December on Ryan’s proposal for compulsory ID cards.