I am at Lithgow, a maximum-security facility west of Sydney’s Blue Mountains, along with a Koori inmate that I bonded with in difficult times at the Goulburn ASU.
He asks to lend a good pair of runners to wear on a contact visit, because his family are due to come and see him and his shoes have holes.
‘No problem,’ I say.
Three days later his unit and mine are both in the compound yard and when I ask when he is going to return my runners, he says someone stole them from his cell.
Not believing this at all, I talk to some senior Koori elders that I get along with. They pretty much run the jail, bullying everyone – Lebanese and Chinese included. ‘It’s not good to steal from me like this,’ I say. ‘If he wants them, let him fight for them instead of being sneaky – that’s the coward’s way.’
The inmate’s brother is a senior solja in the field – he’s killed more than once – but I’m not going to get walked over. For many reasons, one important factor being that if an inmate lets anyone get away with stealing from them or standing over them, then it turns into open season. It might cost you a bashing or worse, but you have to draw a line and retaliate. These are the rules of the jungle.
So I said, ‘Let’s be fair: you control the jail but why do this to me? He should fight for the runners, one on one, and the best man keeps them.’
*
I finish up a shift at the tailor shop factory, exit through the metal detectors, get patted down by staff, and thus walk out unarmed into a reception party of the Kooris’ group.
One of them blind sides me with a cheap sneak shot and when I return fire the shoe thief’s brother rushes up to show me his knife.
Prison staff on patrol intervene and escort us back to our separate pods.
Later, however, when I am in the compound yard that is about 70 per cent Koori, I stand up for myself and fight a mob of them, losing a tooth but holding to my principle.
*
Months later a group of seasoned murderers attack me in the compound yard, cutting me and worst of all stabbing me in the chest with an icepick, the metal puncturing my left nipple directly over my heart.
Bleeding profusely, I have no illusions about what they intend. I argued about the runners; I won’t back down on theft. So I am to die.
In the stand-off after the initial attack, outnumbered 60–1, I put serious pressure on the wound and stem the bleeding. A mate loans me a clean t-shirt to try to keep the incident from the knowledge of the staff, but someone else reports it and it becomes an ‘incident’ – albeit one I deny ever happened.
*
This is prison life: a factory of fear and resentment, hatred and dominance, us versus them, me versus you. When society dispatches a convicted criminal – who is already no doubt disturbed or messed up – into a ‘correctional’ facility, whether they are then sent into the arena or placed in isolation, the real lesson that’s taught is that we’re all in a war for power and that the weak have it coming.
*
My fear goes off the charts and I refuse to leave my pod. I just can’t do it.
I have read many times in the media how I am one of the ‘most dangerous prisoners in the country’; how I am one of the ‘worst of the worst’; how whatever prison regime I am subjected to is not harsh enough for scum like me.
But when the staff order me out I won’t go. I’m shaking. I’m breathing rapidly. I’m a man in my early thirties who has done wrong but I won’t walk out into an arena for a mob to kill me.
‘Fuck off!’ I roar at the staff, flinging my stuff at everyone, not budging. Guards wearing gas masks and carrying riot shields enter the pod.
They threaten to blast my cell with CS gas and I tell them to do what the fuck they want – I’m not leaving. But the other inmates in my unit implore me to go, go anywhere, go to segregation, just don’t get their pod and everything in it stinking of that fucked up chemical weapon.
So I’m placed in isolation and then, as the staff correctly felt that my life was at risk, transferred back to Goulburn.