Dancing with Demons Read online

  A pool of other helpers and hangers-on was attracted to the PRG because of the considerable privileges that came with it. These included additional contact visits, extended out-of-cell hours, time away from jail and, eventually, media attention and public meetings.

  And so, with a little guidance from myself, the program was readily accepted by the prison administration and the powers that be in Sydney. The prisoners cleverly approached two Supreme Court judges (Justice Jack Lee and Justice David Yeldham) to become the patrons of the ‘Day in Jail’ program. This afforded the PRG instant credibility and an unspoken sanction for other judges to direct offenders into the program as a deterrent to future crimes.

  The Day in Jail program was quite structured, yet simple in method. At about 8.30 a.m., the juvenile referral was met at the prison gates and briefly interviewed by me to ensure that he possessed the emotional sturdiness to undertake the day. He would then be processed just like any other fresh recruit to the system. Like a piece of meat, he was fingerprinted, strip-searched, and his clothes impounded. The youth then got dressed in prison greens. Under the escort of a warder who was assigned to protect him, he was taken to the prison yard within sight, but not physical contact, of the prison population. In full view of the audience, who catcalled, wolf-whistled and offered bizarre sexual gestures throughout, he was made to perform some menial task like polishing a lock or sweeping the yard back and forth. A typical prison muster followed, whereupon he was locked in his cell for the meal of the day on a chipped enamel tin plate, served ‘au naturel’, that is, lukewarm. The solitary lunch allowed some time to reflect on the very full and stimulating morning he’d just passed.

  But there was no rest for the wicked. The first part of the afternoon was taken up with a visit to the Circle, with its simple cages built over concrete floors, utterly exposed and reeking of excrement. A brief stop there, and on to the PRG counselling room. In a matter-of-fact tone, the PRG members laid out the boy’s future should he return to crime.

  The involvement of the prisoners was invaluable as they could provide specific insights to their own crime trajectory, which often had commenced with stealing milk money as children, robbing cars and then progressed to armed robbery and, on occasions, murder. They explained how they had never intended or believed they could end up serving a fifteen- to twenty-five-year sentence for serious crimes. And they described the politics of the jail system, particularly how young offenders could expect to be introduced to all manner of new sexual behaviour unless they were on protection. The importance of not informing on others, as well as the loss of family contact, girlfriends and any hope for the future was described in graphic and intricate detail. Hearing from real prisoners seemed to have more impact on the young men than if a judge or policeman had imparted this so-called wisdom. The PRG counsellors did not attempt to scare the boy out of his wits, but rather build rapport and help him gain much-needed insight into the jeopardy he was in.

  After the session, I would again assess and counsel the juvenile offender before his clothes were returned and his fingerprint record ceremoniously torn up. To round off the day, the juvenile was paraded before Harry Duff – in a uniform complete with silver epaulettes – who added a final warning with all the weight of his experience and wisdom. Discharged across the road to the parole and probation office, the boy was then debriefed to return to civilian life, chastened and resolute. Boys left quivering in terror, aware that this was a hell from which they would never return intact. The glamour of crime was drained from their imagination like a sump.

  It worked. In fact, it was an outstanding success. As the word spread, schools, social workers, probation officers and anyone in the criminal justice system clamoured for material. The PRG turned its collective hand to documentary production, with graphic scenes of incarceration reproduced to a grave voiceover. Johnny Bobak became so enthusiastic in his impersonation of an inmate at the end of his tether who was lashing out at random in the yard that he had to be dragged off his fellow thespians by baton-wielding warders, as the director yelled ‘Cut!’ Method acting has a lot to answer for.

  The remarkable success of the PRG naturally led to media attention and invitations to speak publicly. A Sunday stroll around Bedlam, the asylum for the insane near London, was a popular pastime in the eighteenth century. Today, a delicious thrill of fear and horror still grips the public when in close proximity to violent criminals, and this added the sauce to the meat and potatoes of the civic interest in the activities of the PRG.

  So it was no surprise when an offer arrived for members of the Parramatta Recidivist Group to appear on the top-rating The Mike Walsh Show to talk about the program.

  On the appointed day, Kevin Browne, Bruiser Annesley and myself, accompanied by two prison officers, were chauffeured to the Channel Nine studios from Parramatta Gaol in a government Fairlane. The two prisoners commented incessantly on all the changes they could see in the outside world, not the least of which was the car itself, a considerable advance on the crude grunt and flamboyance of the Monaros and Falcon GTs which had been their chariots of choice for fast getaways.

  As a special treat, the two crims had been allowed to dress in their own clothes, redeemed from the jail’s property store where they had been mothballed years before in exchange for prison greens. Even for the tasteless ’70s, their attire was bizarre. Kevin wore a long-collared body-hugging shirt of early polyester, which now sagged badly. The shirt tucked into equally ill-fitting bell-bottom flares that only reached mid-calf and revealed Kevin’s jailhouse tan and hairy legs. Black platform shoes and old tennis socks completed the ensemble. That Bruiser had been in jail longer than Kevin was obvious from his suit. Once the height of masculine elegance (dressing well has always been the mark of boxers), it now simply demonstrated how long it had been since he’d been shopping.

  Ludicrous as they looked, there was a certain poignancy in the way they were anxious to put their best face forward for a TV audience of three million housewives and pensioners. Both men sincerely believed in the PRG’s mission and were mindful of the need to win over the sceptics in the community who felt that the Day in Jail program was a dangerous experiment which could damage, rather than assist, troubled juveniles.

  Once in the studios, however, their saucer-like eyes betrayed their bewilderment. They acted like a couple of wombats who had wandered from their warm, comfy burrow into the high beams of a speeding Mack truck. They were also conscious that all too soon the pumpkin hour would toll for them, with an inevitable return to their prison cells. Fortunately, they adapted quickly to the pressure, the better to fully savour this rare taste of freedom.

  Seated in the green room, we were all brimming with excitement at the prospect of meeting the exceptionally famous Mike Walsh. His show had an enormous following during the 1970s. Tragically, Mike was stricken with the flu and unable to attend, and we were instead introduced in the green room to Jimmy Hannan, who was standing in for Mike for the day. We hid our disappointment, still feeling overwhelmed by the glory of being on national television.

  Jimmy didn’t have a clue why we were there. An American who launched a career on Australian television in the ’60s, he was all charm and teeth. When he was advised by the producer that we’d come from Parramatta Gaol to share our experience of crime as a means of dissuading would-be juvenile offenders, Jimmy nodded vigorously and smiled broadly as the colour drained away from under his make-up. ‘See you on air shortly, boys!’ was all he could muster as he left us. But now there was an edge to his jauntiness, like a crick in the neck.

  The screeching Jeannie Little preceded us on air. Nerves jangling, we walked down the corridors to the studio, then emerged onto the curiously intimate and brightly lit stage during a commercial break. Hannan sat us down and conferred with his producer. The white-bread audience consisted largely of older women and housewives, with a smattering of browbeaten husbands in tow. All of a sudden the rain of carefully orchestrated applause signalled we were on
air. After the introduction by Hannan, the interview got off well, as Kevin narrated a videotape walk-through of the prison and explained the aims of the PRG with telling anecdotes about serious juvenile offenders who had avoided further trouble once exposed to real jail life. I suspect our presentation had unintended consequences. The audience’s mood was pensive. I suspect in lounge rooms across Australia people were greatly affected by this unique exposure to prison life and their minds turned to their own indiscretions of parking tickets and jaywalking.

  ‘That was fascinating, Kevin,’ Jimmy carolled. ‘Are you allowed to tell the viewers why you’re in jail?’

  Kevin was used to such questions and smoothly rattled off his criminal history until his most recent and longest incarceration for armed robbery, a sentence that still had some years to run.

  Bruiser, a powerful figure but more reserved than Kevin, quietly recounted the terrible circumstances of his conviction for murder. In a drunken rage after discovering his wife’s infidelity, he struck her just once but, as she toppled down stairs, her neck snapped and she was dead before she reached the bottom. Bruiser admitted he still felt guilt and remorse, two decades after the fact. Bruiser was unable to further expose the lacerating tragedy of his life because Jimmy cut him off. An urgent commercial break loomed.

  After the break, Jimmy looked stern. Clearly, his expression told the audience, these men were no angels. ‘Well, Tim, what did you do to end up in Parramatta Gaol?’ Jimmy asked, just a little sharply, I thought. I paused and scowled silently at him. I’d seen his type before. They couldn’t take the truth. I twisted my head on my neck, loosened myself up for what was to come. Then I gave it to him with both barrels.

  ‘I’m the prison psychologist, Jimmy.’

  LEAD ON McDUFF

  Back at the jail, the success of the PRG had stirred up a hornet’s nest of envy among the inmates over the group’s privileges. Night after night, one could hear the laborious scratching of pencils on paper in every other cell as born-again crims sketched out plans to atone for their sins with their own scam. Within weeks of the Channel Nine broadcast, my office was inundated with prisoners keen for me to endorse program concepts to be put before the Super.

  Some were plain wacky. The Parramatta Glue Sniffer’s Temperance League, for example, hoped to deter young kids from the perils of organic solvents. Sad to say, it didn’t materialise. Others had considerable merit. Sam Greco, a junkie who murdered a dealer in a drug rip-off gone wrong, approached me with the idea of a drug treatment program for prisoners. Drug-related crime in the late 1970s was a fraction of what it is today but the trend was unmistakeable. Despite the strong nexus between drugs and crime, at the time there was not a single treatment facility within the entire New South Wales prison system. Typically, an addict going cold turkey was locked in their cell under minimal supervision and denied palliative medicines or any psychological support during this critical period in which their ravaged and weakened bodies purged the deadly toxins. A professional treatment facility was long overdue. If nothing else, it would permit prisoners with shorter sentences a chance of going straight on release, once they cast off that persuasive monkey on their back.

  Harry Duff approved, notwithstanding his intense dislike of Greco, whom he considered a manipulative, weak lowlife. This was a common view among custodial staff, who often discussed their contempt for junkies at the pub after two dozen schooners of beer, oblivious to the irony. Regrettably, this hypocrisy to addiction still prevails in the broader community. Notwithstanding a troubling escalation in the use of so-called ‘recreational drugs’, which often mask severe underlying psychological problems such as major depression and anxiety, individuals with addiction are still treated as criminals rather than individuals with an illness.

  Greco became the first President of the Parramatta Drug Rehabilitation Centre and Joe Milton Luger and Joe Lamberti of Odyssey House – a charitable organisation in New South Wales dedicated to helping people addicted to alcohol and drugs – were generous in their advice and friendship. Together with a number of other experts, we structured a flexible in-patient program that suited the prison environment, combining medication and counselling. Drug education was also a critical element for both staff and prisoners. This approach to drug addiction in jails has become well-established over the past few decades.

  Treatment involved both one-to-one psychotherapy, as well as group work with up to eight prisoners discussing their problems in a safe therapeutic environment. As is always the case, there were strict rules of confidentiality associated with their involvement. Remand prisoners were also seen and attended to, with them being given far greater assistance with the painful detoxification they were experiencing in their cells. At the end of each week in the drug treatment facility, Bruce the yogi would arrive to instruct prisoners how to alleviate stress through yoga and meditation.

  Dressed in Indian cheesecloth and beads, Bruce quickly attracted the eye of suspicious warders and was the brunt of untold snide comments as he strode across the prison yards to the hall – his arrival announced by his Dunlop-retread sandals as they clomped up the steel stairs.

  In an effort to lift the sentience level among the inmates, he turned up one day at the main gatehouse bearing a tray of mung beans. The screws were firmly of the view that the chlorophyll-ridden sproutlings looked like young cannabis plants, and promptly confiscated them. Analysis confirmed they were indeed mung beans, but a cloud of official doubt hung over Bruce from then on. As a result, I was instructed to sit in on all yoga sessions. For three hours every week I participated with the lads, huffing, puffing and ‘omming’ in unison with our swami. We all left at lunchtime feeling lighter than helium and higher than the outer rings of Saturn.

  After a while, however, our enthusiasm for the benefits of the practice was tempered by scepticism when we realised that Bruce was far from sorted himself, despite decades of dedicated headstands, twists and contortions. It’s eccentric, yet somehow endearing, to cover your bald spot with black paint in a vain effort to appear youthful. But our shock and dismay were genuine when we heard that the sessions were to cease because Bruce had suffered a nervous breakdown. Apparently his fragile equilibrium was utterly destroyed when a rival swami spread the scurrilous rumour that Bruce, supposedly cloistered away on a weekend-long fast and retreat with his pupils, had in fact slipped out on Saturday night and been seen feasting on a large plate of san choy bau, banquet style, at a local Chinese restaurant. The prisoners laughed themselves silly about this: ‘Poor fuck’n bloke. At least they didn’t do him for murder, then he’d have a real breakdown.’

  While the drug program gathered momentum, another venture floated across my desk, sponsored by George Crawford. Crawford, whose crime file has been known to strain backs, pined for the prestige and privileges flaunted by other jailhouse heavies like Groom and Greco. In an audacious move, he proposed to lure some of Australia’s top rock’n’roll acts to perform at the prison in aid of the International Year of the Child. How he tied all three together is a tribute to his instinct for the angle. Crawford reasoned that the prisoners would be entertained (boredom being well recognised as the trigger to fights and arguments), the prison administration would get favourable publicity for supporting a charitable cause, and a recorded album of songs from the concerts would generate royalties for the little kiddies. Voila!

  ‘You’re not thinking of any backstage shenanigans, are you, George?’ I asked when he approached me about it.

  ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘that’s deeply fuck’n hurtful. I only care about the kids.’

  George’s idea took on a life of its own, and before you could say ‘testing, one, two’, the concert program was launched. Every Sunday, the weathered sandstone walls of Parramatta Gaol resonated with the thumping and wailing of bass drums and electric guitars as an array of vocalists screamed out their lyrics in unison with their deeply appreciative audience, who punched the air until it was groggy. The highlight came one afternoon w
ith the appearance of Cold Chisel. The effect the visit had on Chisel is apparent from the number of songs on the album East that were inspired by that day with lyrics about prison beds, exercise rounds and Her Majesty’s hotel.

  The musicians were true to their word, and all the royalties from the subsequent album, Canned Rock, were donated to a most worthy cause.

  And so, by the end of 1979, a previously isolated and barren prison had flowered with redemptive energy. Contrary to expectations, the sky had not fallen in. The community was engaged along with the prisoners. Legal figures, assorted Lions, Moose Lodgers and Scouts all trooped through the prison yard, and TV crews and do-gooders tripped over each other to be a part of it. During this time the fledging Redfern Legal Group, one of the first community legal centres, was established and I had the great pleasure in meeting the now revered High Court judge Virginia Bell who selflessly dedicated hours of her time in assisting prisoners with seemingly lost causes. Prisoners commandeered telephones, and clipboards and pens became necessary executive tools, as a frenzy of civic good works possessed the jail.

  Parramatta had become living proof that, with training, support and forgiveness, even the most hardened recidivists could channel their energies in a positive way.

  My personal life was similarly on the up and up. People have always been fascinated by the criminal psyche and I often found myself the focus of attention at dinner parties and other gatherings. Indeed, it became quite overwhelming and eventually when people asked what I did I would reply that I was a chiropodist. The enquirer tended to quickly lose interest at that point.

  I had sadly ended a long-term relationship with a lawyer due to my escalating hubris and commitment to long working hours. Nonetheless I was still happily ensconced in my nice house in Balmain, and I was never lonely in terms of female companionships.