By Peter Lord
ADELAIDE — Dean Brown's Liberal government celebrated 100 days in office in South Australia with the minister for correctional services, Wayne Matthew, launching an attack on those in society least able to effectively fight back — prisoners in jail.
By halving the time for family visits and limiting prisoners' telephone usage at Yatala Labour Prison (YLP), Wayne claims to be combating the old bogey of drugs in jails. The Liberals argue that the former Labor government was too soft on the drug issue and let prisoners coerce management with threats of a "backlash" if they did not get their way.
A recent interview with jailed Aboriginal activist Derek Bromley, a prisoner at YLP for almost 10 years, shows that far from being soft on prisoners, the former Labor minister, Frank Blevins, was prepared to risk international condemnation for breaches of conventions on the treatment of prisoners in pursuit of his drugs in jails crackdown.
When Blevins tried to suppress drug trafficking at YLP in 1987, he sanctioned the use of draconian methods, including sexual harassment and illegal cell searches.
All prisoners, regardless of sex or age, were subjected to demeaning strip searches that required prisoners to squat naked over a large mirror on the floor of a special cubicle — before and after family contact visits or at any time by decree. In the case of female prisoners, this was tantamount to rape, since few consented willingly to the indignity.
On other occasions, prisoners suspected of being under the influence of unauthorised substances were detained indefinitely in segregation units on no more than "suspicion", with no medical treatment or formal charges being laid — an unlawful act under the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. And this is what the Liberals call being soft on prisoners.
Derek Bromley was one of a group of prisoners at YLP in 1987 who organised all the inmates in a passive protest against these outrages and abuses of human rights. After an overnight sit-in in the "B" Division Accommodation Unit, and following a promises from prison management that an inspector of prisons would be made available the next morning to accept a petition of grievances, the prison Tactical Response Group (TRG) was deployed without warning with the express intention of employing force rather than accepting negotiation.
The leader of the TRG was heard to say that he would give the prisoners such a "fucking serve of tear gas that they would come out spastic". In the event, Bromley was one of twenty-five seriously injured as inmates sought to protect themselves from beatings behind hastily prepared barricades.
When fit enough to walk, and on release from hospital, Bromley and the other so called "ringleaders" were dragged before the courts and charged with assaulting the officers of the TRG.
When these charges failed for lack of direct evidence, a charge of "riot" was preferred, with the potential for a life sentence. This case dragged on through the courts for four years, the intention being to make an example of Bromley and the others, who had by this time become known as the Yatala Eight.
Eventually the Supreme Court of South Australia ruled that the crown case was an "abuse of process" and ordered a stay of proceedings against Bromley and the other defendants — much to the disappointment of the TRG officers involved, who were expecting lucrative compensation pay-outs for alleged injuries.
In a subsequent action, Bromley and three others sought punitive damages from the state for the real injuries they suffered at the hands of the TRG. In awarding damages to Bromley last year, the judge found that the 1987 disturbance had been deliberately provoked by agencies other than the prisoners, and that the TRG had used gratuitous and unjustifiable violence, causing multiple injuries and broken bones — and in order to commit this "over the top" violence, had cloaked themselves in anonymity. They had also been "less than entirely frank" in giving their evidence to the court, said the judge.
Blevins' drive to "crack down" on drugs in prison thus cost the State coffers in excess of $1 million, taking into account legal costs, court time and compensation pay-outs for the crass brutality of his goon squad.
Derek Bromley and John Karpany, the last of the Yatala Eight to be in jail continuously since 1987, currently hold the record for being held in segregation — 500 days — when the Correctional Services Act provides for 30 days maximum. When this was pointed out to authorities, the act was amended so Bromley and Karpany could be held indefinitely in segregation as a "threat to the good order and management of a prison".
It seems that Wayne Matthew is not prepared to learn the lesson of history. His confrontationist attitude only invites opposition from prisoners, who now have a tradition of taking collective action when their conditions are impinged upon.
Matthew's energies might be better directed investigating the inordinately high rate of prison officers on paid stress leave rather than bending over backwards to appease the blood lust of the "law and order" lobby by bashing people already in jail and serving sentences. [Peter Lord is a member of the Prisoners' Action Group.]