NSW prisons: What really happens inside our state jails
Phones in body cavities, flashes of breasts, hidden drugs and old-fashioned yard fights — we reveal what really goes on in the state’s prison network on any given day. WATCH: VIDEO OF INMATE PUNCH-UP + TIMELINE OF A TYPICAL DAY IN JAIL
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A woman flashes her breasts while on a video call to a prisoner. Another inmate sits in a special cell where staff have instructed him to remove the mobile phone he has jammed up his bottom. And prison officers try to stop two brawling maximum security prisoners who are fighting over a chocolate bar.
Welcome to 24 hours in one of the toughest workplaces in the country.
A highly charged environment where prison staff put their lives in danger daily, break up brawls, diffuse arguments while remaining on high alert for the next potential security breach.
And as the exclusive incident log obtained by The Sunday Telegraph for June 19 reveals, its not just stopping violence – there is the constant battle against contraband, watching suicidal inmates and dealing with incidents such as the prisoner who fainted after overexercising.
“When a prison officer turns up for work in the morning, they really don’t know how their day is going to unfold,” Corrective Services NSW Commissioner Peter Severin, who was also once a prison officer, said.
“This ranges from punches and kicks to assault with spit or urine, hot liquids and jail-made
weapons.
“These are brave and resourceful men and women.”
The day begins at 4.30am with Court Escort Security Unit officers heading out in darkness to pick up prisoners from across the State needing to make a court appearance.
At the same time, Security Operations Group officers search of the Geoffrey Pearce Correctional Centre for contraband – one of several that will occur in jails during the day.
At 7am, the Medical Escort Unit loads up an inmate before transferring him to the special prisoner wing of Prince of Wales Hospital for treatment.
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It is not long before the first fight – at 7.40am in the reception room at one of the State’s most notorious prisons – Goulburn Correctional Centre.
A prison officer asks the two maximum security inmates to stop, but they refuse.
The officer moves between the warring inmates to physically separate them with other officers later stepping in to help break up the pair, who also refuse to say what they are fighting about.
After breakfast, which is a choice of a supplied meal or food from the latest “buy up” list, inmates head to work, class, programs, attend a medical clinic or make a phone call to an approved number.
With limited phones and calls timed to six minutes, tensions run high. Today, it run smoothly.
Over at Wellington Correctional Centre, another search is underway for what staff at the nearby Macquarie Correctional Centre believed to have seen was a drone fly over both jails.
However, it cannot be found.
Minutes later, staff are dealing with yet another jail fight – this time at Lithgow jail where a verbal argument escalates in to a punch up after one prisoners refuses to share his chocolate bar.
CCTV footage show prison officers entering the yard before the warring inmates are eventually separated.
Both inmates are sent to their cells for three days confinement as punishment.
At Parklea, officers attend to an inmate who has cut his lip after fainting.
Another inmate says the prisoner was training “a bit heavy” the day before, and had also skipped breakfast.
Two other medical situations are unfolding at the Blacktown court cells where an inmate has tried to self-harm while another prisoner at the south coast Correctional Centre is being treated after injuring himself while exercising.
At 11am, a Security Operations Group search of incoming inmate mail uncovers seven buprenorphine strips in a birthday card and four half bupe strips in the seam of an envelope.
With COVID-19 stopping visits, inmates are relying on drugs being smuggled in by mail.
As the officers inspect their find, their colleagues at Dawn De Loas are placing the centre in lockdown after a man is seen hurling a tennis ball over the fence before driving off.
The inmates are lined up and pat-searched, but no ball or contraband is found.
After lunch, another fight breaks out between two inmates at the Dillwynia Correctional Centre where staff had been conducting a muster.
Despite telling officers they “don’t like each other”, they each refuse protection.
Back at Lithgow, a prisoner officer notices something odd with the carpet in the day room.
Upon a closer look, the officer discovers a weapon made from an empty powdered-milk tin.
While officers track down the owner of the weapon, Mid North Coast Correctional Centre staff escort an inmate they believe has a mobile phone hidden in his body to hospital for an X-ray.
At 1.05pm, Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre staff relocate a female prisoner who has been scratching her arms and fears for her life to a cell with a camera where she is monitored by the Risk Intervention Team.
At the Shortland Correctional Centre, staff are also concerned about the welfare of a prisoner who has a black eye. He claims he fell in the shower.
Search blitzes across three separate jails are conducted with four litres of jail-made brew made from fermented apples in an empty disinfectant bottle hidden under an inmate’s bed found at Shortland, a jail-made shiv and sharpened metal bar uncovered at Junee and “bupe” strips detected in the personal belongings of a prisoner at Parklea.
More bupe is also in a package found in the gardens of the Cooma jail museum, which contains cigarette papers and 119 wafers.
Back at the Mid-North Coast jail, staff suspicions that about an inmate having a phone up his bottom are confirmed with the offending item so clear on the X-ray that it’s keypad can be seen.
The prisoner is moved to a special cell where staff wait for him to “produce” the phone.
He is later segregated with NSW Police launching an investigation.
It’s not just the antic of inmates that staff have to keep an eye on – over at St Heliers, prison officers cut short a video call between a prisoner and a female friend on the outside after she exposes her breasts on screen.
It is 8.15pm and Dawn De Loas finally find the thrown tennis ball, which is jammed full with a cigarette lighter, tobacco papers and tobacco.
Prisoners are long back in their cells, but the day for officers is far from over with a 9.15pm escort of a sick Shortland prisoner from hospital where he had been taken to be cleared of COVID-19.
One final escort takes place shortly before midnight with an inmate transferred from hospital to the Surry Hills court cells.
In just a few hours, officers will go through it all again.
As Corrections Minister Anthony Roberts said, the job was more than locking up law-breakers.
“Our staff are fine people, and I salute them.”
“It’s a job not everyone would want to do – or could do,” he said.
Originally published as NSW prisons: What really happens inside our state jails