What it’s really like for a regular person in a Victorian prison
WIL Patterson cried himself to sleep on his first night in prison after going from suburban Melbourne dad to living with murderers. But despite witnessing a brutal shiv stabbing, he says he wouldn’t be afraid to go back to jail.
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WIL Patterson’s chest tightens as he stares through the cracked perspex covered window of the Melbourne Assessment Prison and realises a small cell will be his life for the next nine months.
It’s his first night in jail and he’s woken to a terrible panic attack as he contemplates his future behind bars.
The regular dad, 42, from Melbourne’s outer east, has just been jailed for stealing about $300,000 from the insurance company he worked for.
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Years of living beyond his means — of jet skis, holiday homes and skiing — left Patterson and his wife in financial stress and he made a very bad mistake.
One day the perfect opportunity landed on his desk — a $5000 cheque made out to a Wil Patterson that wasn’t him.
Patterson describes in his book Mr Ordinary Goes to Jail how he was meant to destroy the cheque, but instead he cashed it. He then copied the cheque so he could do it again and again.
He was sentenced to three years in prison, with two years and three months suspended.
Patterson’s jail life began with sharing the holding cells at court with an aggravated burglar and his first experience of using a prison toilet in front of other prisoners.
Patterson was then moved to the MAP and handed his welcome pack that included two condoms. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use them.
Patterson cried himself to sleep on his first night.
Patterson had felt relief when his company finally uncovered his offending and fired him.
It was like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
But his first visit to his lawyer gave him a clue of what lay ahead.
The lawyer didn’t hide the truth telling Patterson he would definitely go to jail.
“It was a shock when the first thing he said to me is ‘You’re going to do some time,” he said.
“I guess the logical bit of my brain knew it, but it was still a shock.”
Patterson’s wife, who worked at the same company and was initially also interviewed by forensic accountants after he used her computer login details during some of his offending, didn’t take the news of his offending well.
She immediately booted him out of the family home.
When he told his nine-year-old son CJ what he had done the son replied: “You should probably go to jail for that.”
As he prepared for jail, Patterson met with a couple of people he knew who had spent time inside and they told him the biggest thing would be boredom.
They were right, Patterson says.
Patterson also found a useful page on the Corrections Victoria website titled Going to Prison.
But as he prepared for his sentence Patterson wasn’t scared of going to jail.
Patterson says he only felt threatened during his brief stay at the maximum security Port Phillip Prison which houses some of the state’s most notorious criminals.
As he sat drinking a coffee in a common area, two prisoners got into a dispute about a phone.
Patterson watched as one of them went to his cell and quickly returned with a shiv before stabbing the other prisoner multiple times.
The victim fell to the ground bleeding profusely. Patterson is not sure if he survived.
“It’s a hard jail,” he said.
“At the Melbourne Assessment Prison in the city you could walk around the exercise yard alone, but I wouldn’t do that at Port Phillip.
“I wasn’t from a criminal background … I was a man who stole from his company.”
But a short time later Patterson saw the complete opposite end of Victoria’s corrections system in the relative comfort of the Beechworth Correctional Centre.
Beechworth is a working jail where among other things inmates build cubbies and make food for the local Meals on Wheels program.
There Patterson worked in the kitchen and was allowed out of the prison to cook in the community and even to go on fortnightly excursions of a bushwalk or bike ride.
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Positively too for Patterson there is no methadone program at Beechworth, so no recovering ice or heroin addicts causing trouble.
The prison houses people, including murderers, at the end of long sentences, as well as white collar criminals like Patterson.
Finally, on the morning of February 28, 2015 he walked free.
“The biggest lesson that I learnt from prison is that you find grace,” he said.
“The majority of men in there were just ordinary, kind normal men.”
Patterson said the threat of going to prison again is not something that scares him.
“Am I afraid of going back to prison? No,” he said.
He said the impact his offending had on his family —ending his relationship with his wife and not being able to see his son for some time — was the real deterrent.
“I’m glad I went to jail for some time,” he said.
“You don’t steal … it was right that I went there.”
Wil Patterson’s book Mr Ordinary Goes to Jail is published by Finch Publishing and is on sale from July 1.