Why this controversial NSW prison is changing our perceptions of jail

It’s the prison that breaks all the traditional rules of incarceration and is breaking the cycle of crime.

It’s the prison that breaks all the rules, but is showing phenomenal results.

Macquarie Correctional Centre is not your typical prison. Yes, it is maximum security and houses prisoners who have done bad things, from murder to armed robbery and serious drug dealing.

But you never hear the slamming of a cell door, the roar of a prison brawl or jail officers and inmates going toe to toe in a physical display of one-upmanship.

Macquarie does things differently and the results have been startling in the reduction of violence in prison and recidivism rates. The pro-social model has changed the way incarceration is viewed in the state of NSW.

Former homicide detective Gary Jubelin has gone behind the razor wire to discover just what this prison is doing that is so remarkable for his new six-part podcast - Breaking Badness.

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For Jubelin it was a life-altering moment and said revealing what has gone on inside the prison for Breaking Badness “might be the most important thing I ever do in terms of crime and punishment”.

“In Macquarie, the inmates work together for seven hours a day, study for another seven,

resolve conflicts through discussion and socialise together, just like they would do on the outside,” Jubelin wrote in The Saturday Telegraph - link to come.

Inmates get to study horticulture and work in the vegetable garden. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“Anyone who is violent risks being thrown out, back into the old prison system.

“I realised what I’d been missing in Macquarie was that looming threat of violence I’d felt in other prisons.

“It made me think about who’d you want living next to you, a prisoner who has been released from here or from the old system?

“Because they’re going to live next door to somebody after being released.”

The podcast reveals what is on offer to prisoners at Macquarie where an inmate can work and buy burgers and milkshakes from an on-site cafe teaching inmates about the hospitality trade.

Prisoners can do Toastmasters, chess and art courses, music workshops, join a choir or learn about horticulture, all with the explicit purpose of making them citizens who want to join in with society once they are released. Also on offer are courses in film and production for the inmate MacTV program.

One fo the inmats cooks at the Grills and Gates cafe.

Instead of cells, all prisoners live in dormitories containing a maximum of 25 cubicles.

It’s a change from the old school model where jail was a form of punishment only.

Macquarie’s current governor Brett Lees said the model was controversial but the results were overwhelmingly positive thanks to the decrease in recidivism rates.

“I think what people don’t understand is treating people badly in jail, yeah, I get that’s what the public sort of wants, but they just kind of get bad people come back out again,” Mr Lees said.

The prison has a strict no-violence policy and prisoners are moved on even for a two-finger tap on the face.

In the six years it has been running there has only been two recorded assaults on staff. In one a prisoner threw a pair of foam earbuds at an officer, in the other, an inmate squirted a water bottle on the officer’s back.

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Originally published as Why this controversial NSW prison is changing our perceptions of jail