Former OMCG member Matt Law reveals bad side of bikies and why he wants to change Aussie prisons
Former bikie Matt Law reveals how his time in an OMCG led him to drugs, crime and prison time where crooks were hooked on another fix. Listen to the podcast.
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A former bikie has dished the dirt of gang life, revealing how quickly it turns from “riding bikes with brothers to shoot your brother in the foot, if you have to, take his kilo of crack”.
Matt Law was just 18 when he joined an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (OMCG) – less than a year later he was doing jail time.
His life of crime started two years earlier when he was running crime jobs for his uncle, himself a senior bikie.
“That’s when I started really getting into it, doing burglaries with the boys and you know, stealing cars,” Law tells Gary Jubelin in the latest episode of I Catch Killers.
A romanticised view of bikie life changed when he started witnesses members turn on each other.
“It turned from being about riding bikes with brothers to shoot your brother in the foot, if you have to, take his kilo of crack,” Law said.
“I’ve seen brothers turn on brothers. I didn’t agree with that.”
Law served time in prisons in South Australia and in Tasmania. His second stint in jail by his 21st birthday led him down the path of drug addiction, where he claims he became a drug trafficker to fellow inmates.
“Prisons used to be run by heroin … now they are run by a pharmaco-therapy drug suboxone (used to treat heroin addiction) which the prison hands out and that becomes a currency in the prison,” he said.
It was only a third stint in jail did Law finally decide this was not the life for him.
“This time I went in with the attitude, ‘well, if this is how I choose to live, I can choose to live another way. I can choose to change that. And so, I did this time.”
Rather than sit around playing cards with fellow inmates, Law began visiting the prison education centre, where he linked up with the Australian Red Cross.
He joined their peer mentoring program and began a psychology degree, which opened his eyes to the link between opportunity and outcome.
“Our thoughts can result in the processes that cause our life,” Law said.
“A kid in a foster system that’s very angry, that affects their thought pattern for the rest of their life.”
Since leaving prison, Law has become passionate about changing the prison system, and increasing opportunities for former inmates.
“Let’s correct the issues that have caused these guys to go into prison. They need education, they need housing,” he said.
“I’m a big believing in pre and post prison employment.
“I’d rather have that have guys coming out of jail where they’ve got some experience to get a job, than sending guys out with a $220 Centrelink cheque that (will see them) robbing your mum’s house that night.”
“If we can look at these issues more clearly, we’re going to be able to help these guys a lot more and make the community safer for everyone.”
Listen to Gary Jubelin’s I Catch Killers podcast here.
Originally published as Former OMCG member Matt Law reveals bad side of bikies and why he wants to change Aussie prisons
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