thanks for your reply Bernie -you are quite correct about the fact you are no longer a criminal and I apologise for my poor choice of words.

I do find any descriptions of what occurred at Grafton Jail offensive, but not because I disbelieve them, but because I do. What happened there was disturbing and wrong - prison officers are not above the law and should suffer the same consequences as any other person who breaks the law, although I know its hard to do this.

I don't know how effective the official visitor programs are, but I do think that something along those lines is needed for the police as well so that a independent 3rd party could enter police stations at any time, see any record, sit in on any interview, etc, so that police are on notice that their is a chance wrong doing will be detected. I also believe the law should be changed so that all rumours of wrong doing by police must be reported by any police aware of them. During the Police Royal Commission and many PIC investigations in NSW, it was revealed time and time again that police knew of wrong doing by others but just did nothing and that is how it breeds and flourishes.

However, i do disagree with you on the shooting charge -no life was lost, but that was just luck and bad shooting on the part of the shooter. I still believes that sort of thing deserves a very long sentence, but if the victim is speaking up for Cox and Cox has changed his formerly wicked ways I wish him well on his release.

I believe prisoners should be treated as human beings as IMHO, its the deprivation of liberty that is the punishment and they not be treated badly. I also fully support funding for education for prisoners and all the counselling/support needed to help them make it back into society.

I also believe in compensation for those wrongly jailed to which you would be entitled.

Dear Ed and Bernie

It's a bit to easy to read Bernie's article and then infer that because he is a criminal it would be preferable that he was not so subjective and should engage in a more scholarly and scientific writing style. Bernie's critical review is a bottom up understanding of what happened to Russell Cox. At no stage does Bernie argue that he or Cox represented the interests of mainstream society. However it is hard to ignore the notion that if people are released or indeed escape prison in a worse psychological/physical condition than when they arrived then it is likely that no one benefits.

The only issues that I would pick Bernie up on are these:

I was a detective in the NSW Police and worked on attempting to recapture Cox. We did not give him the title of 'Mad Dog'. What is more it was difficult to get anyone to say a bad word about him. The normal flow of information from the criminal community was less than a trickle. We also knew a great deal about his private affairs and although some may disagree those who were very close to him would realise that there are some very personal details regarding Cox that have never been released to the media or public. We were also aware of how quaint it was for some of the more 'progressive' middle class activists of that time to assist Cox and even Denning with the help of a Sky Blue or a Blue Sky (SIC).

The other issue is this. Denying medical assistance to wounded inmates who attempted to escape is bad common sense from any perspective. But, it is not the low levelled functionaries and caretakers who shape the system or the values of those who are in the system, whether this be inmates or officers.

It is almost impossible to reform a criminal justice system in which class bias is such a fundamental component. The person who initiated the concept of Katingal and the politicians who at an arms length allowed it to be built do not even rate a mention in Bernie’s article. For years now these people have sat back whilst the public spotlight is constantly maintained on the conflict between inmates and officers, crims and cops, rule breakers and rule enforcers.

In order to make a difference we need to place the spotlight back onto the rule makers who shape our society, our criminal justice system and the values of the people within this system.

Never the less none of this will be possible unless people like Bernie continue to critically expose the broader system for the sham that it is. Good on you Bernie.

Mick

Thank goodness for Bernie Matthews. He knows prisons as well as the laughably called "justice system" well. The tragedy is that despite Royal Commissions and inquires Australian prisons are just as monstrous as they were in the past. In fact with mandatory sentencing and an almost universal "law and order" approach by all political parties expect conditions to get worse. We need people like Matthews not only to deal with past abuses but also to deal with ones future because nobody else in the media really seems to care about these matters.

Bob, I am a little disturbed by the tone of your posting... it might interest you to know that one of the many human rights issues Mr Matthews has highlighted in his lengthy and prolific career as a journalist is freedom of speech for victims of the 'justice' system. It isn't really a surprise that a country founded on a penal colony has not afforded Australians a constitutional right to freedom of speech.

An implied right to freedom of speech had to be fought for in a court of law, as did prisoners right to voice what was happening to them, when Mr Matthews' case was heard before the Australian Press Council in 1978 for a story he wrote revealing corruption in the NSW police force.

Australia helped to develop the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the United Nations and Article 19 promotes the endorsement of free speech, for everyone, whilst article 18 endorses the right to free thought.

If people like Deborah Locke and Bernie Matthews and Jockey Smith had not pursued their 'implied right' to free speech there could never have been the reforms to the NSW police force that were so necessary.

Free speech isn't always popular, but it is always essential to the advancement of transparency and accountability in society.

Good grief Bernie, you are now placing yourself in the same sentence as Mandella.
Your prose is dripping with reverence for Cox, placing a "I'm not an advocate for Cox" in a postscript does not negative that. You state that you saw the punishment metered out to Cox in prison. Have you witnessed the trauma and suffering metered out to his victims, bank tellers and the like? Yet after suffering this treatment Cox still continued to commit serious violent crime, he had a choice his victims didn't.
He is a grub, nothing more and nothing less.
Give my regards to Nelson when next you meet.

Paul Huxtable

Hi PFH.

It was fairly plain to me that the reference to various people was merely to illustrate that people who have been in gaol for various reasons don't necessarily remain criminals forever.

Your interpretation of that text would infer a bias against former prisoners and perhaps an inability to conceptualize non-recidivism, and I am sure that couldn't be the case?

Mandella for example was not considered a hero by all people[despite the unfairness of that] or he would never have been put in gaol. Similarly, in corrupt justice systems, regardless of whether they are biased against people for race or for poverty[which is attributed as the main cause of offending]or any other reason, there are people who are gaoled unfairly, which Bernie Matthews was, 2 times and in my view whilst the actions of offenders such as Cox are definitely wrong, violent and frightening - in a system which allows the verballing of innocent men to meet their own corrupt and greedy means, people like that do take on a stereotypical Australian anit-hero status by them going against that corrupt system.

The reason there are set periods for sentencing is because in their infinite wisdom judges sincerely believe in the human spirit's capacity to change and to learn right from wrong. I would like to highlight that the instance of recidivism of sex offenders is far higher than the incidence of recidivism of monetary crime.

Their are a lot of 'victims'in life, but I certainly wouldn't rank bank tellers as being amongst the worst done by, for the crime of armed robberies to warrant more than say sex offences[and this is not taken lightly with 2 members of my family having been robbed whilst being in bank employment and I have also experienced being a 'victim' in an armed robbery].

In my personal experience however, family violence and sex offences are far more prevalent and damaging in the long term and it is a shame people do not feel quite so damning about the perpetrators of crimes against women, children and the rape of young offenders in gaol.