Why on earth was this garbage published?

Leigh, I'm surprised that you were not touched by the authors obvious concern for the victims of violent crime. That his focus was so strongly on the suffering that he and other like him have inflicted on those innocents who have found themselves staring down the barrel of a gun during an armed robery. Those people who struggle to work again because next time they might not survive. Those who take years to feel safe again (if ever) in a public place.

Surely your heart was touched by his lack of concern for the discomfort he endured as he reflected on the fate of his victims and the harm that he has done them.

For those who don't get it I'm being tongue in cheek. Not an ounce of remorse in the article, just a bunch of bleating about how tough he had it being fed and housed at the tax payers expense as a result of his crimes.

Nothing in the article suggests that as someone who has used weapons while commiting crimes he has anything at all to complain about. He can live with the knowledge that the law will not pull the trigger for the hell of it, only in the most dire circumstances. He can live with the knowledge that his needs will always be given consideration regardless of how far he trangresses against society. Not so his victims.

R0bert

Bernie's post's are great. Much of what he tells us we would never otherwise know because our journalists are, in order to get the best news leads, in cahoots with politicians and bureaucrats to occasionally supress information that we should be told.

We already have too much penal institutions in our State. Rev enge does not equal justice.

Yes, Robert. What a heartless devil I am. I know I should feel concern for convicted armed robbers put into terrible jails. But, somehow I just can't seem to do it. His photograph doesn't help.

'Revenge does not equal justice', Blimey, what would you do to these crims?Give them a holiday on the Gold Coast?
While they are inside, the populace has nothing to fear from them, for a while anyhow.
It would be interesting to get an article written by the other side, a victim of a brutal armed robbery describing his/her state of mind for how long it takes to forget the terror that has been inflicted on them .
How it has affect their work, their leisure,their relationships.
Growing up poor is no excuse for crime, the main reason would be sheer laziness.
No sympathy.

Bernie thanks for sharing your experience and consequent insight with us. I thought it was ironic that the guards behaved in a criminal manner ignoring the injured prisoner, Levy, while the prisoners did what they thought was necessary to get assistance to a man with an ankle broken in three places. Leaving Levy like that was criminal.

You also mentioned how the "screws' retaliated with a campaign of harrassment against prisoners. This method of stirring resentment amongst prisoners by punishing all prisoners is based on what prison management method? Sounds like the prison guards, in that particular prison, were into anarchy.

Hope things have changed to a more professional system. Two reasons. First, that kind of draconian measures of control only leads to unnecessary confrontation between guards and prisoners, thereby, endangering the prison guards unnecessarily; and second, it is plan wrong for prison staff to be inflicting their particular personalised form of punishment on prisoners. That is the magistrates duty.

Blake said: "Prisons are built from stones of Law.... "

That Law applies to the prison officials, guards and prison staff too.

It seems that some would have our correctional facilities built from the rabble of spite, vengence, vendetta, legitamised, authorised anarchistic behaviour, cruelty and negligence.

RObert I did not read Bernie asking for sympathy - I read BW presenting some facts. I gleaned from them that he just wants professional behaviour from the prison authorities and system. His article tells me that this was not the case here.

Leigh: I get the feeling that you are more in tune with Saddam Hussiens's Iraqi prison methods than the Australian ideal.

Some of you lot, for folk who supposedly value freedom and democracy so much (probably more than your own lives) you miss the whole point of incarceration.

Good police and good prison staff are the salt of the earth. We must insure that these folk are not put in the position where they are just inhumane tools, instead of proud, ethical servants of the Law. (FREEDOM)