Bernie

What a hell hole! I can't but agree that "Tamworth Institution for Boys remains the Frankenstein monster of a bygone era. It was a monster the NSW Child Welfare Department cloaked in secrecy to brutalise and emotionally scar children in its care."

While it may have been the worst (others may be contenders too), it certainly wasn't the only hell hole. There were hundreds of institutions for children throughout Australia and the Senate report, "The Forgotten Australians", decribes some of the disgraceful treatment meted out.

I endorse your comment that: "The end-products of that institutional process continue to occupy Australian prison cells and mental institutions today."

Unfortunately, the data comes from anecdotes and not from systematic recording of the correlation between life in children's institutions and life afterwards in prisons and psychiatric wards. But anyone who did time in children's institutions will tell you that many of their mates ended up in adult institutions.

Many of these men and women are now elderly and in some cases deperate about how they will survive their last years. Almost without exception, they are afraid of being put back into institutions.

I hope to hell that the Tamworth boys home and its ilk are a thing of the (shamefull) past. But I wish more products of juvie were articulate enough to be able publicly to tell their stories.

Unfortunately, as this article so graphicly states, State "Homes" seem to be mere production factories for adult criminals. They emerge from most of these institutions usually only semi-literate, brutalised, and with a world-view that warps many of their lives forever. Along the way they have picked up only the kinds of skills that are valued in their world - prison-smarts. Most have been not only raped but serially sexually abused.

Main-stream society rarely encounters these kids as they lurk on the fringes, chronically unprepared to fit in. Some of their stories, as this writer notes, would have most adults in tears. Yet the mote in our eyes ensures we reserve our tears for tales of far-away horrors in orphanages and homes in Europe, while ensuring that no product of "the system" comes close enough to our own kids to contaminate them.

Not long ago, running an unofficial "safe home", my star boarder was a softly-spoken, shy 16 year old who followed me round like a puppy, happily taking on any of the chores the rest skived off on.He blossomed in what he described as his first real home. Somehow - illegally - my rental agent found out this child had been in juvie and threatened the rest of us with eviction unless he went. Frenzied application to Centrelink, Youth care organisations etc. did no good and I still get tears in my eyes when I remember this kid, rucksack trailing, literally walking off into the sunset alone.

I dread the day when I pick up a newspaper and read his name.

I guess Keith Windschuttle would tell you that, since there is no contemporaneous documentary evidence of the brutalisation at Tamworth, therefore it never happened.

There is documentary evidence disguised as codes. If records indicate an insidence and they correspond to the story, then that is an indicator. Added to this is the trauma from an insidence, another indicator that something happened. The extent of trauma is another indicator. Also the number of people who were witnesses or with similar stories give it credibility.

I think there is more documentry evidence than you realise. Its a matter of how far enough up the food chain you can go to release confidential information. I don't accept that nothing at all was recorded.

This kind of stuff is the tip of the ice-burg.

The cell in the children's court building in Albion Street Surry Hills is the most horrific prison I've ever witnessed. Apart from the tunnels under Rozelle Hospital, but that is another dreadful story in Australian History.

Surry Hills detention cells were under the ground, low cieling, and so small, you can touch the walls with 2 hands on either side. It was clostraphobic, damp, and hellish to say the least. The door was thicker than the width of a window. The spot of light shone down from a tunnel to the street surface. They closed this in the mid 1970s.

It was built with the intention to isolate children from brutality.

Yet the children's institution were in many ways, more brutal that their adult counterparts. The whole thing is sickening. Surely things have changed. Have they?

i don't think anything has changed. the only changes is the money that is now generated from imprisonment. its a huge business. the whole bloody thing. money continues to be gained from the misfortune (in most cases) of others. the system has and always will be about punishment. rehabilitation and opportunities in a dogged penal system are few and far between.the ridiculous system of awarding certificates in ; anger management, stress management, drug and alcohol ets are insane. to think any of this lunacy adresses these innate issues is laughable. the system needs recidivism to spiral forever upwards. we all know the difficulties of adressing deviate behaviour. its not as easy as the self righteous believe. bernie knows only to well what is needed to adress the inhumane conditions and opportunities that have and continue to elude those caught in this rotten rotten harmful system

Ah yes noting changes, improvement in the education budget and the welfare budget and the numbers of busy-body government departments and we still get the criminally minded acting out their criminal aggression on the rest of us.

As for the bleeding hearts, wanting to excuse everyone for everything (and think the victims should go lick their wounds in private), I have not a minute for any of them.

A career criminal can whine all he wants about every injustice which has befallen him and at the end of the day we can compare him to someone else whose beginnings were more severe or disadvantaged and who has gone on to build an honest life for himself. The difference, the latter has backbone but the former has all the excuses for his own shortcomings – including blaming the system which has been deliberately put in place to circumvent his criminal tendencies.

No convict will ever thank the custodians of his internment for keeping him locked up but until he is prepared to look at himself in the mirror and point and say “you are the one who is to blame” he will continue to find excuses. Sad. Sad. Sad.

Oh tricky – not sure what you are sniffing but it is sure influencing your reasoning skills – the net cost of prisons is a burden on the social resources of the community. The monies generated from prison industries are negative and the prisoners are not worth the few dollars a day which they do get paid, I can at least refer to my own recent history (not as a inmate) as support for holding a view of prison culture and practice and recognize bunkum when I read it.