Insider's plea for clemency

Mr Ted Egan AO
The Administrator
GPO Box 497
Darwin NT 0801

Dear Sir

I write to you as prisoner serving a 3-month sentence in Darwin Correctional Centre at Berrimah. I respectfully ask you to grant me a pardon by setting aside my conviction, or, failing that, to show clemency by granting me an immediate release.

I believe that I have paid my debt to society for the offence I was found guilty of on 18 October by being made to suffer for nearly 2 months in the deplorable conditions of this prison, and that nothing will be gained by squandering further taxpayers' dollars on my continued incarceration.

In addition, I invite you, or a representative, to experience for yourself the conditions that we, as NT prisoners, are forced to endure for months, or years, by spending a night with inmates in a dorm in Medium Security M Block.

I also invite a representative of the NT Government to spend a night in one of the notorious punishment cells 'down the back', in order to see for himself the contempt in which prisoners' rights, which are of course human rights, are held in this prison.

In both of these blocks prisoners are locked in every day, from 3pm until 9am.

I await your reply in anticipation.

Yours Faithfully

Stuart Highway.
Darwin Correctional Centre
PO Box 1407
Darwin NT 0801

Letter written and posted December 14, 2005, checked and stamped by "prison intentelligence officer" on December 15, and received by the Network Against Prohibition on December 21.