Freedom

A month in Darwin's Berrimah jail, from March 12 to April 8, sheeted home several undemocratic truths to former print journalist ROB INDER-SMITH.

The sight of the exit gate to freedom came as my head was giddy with mixed emotions.

The triumph of a plan unhatched and about to be fulfilled swirled with the rage just conjured up by Officer Move Out!, who could not let me pass through "Checkpoint Charlie" without one final act of bastardry.

Here I was, a 28-day political prisoner, about to turn my back on his workstation, Berrimah Correctional Centre, and he had just confiscated more of my papers.

"I'm keeping these," he said, as he clutched a fist-full of documents I immediately recognised. Included were shopping and to-do lists, for this very day, plus letters already processed and vetted by Officer Ten Gallon, the prison censor. They'd accompanied me safely from the "mainstream" M-Block to my one-man B-block bunker, aka solitary, where I spent my second
fortnight, so why was Move Out! taking them from me now?

We both knew that this final confiscation was unjustifiable and I was livid.

At the same time, I was almost jubilant with relief at seeing that what was not in his grubby outstretched hand, were my unravelled shorthand notes the ones I was attempting to smuggle out and which seemed at this late stage, just seconds after my sixth and final strip-search in the penultimate mantrap, to be as yet undiscovered and on their way with me out the gate.

Move Out! and his band of uniformed rubber glove-wearing screws aka prison officers, but something entirely different in prisoner parlance were demonstrating that even as a prisoner is all but free once more, it is they who are ultimately unaccountable.

"You can't do this!" I said, outraged with indignation, yet thankful my booty seemed to have slipped through under their noses, and just to be sure, I dug into the plastic bag just handed back to me.

My relief instantly became joy the object containing my precious notes was safe and sound.

Then, with one last, albeit not entirely full-blooded protestation, "that's my intellectual property", Berrimah's henchmen frogmarched me to my freedom.

Getting the notes out had been a case of second-time lucky. Soon after my arrival, while still in an M-Block dormitory cell, I had tried to smuggle out letters and news stories with a prisoner due for release in a few days,who happened to be a neighbour of a mate, Stuart Highway, one of Australia's best-known political and human rights activists.

Also included in the soon-to-be-deemed contraband, was a letter from Annum, an Indonesian fisherman, who saw our "arrangement" as a last resort.

Over the previous 12 months, he had written at least three times to Highway, with all his letters returned by screws who told him, "You cannot write to this person because he is a political activist and trouble-maker."

As well, he was told he was not allowed to telephone Stuart, so when he got wind of the arrangement, he leapt at the idea.

But as often happens, the plan came awry. Screws frisked Parny the way they did me and our letters sealed in envelopes addressed to the Ombudsman, which should have rendered them untouchable were opened and never made it outside the prison walls.

As punishment for our audacity, Annum and I ended up behind those in "Sepcon" separate confinement.

Perhaps the most ominous "parting shot" was delivered by the screw escorting me out the gate.

"You activists get what you deserve," he said.

Coming from a man I never even knew, the words left me dumbstruck.And I realise that they were not just meant for me.

♂ The author was convicted of “Intentionally disrupting the (NT) Legislative Assembly while it (was) in session, in February 2002”.