When Kerry Tucker was jailed for five years in Victoria’s maximum-security prison for women for fraud, she had two choices. She could give in to the shame and hopelessness or apply her energy and brains to building a future. Kerry Tucker decided to turn incarceration into an opportunity. Missing her own two daughters, she wrote a children’s book to help ease the trauma of prison visits. Kerry quickly adapted to the prison regime and set about using her skills to successfully represent women in internal court, parole hearings, and child welfare issues. She also introduced her own awareness programs and encouraged inmates to enrol in courses. She helped prison administrators by helping other inmates, she acquired an education and gained her Master of Arts in the first graduation ceremony behind bars in Australia.
Now, out of prison, Kerry is a successful academic manager, published author, and an in-demand speaker in the Fraud, Education, Prisons and Motivation arenas. The story of how she rebuilt her shattered life is in the hands of Hollywood producers and her experience behind bars is the inspiration behind Wentworth, the critically acclaimed remake of the much-loved Australian drama series Prisoner. Since her time in prison, Kerry’s prison/criminal record has been removed under the Spent Sentences Act and with the support of the Magistrate, Chief Commissioner of Police, and Governor General.
Let’s talk prisons!
It is always important to remember that offenders go to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment as this does form a lot of the narrative around prisons, programs, and rehabilitation. It also forms the basis for community pushback on any sort of funding. Until the community understands the real impact of loss of liberty, that this is enough in regard to the crime, the system will continue to fail.
It is also important to note I am not an abolitionist – I am a reformist. I believe there is a place for prisons in our community, they just need to be a lot better and a lot more effective.
When we talk about programs in prison, especially women’s prisons, it is somewhat of a fanciful ideal. Prisons are never implemented in line with the original ideal, and rarely effective in reality. Many people in the community imagine that once a person goes to prison, the system begins work on the individual towards rehabilitation and release. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For instance, if you are currently a woman on remand in Victoria’s prisons, and half the population are, you are not eligible for programs. You can only access programs once you are sentenced and the prison can work out what programs suit your timeframe. They will not enrol you in programs when there is a possibility you may be released either before you begin or midway through the program. It takes around 2 years for a large trial to hit to the courts. So that’s 2 years the offender has to sit and become part of the ever-perpetuating environment of victimness, where women eventually see themselves as the victim when waiting for long periods to go to court and sitting in prison waiting for programs that never come. If a woman is sentenced to 26 months – she has thus received no programs at all and then is released either the same or worse than when she arrived.
The drug program in the women’s prison is particularly difficult to get into, and usually linked to a parole plan. So the prison won’t admit someone into the program who has an unknown sentence on remand. The problem is funding. This is not the fault of the prisons – it’s the lack of funding. The community sees no benefit in funding prisons. And it is the community who informs the sitting Government and any subsequent funding thereafter.
When I was in prison, 84% of the women were either coming in from a domestically violent relationship or experienced domestic violence while they were offending. Yet we had no domestic violence programs or counselling in place. The men did, however. Given that their population was around 17,000 and women around 500, the funding is distributed according to these ratios. Many women returned to these relationships, and some of them were killed shortly after. This is not the purpose or intention of incarceration.
Further, when women do get programs, to save money and maximize facilitators, group programs are usually the only offer. This goes directly against the culture of prison, requiring women to reveal past histories and vulnerabilities to those around them that live in the same place. If the group program is attached to their parole, women will do it but will also abstain from any meaningful contribution. This is a necessary step in order to survive in prison, but does nothing for the rehabilitation of the woman. On this point, women don’t trust the facilitators because they rarely come back. Again, due to funding, stakeholders usually send their most junior facilitators, often those requiring a placement in an education program. They are usually young, inexperienced, and not mature enough to make any headway with career criminals. It is also a long way out of Melbourne. So, they rarely return after the initial meeting such that all continuity ceases, as does trust. They are also not permitted to meet and consult with the counsellor, psychiatrist, etc that they had on the outside. That all ceases. They are now at the mercy of the Prison Counsellors – who rarely turn up.
One of the largest but unseen issues that directly impacts programs is the 3-to-6-month sentence. Apart from these small sentences being more destructive than just a custodial sentence, the 3-to-6-month month sentence is just enough for a woman to lose their job, their home, and their kids. They then come to prison and have no time to benefit from any programs. These short sentences also disrupt the entire prison system on the inside and have long lasting effects on the rehabilitation of major offenders – those with the longest sentences.
This is how it works on the inside: when someone goes to prison and is sentenced to say 16 years for murder etc, they are already sentenced. So they are slotted into programs to address their crime. This would normally happen around 2-3 months into their sentence because it takes around 1-2 months to get settled into the prison – assessments, visits, medical etc. Then around the 3rd month, Sentence Management will visit to reclassify their security status. But they don’t need to do this if women are due to be released around the time Sentence Management would visit in 3 months. However, even though women only have a 3-month sentence, parole conditions will be attached to that before release, in the form of programs. Therefore, in order to get the 3-month sentences into the programs for parole, everyone on longer sentences gets pushed back until there is an availability that isn’t urgent. Thus, most offenders on longer sentences do not get their parole programs until their imminent release. I’m sure the community believes offenders to be attending programs day in day out, however this is never the case.
I have lived with women who were in for sentences of 20+ years for murder and conspiracy to commit murder who had had no programs for 11 years. For long-term dangerous women, Sentence Management visit once a YEAR to touch base with the woman, and much to their dismay, revisit their crime. Because there are no programs that have been addressing this, since they arrived . . . for say 11 years . . . the women are entirely hostile to this procedure. Their thought process is that they have been tried and sentenced in a court of law and are now doing their sentence – so it’s not fair that people come out and bring it all up again !!!
The reason for their outrage is again directly linked to ongoing lack of programs and more importantly – sitting in an environment that perpetuates a sense of victimness. Women on longer sentences tend to rewrite their crimes and stories. Women come and go in the prison, the long-termer is a constant as memories fade, there is no internet etc. So they begin to rewrite their crime and usually write themselves completely out of the story to the point that they weren’t even present during the crime or were set up. This mentality, without the benefit of programs, all but ensures they become victims of their own crime and incredibly bitter about being wrongfully imprisoned. And then they get out.
There is an even more disadvantaged sub-set of the prison population, and that is the female sex offender. They are kept in Protection from Protection, a smaller part of the larger protection population, who never leave their area. If they require medical assistance, the entire prison needs to be locked down and mustered. This is a costly and time-consuming event. This is because sex offenders can’t even be separated by just fences as with Protection women. In some cases, the prison must lock the entire population down so other women do not try to kill the sex offender. They cannot even be sighted by other prisoners for fear of a collective riot. In the prison hierarchy, no one is lower than the sex offender. A couple of reasons, most women in prison had been sexually abused themselves, it’s a crime against children . . . and the old abiding by the prison code set down by the male offenders in prison.
These offenders also do not receive programs, can’t access their own counsellors, and can see a psychiatrist only if they are intending to kill themselves. They mix with no one other than themselves and can only see daylight out of their window. Even the Protection prisoners are taken to the gym when the prison is in lockdown. The sex offenders aren’t. They sit in isolation and darkness and are then released, to offend again I would imagine. The opportunity to delve into their own backgrounds to find the link to offending is lost. All the research, all the data never gathered in the first place. They should have specialists in this field, counselling with them for their sentences, as most attract small sentences anyway. They are then released and excommunicated further from communities, housing, employment, and opportunity. Under the present prison conditions for sex offender women, they don’t stand a chance and their life all but ends when they were sentenced. Male sex offenders in Victoria have their own dedicated prison.
At any time in prison, drug crimes make up around 80% of the population. I usually combine the stats for what is labelled drugs with burglary, robbery, assault, armed robbery (remembering an armed robbery is a robbery even if the weapon is a banana) etc, as they are more often than not motived by drugs. Major crime syndicates exist for the very fact that our citizens remain addicted. And regarding women and drugs, they are more often a nuisance to society than a threat to society. Because drugs are readily available in prison and drug programs are not, the cycle of incarceration and recidivism will continue to increase.
It is my belief we could treat drug crimes, which often ARE the 3-to-6-month shoplifting sentences, in a more holistic manner. Many countries today have learned this lesson and are now using harm-reduction and decriminalisation approaches to reducing prison populations and addressing drug-related issues from a public health perspective.
I’d suggest with the more serious crimes resulting from drugs, the treatment could be in a health custodial centre, whereby the individual is put back together again from their broken past. Some addictions are nearly as old as the individual and there will be resistance, as drugs have been their longest and strongest relationship. However, successful completion of programs in a health-based treatment custodial facility would dictate whether they get their parole. Some need a stronger diversion and longer assistance.
This type of facility would clear out most of the population of most of the prisons and everything that goes with it, moving from environments of perpetual victimisation to health-based environments of empowerment. The funds saved in the prisons could funnel directly into the health-based institutions. The stigma of being in a health-based treatment centre, albeit custodial, is easier to overcome than that of being a prisoner.
Prisons could then focus on serious criminals, dangers to our community, and the mental health issues associated with criminality. They would do so with more than half the populations reduced and more focus on those who require it. This is called a focus on rehabilitation.
At it is now, most of the women in prison get up for muster at 8am, get counted, get let out, wander down to medical to get their medication or methadone, then wander to work to spend the day untangling Qantas headphones. Then back to medical for their nightly medication, a 12-minute phone call to children, then lock down at 5pm in the winter, 7pm in the summer. This is NOT a focus on rehabilitation. The only one that benefits from this scenario is Qantas.
I’ve been approached by Victorian Government Ministers in the past years, who sought me out and contacted me for consultation and input. I felt quite hopeful, until I began discussing my ideas around a health-based system. Both ministers advised me they’d never get elected, the community would speak. I found this reasoning to be . . . cowardly, spineless, self-benefitting, egotistical, shallow, and short sighted.
I did discuss with them that the community is not the judge and jury when it comes to prisons. We actually have . . . judges and juries for that. I’ve always said the community doesn’t get two bites of the cherry. They contribute to sentences through who they elect. On a more personal basis, victims also contribute to sentences through Victim of Crime Statements – as they should – and this can influence the length of sentences. But victims and community members, – in my opinion, should not then also get to decide on how the offender’s sentence will be done . . . i.e. no TV’s, no visits, etc.
To summarize, Australia currently imprisons more people than any other time since 1900 at a cost of $3.6 billion annually. With current recidivism, 4 out of 10 will return to prison within 2 years of release, most entrenched in a relentless cycle of unemployment, homelessness, and offending.
By simply altering our perspective and thinking about the same things differently, we can unlock a world of alternate possibilities. In this shift of mindset lies the potential to transcend boundaries around the prison system, bridge divides, and cultivate innovation. It allows us to see challenges as opportunities, to reimagine problems as solutions waiting to be uncovered. By viewing prison through a holistic lens, as a source of strength rather than division, we can foster cooperation in ensuring reform is beneficial to all.
So until our politicians, law makers, people of substance and courage can step up . . . the same will be the same.
