Brighton siege gunman Yacqub Khayre
When it comes to Yacqub Khayre — the young man responsible for killing a 36-year-old man and kidnapping a woman in Melbourne’s Brighton earlier this week — no politician wants to address the extent of how the Victorian prison system contributed to the “Brighton siege”.
Isolation, lack of mental health support and little or no rehabilitation — this is the experience of those detained on suspicion of having committed terrorism offences, and, in fact, of young offenders who commit crimes of violence generally, in the prison system.
Khayre was charged with terrorism offences and incarcerated from August 2009 to December 2010 when he was acquitted of the offences. It is important to understand what happened to him in those 16 months to understand his later offending, and what happened in Brighton this week.
When Khayre was arrested on terrorism charges, he was a young man of 20 with a troubled history of drug use and alcohol dependence. He had spent time in a youth justice centre, and of critical importance is the fact that, according to a judge who sentenced him in late 2012, Yacqub was held in “high security remand” while he waited his terrorism offences trial.
“High security remand” is where corrections authorities house those who are charged with terrorism offences, despite their being presumed innocent. There seems to be a view among corrections authorities that simply because a person has been charged with a terrorism offence, they must be housed with convicted violent offenders, who form the major population of Australian prison’s high-security units.
The adverse impact of holding young men charged with terrorism offences in a high-security unit was highlighted in the so-called Melbourne terrorism case in 2008. The 12 accused in that case were classified as high security from the time they were arrested in late 2005, and held in the notorious Acacia Unit at Barwon Prison in Melbourne’s west. The conditions were so appalling that the trial judge, Supreme Court justice Bernard Bongiorno, threatened to stop the trial unless radical improvements were made by corrections authorities. Bongiorno said the conditions were “a risk to the psychiatric health of even the most psychologically robust individual”. Constant strip searching, spending up to 23 hours a day locked in a prison cell, little access to mental health treatment and limited access to family and friends are the hallmarks of high-security units.
Khayre would have endured similar deprivation in the 16 months he was held on terrorism offences. It did not take long for him to resume drug use and re-offend, in a serious way, after he was acquitted at Christmas 2010. In fact, the aggravated burglary he committed in 2012 and in respect of his parole in December last year, was at least partly due to the heightened risk of re-offending that inhumane treatment in maximum security causes.
In a September 2015 report, the Victorian Ombudsman confirmed the widely shared view that “there is a correlation between the maximum security prison locations and a higher recidivism rate. While the explanations for this are complex and varied, the security nature of the maximum prisons generally means prisoners have less out-of-cell hours, and do not have the opportunity to access the same level of transition support and adaptation to more independent living as those in medium or minimum security locations prior to release.”
In the case of those prisoners on remand, once they are acquitted there is literally no support provided to them to readjust to civilian life after the hellish experience of maximum security detention.
If tomorrow’s Council of Australian Governments’ meeting simply postures about the parole system for violent offenders and terrorism offences, it will have completely missed the mark. The fault lies with a corrections system that is obsessed with making prison life as unbearable as possible for certain types of remandees and convicted prisoners. It is a prison system that thinks it is acceptable to subject troubled young people to enduring isolation, boredom, capricious discipline and humiliation.
*Greg Barns is a Spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance and represented one of the accused in the Melbourne terrorism trial in 2008.
Turnbull asked how this bloke got parole, as if he should never have been a parole candidate. Surely it is better that he was released on parole, with some form of supervision, reporting requirements and potential support (even if limited), and being at risk of return to prison if he misbehaved, than that he completed his maximum sentence and simply walked out the door with no supervision, reporting, support or motivation to behave at all? Which option protects the community more? Just watch the recidivism rate jump if serious and violent offenders don’t have parole available.
He was complying with all his parole conditions and monitoring requirements… but remember the fat fuck in the camouflage coat trying to do “gangsta” with his pistol (fuck knows why it had a laser sight on it if he was going to do that), thereby ensuring that any round he squeezed off would go wherever the fuck it liked? That’s the calibre of people that do the parole monitoring.
But if you say that, then you love criminals and want to have their children. Or that you hate children and don’t want the streets to be safe. Or whatever the current line is – I can’t keep up.
Whichever – Andrews was right to stand over Turnbull and take his lunch money.
This article should be published where more people will read it. Most are clueless about the circumstances of prisoners. The lack of rehab and after-release support following any form of incarceration almost seems designed to cause recidivism and worse, let alone under the circumstances described here. We now know so much more about human behaviour than we or our politicians are willing to make use of, and that is a scandal and a tragedy.
“Distraction”? State jurisdictions? What was the AFP doing – chasing Party leaks?
And does reality matter : as long as this government looks like it’s doing something?
There are probably different and better ways of doing things than the Limited News Party way?
AFP are busy chasing journalists for spreading facts.
I’ll state the bleeding obvious and suggest that Greg Barns could set up a boarding room in his blue-ribbon property to counsel anyone on a terrorism watch-list. Good luck to him.
…or the State could do its fucking job and actually treat prisoners humanely.
So that’s another vote for Greg Barns’ boarding house?
I’d rather we implement more of a ‘cool hand Luke’ type situation.
Find some uneconomic tunnels that need digging.
Our courts have admitted over and over again that men we have been jailing for ”terrísm haven’t done anything but have thoughts and talk. No weapons, no bombs, no plans, no nothing yet they spend longer in prison than men who murder their wives and kids simply because they are muslims and our courts are openly and frankly racist.
Then we have the drivel of deradicalistion which is just a fancy lazy western word for brainwashing or Stepfording, it’s lazy because it’s only ever applied to men who believe we shouldn’t be bombing millions of people in nations that have not hurt us ever.
As for the pathetic little men in this nation, Jack Robertson summed them up wonderfully yesterday, with their cowardice it’s not wonder dozens of women and kids are slaughtered by them every year.
” jailing for ”terrísm haven’t done anything but have thoughts and talk”.
Yeah well it’s a bit late jailing them after they’ve driven a bus through some tourists.
I’ve yet to hear a good alternative solution that will actually work – and yes I agree that invading Iraq and meddling in the ME was a very bad idea.
“Your yet to hear a good alternative . . . ”
Surely, you must have read Greg’s expert opinions, given his knowledge of pre and post maximum security environments upon young men on remand and/or serving extended terms. The more an inmate is desensitised, the more likely he/she is to accept a retributive mindset. Basically, as understood, our protective system failings are manufacturing deeply damaged inmates.
It’s usual to jail people for crimes, not for thoughts. If all of us were jailed for thoughts that others don’t like we would all be in prison for life. Now try not to be one of the whiney little man cowards.