Protest Mum's Jail Experience

Sitting in jail, there was still my exhilaration to be savoured.  I had shown
the government, I had taken a stand, I had laid down in front of the
bulldozers - not literally, but I had climbed a barbed-wire fence.  At Pine
Gap, near Alice Springs, we had protested against Australia's involvement in
the nuclear alliance and against the presence of American bases in our land -
a symbolic, nonviolent group action.  I even presented a white flower to my
arresting officer, who seemed more nervous than me.  Probably the most risky
aspect was getting hooked while climbing the barbed-wire fence.

Sensory deprivation.  Try it.  Lock yourself in a bare room, completely cut
off from outside light and view, and lit continuously with fluorescent lights.
Don't turn them off. Put on the air conditioning.  Keep the temperature
unchanged and steady.  Have nothing with you - no watch, no radio, no books,
no comb.  Give the key to friends and say they must not let you out before an
agreed time - try 24 hours, so you live through a day and a night.

I wonder how many would last the distance, or even a few hours.  Suddenly a
short space of time seems drawn out, boring, frustrating.  Mild panic may even
set in, especially for someone who is claustrophobic - no matter how large the
room.

So how do people stand it?  Prisoners of conscience, locked up for months and
years, put into solitary confinement, left in black holes and even, absolute
horror, tortured and then returned to the same conditions.  Some don't stand
it of course - they suicide, murder, go mad, confess (to anything).  They may
even reform, or perhaps, more accurately, avoid future trouble at any cost.

And miraculously, some grow in defiance and commitment.  They are the
remarkable ones.

I tried a small dose of sensory deprivation - and it's no fun.  I'd probably
have opted out after the first hour if I'd had a choice.  It left me
marvelling at the ones who can stand it for long periods and not give in. 
Panic, exhilaration, humiliation, intermittent joy and amusement, frustration,
even depression, but mostly boredom,  boredom,  boredom.  I had three days in
the lock up - and I went through enough feelings to get a taste of what
long-term must be like.

It had taken two years for the legal red tape to catch up with me but even
when it did, by way of the local police knocking on my door one evening, I
refused to pay the fine.  Such ideological commitment somewhat confused my
prison guards.  I was obviously their first 'political' prisoner and they did
not quite know how to deal with me, but decided to stick to the rules - no
concessions, no nonsense, no chat, no possessions.

I had nothing but the clothes I was wearing - sneakers, cardigan and my 'best'
skirt worn especially for the newspaper reporter I knew would be there to
photograph me as I came out of court - Protest Mum Chooses Jail - Queenscliff
Mother of Three Sentenced to Four Days!  My watch, rings, money, etc had been
taken, listed in a register and put in a locker in the station office.  Even
my shoe laces were removed from my sneakers.  I'd tried the standard line. "Do
you think I'm going to hang myself for a $160 fine?"  There was no response;
had they been asked this too often?  But of course they were all too young to
have heard of Arlo Guthrie and Alice's Restaurant.  Oh, well, I amused myself
and that was some comfort while I was being searched.  No drugs, knives, or
other forbidden fruit were found - but then if they couldn't find the biro I
had smuggled in (the thought of not being able to write while in there was too
awful!), I doubt they would have found anything else.

Panic hit me when the guards first closed the gate on my cell.  (They always
managed to do this with a great deal of noise, leaving one feeling they were
making a very obvious point!)  I was alone in a large completely enclosed
concrete room containing nothing other than a bench with a thin vinyl mattress
and two folded blankets on it.  A shower enclosure was set in one wall. 
Another led off the first.  This contained a toilet and a washbasin, another
sleeping bench and two more blankets.  No pillows, I noticed, and immediately
felt sorry for myself, having to do without the home comforts.

A book was the only thing I felt would alleviate my panic.  As the guards
walked away I gulped, "Can I have a book to read?"  "After lunch", came the
answer.  When I saw lunch a few hours later, I know which I would have
preferred!  Especially, as by then, I was convinced it must be dinner time at
the very least.

Another moment of panic.  My asthma spray was taken away.  (Presumably I might
have tried to escape by squirting this into the guards' faces; or perhaps I
might try overdosing on Ventolin.)  If I needed medication I had to call the
guards.  As the only method of summoning the guards was to shout down the
corridor, having to request your rights becomes part of prison humiliation. 
To wake up gasping in the middle of the night (who knows what time as there is
no access to a watch and the light stays on the whole time) and wonder if they
will hear you is disconcerting to say the least!

And there were other humiliations, such as the video camera trained on the
cell constantly - even toilet going could be observed.  One could only hope
the guards had become bored with such goings on and didn't bother to pay any
attention.  I felt the urge to do something outrageous - dance naked or
scream.  But suddenly such actions seemed more dangerous than climbing over a
high security fence protected by armed guards.  Getting out of prison without
further fuss or charges seemed very, very important.  One is soon confronted
and overwhelmed by the reality of the enormous power of our legal and punitive
system.

Having learnt to accept that the lights stayed on and the temperature never
changed and the sun never shone and the birds never sang, I was horrified when
suddenly one day the outer passage door clanged shut and the lights went out. 
Absolute pitch black!  Stay calm, I told myself, do not panic.  I even tried
the corny line - they're trying to break you - don't give in!  But of course,
I did, feeling humiliated at not being able to stand more than about ten
minutes in the dark.  (How long did Nelson Mandella put up with it?)  I called
out many times - sweetly, to my credit, and in command of my voice.  After the
mandatory delay to assert their authority, the guards (always two together,
never alone) came, full of innocence and surprise, "Oh dear, someone must have
thought this cell was empty".

"Oh, yeah!"

Do I sound too harsh on the guards and their motives?  I acknowledge there are
some caring people working in the prison system.  There were a few who showed
feelings of concern and I am grateful for their compassion.  (One thoughtful
guard turned the lights off for me for a few hours one night to allow me to
sleep, but the next shift turned them on again.)  My quarrel is more with the
system which sets up suspicion and intolerance between humans who of necessity
are constantly in close proximity with each other.  Are not the warders there
to punish and guard?  And does this not give them a dangerous amount of
control and power?  And are the prisoners not there to learn their lesson and
suffer?  And does this not lead to feelings of helplessness and rebellion? 
Prisoners and guards inevitably learn to mistrust each other.

Before experiencing my lock-up I would have sneered at the problem of boredom.
What problem?  Four days to read (they did let me read, feeding me my books
one by one thought the bars as I finished them) what bliss, what joy, how
relaxing!  As I consider reading one of the pleasures of my life it was a
surprise to find that after a day or two of nothing but reading (no radio, no
conversation, no birds, those wonderful creatures - how I missed them) I was
looking for other stimulation.  Walking up and down the cell about 385 times
became full of interest and fascination (trying to keep count was a problem, I
thought of cutting fingers and using my blood to notch up the laps, but the
plastic knife was useless).  And doing press-ups on the concrete floor (not
much blood needed to record my ability to do those!) was used as another
welcome diversion.

Perhaps a prisoner becomes inured to the solitude and quiet, even comes to
like it.  Certainly I found sharp contrasts quite distressing.  One afternoon
my cell gate was opened, with the usual banging, and clattering and shaking of
keys, and a teenage girl was forced by two policemen into the adjoining cell
and left alone with the door locked.  (Hey, what if I want to go to the
toilet?  Not the time or place to confront the police with such an issue, I
decided, just wait and see).  Quiet descended again, but suddenly a crash
shattered the silence.  I leapt with shock.  The girl had thrown herself
against the door separating our cells and she continues to bang and scream for
some time.  Due to the concrete walls, the metal doors, the enclosed space,
the noise was overwhelming.  I sat huddled and miserable through the din, all
my senses assaulted.  Eventually the girl calmed down and was lead away, who
knows where.  She looked only about fourteen, and the worst of it was that she
seemed used to such procedures.

I was allowed one visitor a week.  And observing my own excitement and
stimulation, the high I got from the event, I could see why in a long-term
prison, visitors could be more trouble than they're worth.  Not that I had any
chance to do anything with my excitement.  My lover and I were locked into a
small enclosed space with plate glass and bars between us.  No sound could get
through the barrier.  Our voices were relayed with a brief but disconcerting
delay as on a long distance phone call, through an intercom.  (And no doubt
into the police monitoring office).  We kissed through the glass.

The joy, even after such a short time, of reestablishing contact with the
outside world was intense.  What's the time? What's the weather like? Have any
earthquakes occurred?  Is the dog missing me?  Are you?  And when my lover
asked the guards to pass onto me the newspapers he had brought me, and they
obliged, what joy!  And more delight when I realised he had distributed
messages (some more obscene than others) throughout the news items.  To a
convenient heading Life on the Outside is no Fun, he had added 'With Jill on
the Inside'.  And showing total disregard for the given clues, 'I love Jill'
had been entered in the crossword spaces.  Searching for more messages
occupied me for hours.

When the guards refused to pass on the bunch of flowers he had brought in for
me (no glass allowed in the cells - slit wrists would be a major
embarrassment) one young female guard who seemed touched by his gesture and
had not lost her kindness passed one, just one, of the carnations through the
bars.  I sat it on the floor - there was nowhere else - in my plastic
disposable cup.  I couldn't decide whether I was like the heroine in a
romantic opera - Carmen perhaps - or a Marx Brothers comedy.

The rules said one visitor a week.  But my clever companion who had visited me
on Friday came again on Sunday and persuaded the guards that a new week has
begun and that I should be allowed another visit.  I think they were
influenced more by a relaxed Sunday lunch and an afternoon in front of the TV
footy game than by his logic.  They even forgot to let him out after the
regulation one hour.  He had to ring the bell to 'escape' as he was locked in
and needed to go to the toilet.

Depression never actually overtook me, but it hovered and threatened,
especially as I realised that in the grand scheme of things - of fire, flood
and pestilence - four days in a reasonably civilised prison hardly counts.  So
how could it be that I should feel so personally overwhelmed by lack of
company, by boredom, by not seeing the sea and the sky?  Surely, I thought,
I'm made of sterner stuff.  But the system subtly, though still rapidly, works
to undermine and disorient belief in the idea that idealism, decency,
generosity and reason are the values that count in the world.  They do help,
but they lose much of their relevance and meaning once one is enmeshed in such
a 'system' and trying to discover what are the ways that count.

So many things add to this awareness and disillusionment.  The loss of
liberty.  The drunken, sad and sometimes obscene yells from the other cell.
(The most frequent calls were - Can I have a cigarette? and What time is it?) 
My powerlessness in the face of uniforms, keys, mindless regulations.  The
fact that just about anything could happen to me in there and it would be only
my word against theirs.  The realisation that this sort of system would surely
never reform anyone.  Even the lousy food undermines one's energy and I
suspect eventually one's health.  The disappointment of always getting sugar
in my tea or coffee, no matter how many times I explained my dislike for
sugar.  And adding insult to injury by waking me each morning (it was the one
time they were happy to tell me the time - 6:15 am) out of the deep sleep I
had finally sunk into - waking me for nothing but another interminably long
day and to give me sugared tea, still frozen milk, tinned spaghetti and cocoa
pops for breakfast.

Does the legal system think this experience could possibly change my reforming
zeal?  On the contrary, perhaps my new cause will be prison reform.

Jill Warneke