Mulawa Aims To Contain, Not Punish

Illawarra Mercury

Tuesday December 2, 1997

If first impressions truly count then life in Mulawa is good. Very good.

There are medical specialists on tap, reasonably nice food is provided, there's access to a wide range of educational courses, and you can even launch a career in telemarketing.

Staff members are guided by the ethos that they are there to contain you, not punish you, and try very hard to make sure your sentence is spent productively.

If they can't rehabilitate you then they at least want to send you back into the outside world no worse than when you came in.

Kids can visit their mums on the weekend and all day Monday, and in a couple of weeks they'll enjoy pony rides and a jumping castle at a bumper Christmas bash.

Jail governor Stuart Campbell, who has transformed Mulawa since he was appointed three years ago, paints such a positive picture of life on the inside that it's almost inviting.

Isn't he worried about making it sound so good that women will turn to crime to get into Mulawa?

"Not at all ... it may sound great but the reality will always be that there is someone telling you what you can wear, what you can eat, what you can do, what time to go to bed and what time to wake up," he said.

"It's certainly not a place you'd want to be although we try to make it as human as possible."

Observers say the worst thing about doing time is not necessarily the lack of liberty. For many, the worst aspect is being forced to live with people you would not otherwise choose to live with.

Many of the women in Mulawa have psychological or psychiatric problems.

Mr Campbell concedes that, because of those problems, some of the inmates probably should not be in jail.

But that's by the by. The job of Mr Campbell and his crew starts after the courts have made their pronouncements. For most jail workers, the question is not "How did you get here?" but "Where can we take you from here?"

"If we can turn their time here into constructive time by teaching them skills and addressing their drug and alcohol problems we're not wasting taxpayers' money," he said.

"To the contrary we are saving taxpayers' money because when they get back out in the community they are better educated, healthier, and therefore less likely to reoffend.

"We try to make the ladies' days productive and reflective of the outside. Their days are structured. They all go to work, and the education and the programs happen after work, just like they do on the outside.

"They can work in the nursery propagating seeds, or assemble headsets for airlines, and recently they've started telemarketing which is big in quite a few American jails."

That involved inmates phoning a business' customers - for example, people who had placed classified ads in newspapers - to see if they were happy with the service and result.

But helping the women help themselves is no mean feat. Most have been abused in some form and have struggled with drugs and/or alcohol.

"So by the time they come here they have a lot of issues and problems," Mr Campbell said.

"When they first arrive they are assessed in the induction centre where their welfare and medical needs are addressed.

"A lot of them neglect themselves on the outside and need quite a bit of support."

It would be too rich by half to say that going to Mulawa could be the best thing that could happen to many of these women.

But Mr Campbell believes that in a lot of cases coming to Mulawa "assists inmates in their crisis period".

The Governor loves his job. There are the "problems and hassles" but ask him to nominate a bad aspect of his work and he is truly stumped.

"I can't think of anything negative," he said. "You actually feel as if you are achieving something. Often after an inmate leaves she or her parents will write and thank you for what you have done for them.

"Sometimes after they leave they phone us and keep in contact during that crucial two or three-month period after release."

He said one of the jail's golden rules was that an inmate's children were never punished if she did the wrong thing.

"We never punish the family - if the prisoners do wrong we never jeopardise the kids' visits," he said. "Christmas is a hard time for these women so we have a special party.

"It means that when the children's friends talk about going to a Christmas party they can also talk about a party.

"Otherwise they'd have to say, `I'm not going to a party because my parents are in jail'. It brings normality into their lives."