FTG - Could you do this badly in Germany?

Off-Topic Off Topic
#1

Three blokes in the most secure unit in our most secure gaol. One of them bludgeons another to death in the full gaze of security cameras while the third bloke describes what is happening to someone else he is speaking to on a phone. The body is dragged into the deceased’s cell. About 20 to 25 minutes later one or both of the two surviving prisoners suggest to prison officers that they might like to check on the condition of the, by then, thorougly deceased third prisoner.

Williams’ death sparks corruption claims

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 21/04/2010

Reporter: Heather Ewart

The death of gangland criminal Carl Williams in a Victorian prison this week has led to calls for a Royal Commission or independent body to examine claims of police corruption.

KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: There are growing calls in Victoria for a Royal Commission or another independent body to examine claims of police corruption linked to the murder of gangland criminal Carl Williams in a Victorian jail this week.

Media claims today that Williams was not discovered by prison guards until 20 minutes after the fatal attack on Monday have added to the public furore over the circumstances surrounding his murder.

The State Government has for years resisted calls for a Royal Commission on police corruption and continues to do so.

Victoria’s Office for Police Integrity will now oversee investigations into the murder, which Premier John Brumby says should be adequate.

Heather Ewart reports from Melbourne.

PHILLIP DUNN, BARRISTER: What you discover is truth becomes stranger than fiction. Carl Williams is killed in the most secure unit in the most secure jail in Victoria. And in the most secure unit in the most secure jail in Victoria, nobody knows he’s been murdered for 20 to 25 minutes. I mean, if you wrote that in a book or published it in a film everybody’d think you were crazy.

BOB HASTINGS, VICTORIAN CORRECTIONS COMMISSIONER: This is a concern. It’s not something that we like to see happening and the security of prisoners is really high priority for Corrections Victoria.

ROB STARY, CARL WILLIAMS’ LAWYER: It’s inconceivable and incomprehensible when you understand how strict the regime is.

HEATHER EWART, REPORTER: The nation woke this morning to the news of another shocking twist to the murder of notorious criminal Carl Williams in Victoria’s Barwon Prison: front page newspaper claims that Williams was left for dead in his cell for 20 minutes after being attacked before guards discovered him.

How long did it take for guards to find Carl Williams?

BOB HASTINGS: Again, I can’t speculate around that. Well the issue is that we do have three investigations going at the moment and I think it’s appropriate that we wait for the outcome of those investigations.

HEATHER EWART: What does this all point to, in your view?

ANDREW RULE, CRIME WRITER, THE AGE: The longer this story goes on, the more one thinks that the killing might have been premeditated.

HEATHER EWART: There are no police denials that security footage shows Williams being dragged to his cell by his attacker and left for 20 minutes until guards were notified they might like to check on his welfare. But nor are there any answers yet as to what happened and why, as the community looks on with growing disbelief.

PHILLIP DUNN: This isn’t Underbelly, this isn’t dollar notes and naked women. This is going to the heart of the administration of justice in this state. And it’s wrong. I mean, it really is wrong.

HEATHER EWART: What is known is that Victoria’s Office of Police Integrity will now join the investigation.

PHILLIP DUNN: Well, I don’t think you need to be Barry Jones to work out that the Office of Police Integrity’s charter is to investigate corrupt police officers. Now, what is an organisation that invests corrupt police officers doing investigating the murder of a man in a high security jail unit?

ROB STARY: Well the fact that they’ve intervened in a sense fortifies our own view of how serious this case is. Implicitly they must take the view that there is police corruption involved.

TED BAILLIEU, VICTORIAN OPPOSITION LEADER: OPI have now got involved. The problem with that is that the Victorian Government is actually investigating OPI and there is currently a review of OPI’s activities. So I think Victorians are entitled to be concerned and confused about what’s gone on here.

HEATHER EWART: They’re confused alright. Even after years of the gangland war, public shootouts and one underworld funeral after another, with Carl Williams constantly taking centrestage.

PHILLIP DUNN: We’ve now had public revelations that the police force have paid for his daughter’s private school fees. Now this is for a drug dealer and a murderer. What on Earth are they doing that for?

HEATHER EWART: There are also revelations in the media that the man charged with killing Williams belonged to a prison gang. It was allegedly founded by Chopper Read in the 1970s to terrorise fellow prisoners who blamed him for eating too many sausages on Christmas Day.

ANDREW RULE: I’m told on fairly good authority that the baton was handed over from the Overcoat Gang to a very young violent prisoner in 1991 who later became a very violent older prisoner at Barwon, and that man, I understand, was very close to Carl Williams when he died.

HEATHER EWART: The ABC is restricted from shedding further light on matters surrounding Carl Williams’ murder, but has been among media organisations in court today fighting for permission to broadcast further details. There are now renewed calls for a Royal Commission or a permanent authority to investigate claims of corruption, something the State Government has always resisted.

JOHN BRUMBY, VICTORIAN PREMIER: I know there’s been some calls today for a Royal Commission. To be honest, what occurred in the prison was obviously unacceptable, but the person concerned was a serial killer. I think it’d be quite unnecessary and quite inappropriate use of taxpayers’ money to have a Royal Commission.

HEATHER EWART: That response is unlikely to stop a growing push for a Royal Commission that began years ago at the start of the gangland wars.

ROB STARY: We said there was linkage between the so-called gangland wars and corrupt police and they simply put their head in the sand. There has to be some sort of inquiry with coercive powers to look at the thing holistically. We can’t just look at Mr Williams’ matter in isolation. We’ve gotta look at the linkage between all of these cases and these issues.

SIMON ILLINGWORTH, FMR POLICE WHISTLEBLOWER: It’s glaringly obvious that we need an independent corruption commission. That would be - to me it’s a no-brainer. The only question now is why there isn’t one.

PHILLIP DUNN: I think there should be a Royal Commission. I really do.

TED BAILLIEU: We stand by what we’ve said before: Victoria needs an independent, broad-based anti-corruption commission which can be called upon when issues of corruption arise.

ANDREW RULE: There is undoubtedly an argument that Victoria probably should get in line with the other states and have a standing anti-corruption commission.

PHILLIP DUNN: Police investigations underway right now may well end up raising more public concerns than those that exist already.

SIMON ILLINGWORTH: There’s numerous question marks over, I guess, the jail system and the police system and so on within Victoria and it’s unfortunate that that is the case, but obviously more will come to light soon.

ANDREW RULE: I think that those corrupt police that work here have been very good at it and it’s been done subtly and fairly well, if you get my drift. But now of course the - ultimately the bodies do get uncovered and they smell.

PHILLIP DUNN: Victorians expect answers and action over Carl Williams’ murder at Barwon high security prison. This is state that’s just about had enough of its Underbelly notoriety.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Heather Ewart with that report from Melbourne.

#2

Well, during the years I’m doing the job I learned that there’s no word like “impossible” behind bars.
I don’t know about Australian directives for the penal system but according to German rules inmates shouldn’t own (cell-) phones and must not be unsupervised outside of their cells - at least in a high security institution.
It’s more than strange that the blokes supervising the cameras did not see a thing. By own experiences I know that it can get pretty wearying to sit in front of dozens of monitors but hectic movements like those of a fight should attract the attention.
So it sounds possible that maybe someone was paid to not notice a thing. Corruption among correction officers is a global phenomenon. We had some trouble with that lately as well…

#3

We have some rather more quaint rules, such as prisoners not having drugs.

A great deal of prison officer effort is directed to ensuring that visitors do not bring drugs into prisons.

This ensures that the drugs brought into our prisons by some prison officers retain their high value, which is nice for the corrupt prison officers supplying prisoners and for the prisoners running the drug rackets in gaol.

Some of the other prison officers, who would never bring drugs in for prisoners, are not terribly distressed by the actions of their corrupt colleagues, because at least when the prisoners are spaced out they are more manageable. And when the prisoners’ drugs are cut off they become quite unmanageable. So just about everybody has an interest in ensuring that prisoners get all the drugs they want.

Not least because the aim of the exercise from our prison management viewpoint is to keep prisons and prisoners as untroublesome as possible.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I heard a bloke on talkback radio saying that he had installed camera systems in many of our gaols over many years and that the problem is that the observer has eight or sixteen or whatever number of screens to observe and that studies have shown that nobody can maintain complete vigilance for more than a short period, perhaps five to at most ten minutes. This is complicated by systems which show stills every few seconds, so that things can happen between the stills which cannot even be seen.

The assault in this case apparently took about ten seconds, so someone / a camera on a reasonably well run system like I have where I work could easily miss an event when many cameras are feeding into a central point on an interval of a few seconds or might not even record the event or at best might get only a glimpse of it.

The issue here might not have much, or anything, to do with corruption of prison officers.

We are blind here to what is going on because of numerous suppression orders issued by our courts, but newspaper reports suggest that at least one case involving serious offences by corrupt police has come to a grinding halt because of the prisoner’s death.

And you have to wonder what would possess a prisoner who knows he is on full time CCTV to murder someone on CCTV. Then again, some prisoners ain’t exactly the most rational being, or the sharpest tool in the shed.

#4

Quote: “And you have to wonder what would possess a prisoner who knows he is on full time CCTV to murder someone on CCTV. Then again, some prisoners ain’t exactly the most rational being, or the sharpest tool in the shed.”

I can speak only for conditions in American prisons, and what would cause someone so well monitored to do such things. simply put, the ones doing the killing have nothing to lose. Being lifers, they can only be held until they are dead, and with no death penalty in most States, what else can be done to them. There is only so much space in isolation, cant put everybody there. On occasion, someone fairly new will do the deed, in order to gain membership in one of the several National prison gangs. The gangs generally control the prisons, and pay the guards to expedite the introduction of drugs, hookers, weapons, and anything else money can be made on. The one upside to this arrangement is that should a true bad guy beat a well deserved sentence, the inmates will generally take care of them. Especially in the case of pedophiles, and those who have done violence to the young. Jeffrey Dahmer was one such case. The guards are not terribly motivated to prevent, or pursue these cases.

#5

…or by lawyers.:wink:

#6

Friend of mine is a prison guard.
They have 2 man cells.

One morning there was a deadman in one cell with his underwer shoved down his throat.
His “roomie” swore He don’t know anything.

#7

And why not? Prisons are the only place you can be sure have plenty of drugs all the time. Plus the security is way better than with street deals. :smiley:

And now for the latest instalment in our brilliant prison (mal)administration.

Prisoners given phones with security codes

The Victorian Opposition has called on the Corrections Minister, Bob Cameron, to explain how prisoners ended up with phones containing security codes for the Melbourne Assessment Prison.

About 25 prisoners were given phones so that they could be monitored while on unsupervised leave from the Judy Lazarus Transitional Centre in West Melbourne.

The Age newspaper says the phones were previously used by prison management and also contained private phone numbers for prison staff and their families.

The Opposition’s corrections spokesman Andrew McIntosh says giving prisoners access to prison security codes is a significant security breach.

The phones have been recalled and Corrections Victoria says denies there has been any security breach.

Mr McIntosh says a prisoner alerted officials about the phones.

“The concern is that the private details of prison officers and their families, together with the access codes of the Melbourne Assessment Prison, would be contained on those phones,” he said.

“A prisoner providing that information has drawn a halt to that situation, but certainly, it begs the question, why did they go out in the first place?”

He says this incident is just the latest problem in a series of problems in the prison system.

“Two weeks ago, it was a fire at Port Phillip. Last week it was Carl Williams, and now we find out that phones released to prisoners in the Judy Lazarus Centre contained highly confidential information,” he said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/27/2883252.htm?section=justin

#8

No one would ad,it it officially but the idea of drug-free prisons was surrendered long ago. Meanwhile we’re happy when they’re “just” smoking dope, at least that keeps them quiet…

#9

Which brings us to the wider question of legalising currently illicit drugs.

There is magnificant illogicality in locking people up for trafficking illicit drugs and then allowing them to have illicit drugs in prison to make prisons more manageable.

If we legalised illicit drugs there would be an awful lot less crime and many fewer prisoners.

Admittedly, some politicians and police and the people who pay them off would be a lot worse off, but I can’t see any injustice or social detriment there, either.