Name: Meagan*
Age: 32
Current conviction:
1 count: Reckless Wounding
16 counts: Dishonestly obtain financial advantage etc. by deception
Sentence: 2 years, 1 month
Meagan says her first encounter with the law occurred a number of years ago, when she managed to steal a car - her father’s car - with her brother. “My mum had just got sent to jail and I went to Newcastle to my uncle’s ex-girlfriend … and my dad had lived there as well,” she remembers. “And me and my brother wanted to go back to Dubbo and he refused to take us, so we took his car.”
She says they pushed it out the driveway and began the four hour drive west. Meagan took the wheel for almost two thirds of the trip, as far as Dunedoo. She was eleven.
During her interview with Insight’s Jenny Brockie, as part of the show’s inside Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, Meagan’s brown hair is pulled up into a high bun to reveal a round face and smaller-set eyes. A scar that bridges the lower half of her nose accentuates its button shape. A few small tattoos adorn her arms, bared in a green T-shirt. “These are three things that’s literally changed my life,” she says. “I know it’s wrong.”
Violence has brought Meagan to Silverwater Correctional Centre, both inside prison and out. It’s something that has been a large part of her life, she tells Insight. “I've seen it with my mother, I've seen it with my sisters, myself.” Her childhood was difficult – “we, from a young age, had to practically raise ourselves” – and she claims there was violence in her house from a young age, with easy access to alcohol from “probably eight, nine, maybe even younger.”
'Meagan', with Insight host Jenny Brockie Source: Insight
Despite its prevalence, she says she did not become violent herself until 2014.
That year, there were three violent incidents she was involved in, the last occurring at her sister's house. Her sister was arguing with another woman as Meagan sat on the couch, watching television. “My sister questioned her over an incident that happened a few days prior,” Meagan remembers. “I got up to actually stop them two from fighting and I seen a cricket bat on the ground so I picked it up her hit her three times in the head with it.”
“I’m guessing it was quite hard because she had a haematoma to the brain,” says Meagan. It was the size of a golf ball when doctors later cut into the woman’s scalp to relieve the pressure. Meagan returned to the couch and the television.
“I'm still trying to answer that myself. I ask myself that every day why I did that,” she says.
“And have you come to any conclusion about why you did it?,” asks Jenny Brockie.
“No, I just, I didn't think … I just seen it and I just picked it up and hit her.”
“It sounds like you don’t feel very much when you do these things?” Brockie puts to Meagan.
“I feel nothing at all … It’s like I’m blank.”
She also says she did not consider her teenaged son when committing her crimes. “I didn’t think of that at the time, no, but it’s had a lot of effect on him,” she says. “He’s started getting into trouble and I don’t want that.” She admits it must be “horrible” for him to visit her in jail.
During the interview, Brockie asked Meagan whether she’d known anyone who had been to jail before she, herself, was incarcerated.
“Most of my family,” she replied.
“Had all been in jail?”
“Yeah, my husband, all in the criminal world.”
In, now, for her second prison stint, she says she is the first to welcome new girls, or “freshies”. “Do you need toiletries, do you need socks, do you need undies, here's some singlets or do you need anything?” she asks them. “I don't intimidate people, I don't threaten people, I'm very kind to people.”
I feel nothing at all … It’s like I’m blank.
Unless you are a snitch, or a “dog”, as they are colloquially called in the prison. “They can get bashed,” says Meagan. “Depends really what the person they're giving up wants to do about it.” She admits she has been one to enact this sentence, to a woman she believed to be spreading false rumours about her.
“I broke her nose, I split her bottom lip and broke two fingers.”
“[After the fight], I just went home, changed my clothes, fixed my hair and put my shoes on for muster.”
It is this assault that has brought the 32 year-old to maximum security at Silverwater.
“In here you just learn not to feel. You just go numb.”
Hear 'Meagan''s full story on - Insight's two-part special inside a women's maximum security prison. Catch up on both episodes below:
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*Name has been changed
