In a small section of the Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre , a maximum security prison that sits in the middle of Sydney’s urban sprawl just back from the banks of the Parramatta River, new prisoners are housed in the induction unit.
Shiny cream floors and walls are broken at intervals by the dark grey of cell doors. Paint has been chipped off the walls inside some cells to form words: “Home” can be read above one bed; “What goes around …” on the bricks of another. “Good luck 2 all’ has been scrawled on a door frame in another part of the prison in black marker.
There is a thin mattress in mint green bedding, with one white hospital blanket thrown over the top, elevated above the floor on a bench or in bunks.
A stainless steel toilet, without lid or seat, also occupies the small space. A stained, concrete shower allows the women to wash. “It’s horrible,” says one inmate. “You have to go to the toilet in front of people, you have to shower in front of people, there’s no privacy, none at all.”
“Did you not expect that when you came to jail?” Insight host Jenny Brockie puts to her.
“I expected similar but not like right under each other’s noses.”
“There's absolutely no air flow in there, the walls are saturated with moisture all times,” describes another inmate. “It's just horrid.”
“It’s a disgusting cell environment,” agrees Matt, a senior corrections officer.
It’s into this environment that Insight has gained to see what life is like inside a women’s maximum security prison. Over a number of months, host Jenny Brockie and an all-female team of producers have secured admission of cameras into a world rarely seen by outsiders.
While filming through its corridors, inmates called out to the Insight crew. One yelled out for some “cigarettes and some fresh food” to be brought in. Another, laughing, said, “we love coming to jail.”
“I was shattered,” says Shannon*, an inmate who is just about to finish a one year, five month year sentence for fraud and larceny, when she arrived at Silverwater. “When you go down into induction and you’re placed in a cell down there, it’s horrible.”
“You’ve got a big steel toilet with no seat and no lid which is horrible for me because that’s where you’ve got to eat, you know?”
New prisoners are placed in a cell with up to four other women. Nicole, a senior corrections officer, tells Jenny Brockie that violence between them can occur, though its frequency fluctuates: sometimes once or twice a week, sometimes nothing at all for a good stretch of time. The violence is less serious than what she has seen in the men’s prison. “How do I say this politically correct?” she hesitates. “It’s more bitchiness.” She gives examples of arguments over desired shirts, and shoes.
Toilet and showering facilities in the induction unit Source: Insight
It is a “daunting” welcome to the largest prison reception centre for women in NSW.
“It’s not necessarily as clean as they’d want it to be,” says Nicole. “Inmates are screaming out in this unit. We've got at risk units, those inmates if they're mental health units they start screaming, they start banging on the doors. These inmates may not get sleep for the first twenty four hours that they're in here.”
New prisoners can be housed there for up to a week. “I would say it's a hell,” adds Nicole.
“Do inmates get hurt in here by other inmates?” asks Jenny Brockie.
“Oh, it could be happen once a week, it could happen twice a week, it could happen ten times a week, and then we may not have anything in a week,” says Nicole. She says it is less serious conflict, rather “more bitchiness”: fights about wanting better shirts or shoes.
“We sit there and think: it's a pair of shoes, you're fighting over a pair of shoes, you're hitting people and you're coming from a life where domestic violence [is] prominent and stuff like that but the only way that they've got to actually talk is with their hands.”
When I come to jail, I thought woman get raped in jail, I thought officer maybe hit you, because I don't have any idea about jail.
For Zaynab*, a first time offender who entered the prison in 2011, no prior knowledge of incarceration prepared her for her own. “When I come to jail, I thought woman get raped in jail, I thought officer maybe hit you, because I don't have any idea about jail,” she tells Insight.
“After a couple of days,” adds Zaynab, “I meet good people here. So good people they don't deserve to be here.”
After their time in induction, prisoners are categorised according to their risk, before being assigned a wing and a cell to live in. Uniforms are varying shades of dark green – simple T-shirts, pants jumpers - and stand out against the cream walls that continue throughout the prison. It is a stark environment.
Silverwater is the first place most female offenders in NSW will go, sentenced or unsentenced, before receiving a classification of risk. “This is the starting point for everybody,” says Angela, an Assistant Superintendent who works in case management. “Whether they’re charged with murder … or stealing a credit card, they all start here.”
They will receive one of four categorisations: category two (minimum security), category three (medium security), category four (maximum security) and category five (national security risk). The bulk of prisoners in Silverwater serving long-term sentences are category four. Often they live alongside unsentenced category two women.
An additional category, ‘E’, can also be assigned during their stay: escapee. It is almost impossible to have an ‘E’ removed from your classification.
Since 2005, the of women in prison throughout Australia has risen by over 60 per cent. Between 2014 and 2015, it grew by 11 per cent. Their average age is 34.4 years. Indigenous women are 23 times more likely to be incarcerated by their non-Indigenous peers, making up 36 per cent of the female prison population.
Over the next two weeks, Jenny Brockie speaks with the women behind these statistics. Who are they? What have they done to be incarcerated inside this maximum security prison? What is their life like, inside?
What are their stories?
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