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Experiences
Ethan Cassidy
Water’s Extraordinary Beauty
By Stephen Rothwell
I went to Leicester Prison in 1987, where people had once been hanged. It was a 19th-century dungeon in every sense of the word.
One of the extraordinary experiences for me was going into what they called the slop-out room, where we emptied our potties. There were taps there – ordinary taps with fresh water.
The sheer beauty of that water expressed itself across all five senses.
It was cold. Silky. Life-giving. Clean. To me, it became the essence of freedom.
It was hydration piped in from the free world. Cool, refreshing, familiar. The experience of it was exactly the same as turning on a tap back home, and because of that I found myself savouring it.
I revelled in how it flowed and eddied around my hands, thrillingly animated to the touch.
There would be people queuing behind me, waiting their turn, so my time with the water was brief. In those few compressed moments, I would linger as long as I could.
Even the faint taste of fluoride was reassuring. It told me the water was clean. It cut through the smell of the buckets and the waste. The sound of it splashing into the sink became beautiful too. It drowned out the clanking of prison buckets, gates and heavy doors.
The light sparkled through the water as it swirled towards the plughole. It shimmered with a kind of quiet invitation.
Then I’d turn on the hot tap. Even that had its own smell. A warm, comforting smell that reminded me of having a shower at home.
For those few moments, while filling my freshwater jug, I felt connected to the outside world. I was, quite literally, being supplied by it.
It didn’t necessarily give me hope. What it gave me was a reprieve.
It was a brief escape from spending 23 hours a day in a cell without running water. All I had there was a water jug and a potty. Nobody ever used the potty for anything more than urinating. The smell of faeces in a locked cell would have been unbearable, so everyone waited until morning.
Looking back, I don’t think many of us realised quite how captivated we were by that water.
There was so little beauty around us. So little freshness. So little life.
And so we formed a relationship with it. It wasn’t merely water.
For a few precious moments each day, it was freedom flowing from a tap.
Playing Cards
By Rafael Rodrigo
SHMACK
SHMACK
I jump up off the cold steel stool and race to the window to see who’s cracking on, only to realise it’s just the card table.
My cellie had just gotten into a scrap and my mind had been trying to rewire itself so quickly that it’d forgotten there were other ways to make such sounds. It was my third day in. I let my gaze linger, watching the blokes slap cards down with such speed and precision that it made me shudder. I’d seen such empty stares, such tension, that it was oddly refreshing to see people enjoying something as simple as cards. A buy up slip slid under the door later, and I ordered me some cards.
That fresh deck smell, like a new car, clean and crisp and untainted. That smoothness as you shuffle them, not a bend or blemish. No mileage. My first actual possession. Then, with my own deck and some of the more patient fellas, I learnt how to play Chop.
It marked a means of killing time and getting out of the monotony: something to look forward to, something involving luck, something to get better at. Invaluable in a place that cares so little for entertainment, progression, and joy. It also brought a sense of nostalgia, of memories of being a little kid, playing cards with my family on camping trips.
The stakes were a lot higher in here though, and my family had never punched up over getting chopped for two red twos, but still. I practised in my cell, shuffling for hours, learning how to play solitaire and other solo card games.
I gradually improved, though there will forever be that gap between a first-timer and someone who has done long stretches; people actually wanted to play with me.
It brought a small sense of community, of getting to know people at the table. I even became a sort of disciple to an older Indigenous fella; he could flick the cards like bullets, always landing bang on in the middle of the table, always with a saying.
There’s a certain level of speed, skill and smarts that you won’t find anywhere else. Those times of laughin' round the table will forever stick with me.
In a time so boring, so draining, it’s just good to have a laugh. Something as simple as a deck of cards can make the time just that little bit easier. I wish everyone good luck, and I hope yous get out of the hole. Can’t win with your party in the hole. All love.
The Guitar
By Carly Smith
The object I chose is the guitar. I first saw her leaning silently against the wall in Miss Patterson’s office. The off-white small box shaped room held only a slim vertical tinted window on one side of the building.
This restricted most of the natural light, which kept the room feeling bland and suffocating…until I saw her.
My eyes were instantly drawn to the warmth in the room. She was calling my name like a fresh blank canvas, something I could draw a beautiful picture on. I felt it rush through me as I recognised her, a sudden surge of energy and power. A smile from the inside spread to my face. She was familiar and to me she represented home.
I walked over and picked up the petite wooden instrument, the scent of heartache, loneliness and deep regret linger on the fret, the nylon strings cold, stiff and greatly out of tune, still resonated a feeling of freedom, one that instantaneously took me back to childhood memories of playing guitar with my father.
A time where anything was possible, everything was an adventure and life was almost always happy.
People might not always understand different languages from different cultures and countries, but we all understand the universal language of the soul: music.
Knowing this instrument and its capabilities, I somehow managed to convince the officers to allow me to take it back to my pod and keep it in my cell, which was a win on its own.
A friend who also played guitar got on board and we began to write songs together. For the first time inside these silencing walls of prison, I had a voice – one that no one could touch or take away. One that was freeing and unique to say the least. It became an outlet, one I could focus my energy toward and create something beautiful opposed to sinking in sadness and negativity.
This was sound healing at its finest, and it was contagious. Before we knew it, half of the compound was singing our music, which seemed to generate a special kind of energy. It was communication on another level and somehow it seemed to bring us all together.
The guitar, the music, much like the gold used in the Japanese art of Kintsugi (putting broken pieces together with gold) embraced our flaws and turned what was once broken into something spectacular.
The Prison Jumpsuit
By Gary Griffiths
I don’t know if it’s different in other states but when you go for a visit in WA you come out of your prison greens and you get put in a grey jumpsuit and they zip it up at the back with a cable tie.
I’ll start with the smell. It smelled like unwashed dirt and energy. It was horrible. It was everybody else’s emotion from their previous visits – all the crying and the laughter; all the hope and the failure; and it was all trapped in this suit.
Those jump suits smelt different to other jail clothes – it really caught me off guard. The suits smelt like visits, and they smelt like anxiety. The visit room is always buzzing with anxiety. When you’re in there, you don’t know if the person is coming so you go to the visit room and wait and 90 per cent of the time, there are three to four guys whose visitor doesn’t show up for whatever reason and you can see it on their faces after a certain point they know it. The mood was very tense and anxious, and these feelings also get stuck in the visit suits.
They cut the back of the cable tie so you can’t fiddle with it or the person who’s visiting can’t do anything to it. I felt like I was in an asylum. I felt like a mental patient and I couldn’t focus. During the visit, I completely lost everything I wanted to say to my parents.
Looking back, mum was heartbroken. She was asking me, “How are you? How have you been?”. And I just couldn’t talk to her properly because I was so taken back by the fact I got cable tied like an animal. I felt like my power had been taken away from me, made to feel like a mentally unstable person in front of my mum when I wasn’t.
I feel like the energy of the person wearing it comes out into the water when they get washed, so they’re all continuously washed in this big tidal wave of energy that you do and don’t want to feel. You could be sitting in the visit room talking to your partner saying, “Oh my god, baby, I’m gonna get out in three days”. And the person in a jumpsuit next to you or after you could literally be being told that their loved one or their dad has died in the same visit room – it’s crazy.
It’s like all the feelings are just like compiled into this massive ball of energy, and then it’s almost like when they get washed the cycle just goes on and on and on. I hated going through the whole ordeal of getting into the suit, getting it zipped up and then clipped. It was impossible to get an hour of some form of normality in that suit.
Another way to describe it is like a herd of sheep being grabbed and cable tied at the feet to be sheered. We’re expected to let our emotions out and see your loved ones, only to be herded back an hour later to life of muster and prison foods.
People don’t talk about it much, but the time after a visit can be a horrible time to be a prisoner, especially for the ones who have young kids.
I hope this has given people some insight into how hard it can be at certain points in your sentence. So stay free and if you’re reading this from inside and it has hit a nerve, use it as motivation to see those loved ones out of prison for the rest of your days when you do eventually get out.
The Fence
By Renee McNab
The prison fence is something you can never ignore. There were so many of them, but the one surrounding the yard where I was housed stayed with me the most.
No matter where I stood, it was always there. At times it made me feel like a caged animal, but other times I’d find myself sitting against it after muster, staring through the metal grills and wondering what was happening in the outside world.
I’d sit there wondering what my kids were doing at that exact moment.
Did they remember me?
Were they disappointed in me?
I wondered how my mum was coping and whether she was disappointed in me too. Life was still moving on without me, and all I could do was imagine it.
Looking back, I found myself behind those fences more than once because of the choices I made through addiction. But during my final incarceration, sitting against that fence, I finally admitted enough was enough.
For the first time in my life, I stopped making excuses and accepted that if I wanted to stay free, I had to get clean and change my life.
Prison has its own sounds.
Officers calling out people by their last name, gates opening and slamming shut, keys rattling, people lining up for muster, and voices echoing across the yard through the speakers.
Those sounds became part of everyday life, but they were never the sounds I wanted to wake up to.
I missed hearing birds chirping outside my bedroom window, my kids’ voices, my mum, and my dog’s paws running across the ground.
I missed the little things like lighting my favourite coconut and lime candle and the flavours of proper home-cooked meals shared around the dinner table. Especially my mum’s signature fettuccine bosciola, instead of eating bland prison food from an aluminium tray.
One memory I came back to often was Bondi Beach. It was one of the last places I visited before I was incarcerated.
I remembered myself walking along the sand, feeling the warmth of it beneath my feet, smelling the salty air and listening to the waves crashing around me.
More than anything, I missed hugging the people I loved for longer than the few minutes visits allowed.
That fence reminded me every day of what I had lost, but it also reminded me of what I still wanted and what I was capable of.
People often think rehabilitation starts when the prison gates open.
Mine didn’t.
It started while I was still standing in that yard, looking beyond that fence and making a promise to myself that when I served my time, I wouldn’t waste it.
Every day I looked beyond that fence, I imagined the life I wanted to build. Not a perfect life, just an honest one.
One where I could sit with my family, make amends over time and never again take them or my freedom for granted.
Of course the fence never moved.
But I walked out of those gates for good and have never looked back all these years later.
And I wish that for as many people as possible, especially the amazing women I did time with.
Watching Rust
By Ashleigh Chapman
I was standing by a glass window surrounded by metal and concrete, inside and out. The same view for two years. Only one thing changed over the years, the metal. The metal on this stationary bike I had only used once. I spent two years watching rust.
Rust was growing on the stationary bike, taking over it. It started off on one small spot then over the years spread to the pedals and the handles. The sound it produced when you would try to move the bike was loud, metal on metal, when you had your time in the airing yard. A screech, like nails on a blackboard.
And this very distinctive smell when it would rain. If you were close enough you could smell the rust, you could see the leaking of the rust dropping down onto the fake grass. A light brown liquid.
I would try to turn the pedal with my hand, and the residue that would end up on my hand was brown and yellow. A stain that was hard to remove. It is a place built on a mask, fake and pretentious and lies that it rehabilitates. You live there, you see the rust, you watch it. Not just this stationary bike but the entire place. Rust waiting to crack. Sometimes I think the rust has been absorbed in me. That this place has taken over and all that is left is brown, yellow rust.
Cracking, slight imperfections made up by a smile and a happy demeanour just as fake as the prison portrays.
But I think back on looking out the window of my solitary confinement cell and think of the rust.
Why was something that was not waterproof kept outside? How much money did this stationary bike cost? Who designed it to rust when water hits it?
Over the two years I spent in solitary confinement, how can this rust on this one stationary bike be linked to how I see the system and how I see myself. Is my autism spectrum disorder responsible for my sensory experience of the rust or is it a metaphor for how my incarceration could be summed up? I now find myself doing research on rust, like who first discovered it, why it is named rust, the makeup of the chemical compounds and how to get rid of it. Reflection research in all its forms. A psychological exercise to free my mind from this hypothetical rust. In 1788, rust was first observed by a British scientist. That is 239 years ago. There are many ways to come up with something to stop rust from forming. This is like the system - there are many alternatives to incarceration, but are these alternatives used? In some forms, in some ways, yes.
Why place a metal item that is not waterproof outside in the rain?
Why place a human being inside solitary confinement?
Two very different questions, same silly reasoning.
Is placing this non-waterproof stationary bike outside in the solitary confinement yards an illusion? Everyone knows physical health is very important for mental health and therefore positive behaviour. Is this illusion to show the world that we are adjusting to improve mental health outcomes for people incarcerated? Show rehabilitation in its smallest form? There is no other reason that I can think of that taxpayer money meant to be used to improve health outcomes and aid rehabilitation is used to purchase a stationary bike. A stationary bike that is rusting as it is not waterproof. I spent two years watching rust.
The Guitar
By Carly Smith
The object I chose is the guitar. I first saw her leaning silently against the wall in Miss Patterson’s office. The off-white small box shaped room held only a slim vertical tinted window on one side of the building.
This restricted most of the natural light, which kept the room feeling bland and suffocating…until I saw her.
My eyes were instantly drawn to the warmth in the room. She was calling my name like a fresh blank canvas, something I could draw a beautiful picture on. I felt it rush through me as I recognised her, a sudden surge of energy and power. A smile from the inside spread to my face. She was familiar and to me she represented home.
I walked over and picked up the petite wooden instrument, the scent of heartache, loneliness and deep regret linger on the fret, the nylon strings cold, stiff and greatly out of tune, still resonated a feeling of freedom, one that instantaneously took me back to childhood memories of playing guitar with my father.
A time where anything was possible, everything was an adventure and life was almost always happy.
People might not always understand different languages from different cultures and countries, but we all understand the universal language of the soul: music.
Knowing this instrument and its capabilities, I somehow managed to convince the officers to allow me to take it back to my pod and keep it in my cell, which was a win on its own.
A friend who also played guitar got on board and we began to write songs together. For the first time inside these silencing walls of prison, I had a voice – one that no one could touch or take away. One that was freeing and unique to say the least. It became an outlet, one I could focus my energy toward and create something beautiful opposed to sinking in sadness and negativity.
This was sound healing at its finest, and it was contagious. Before we knew it, half of the compound was singing our music, which seemed to generate a special kind of energy. It was communication on another level and somehow it seemed to bring us all together.
The guitar, the music, much like the gold used in the Japanese art of Kintsugi (putting broken pieces together with gold) embraced our flaws and turned what was once broken into something spectacular.
The Prison Jumpsuit
By Gary Griffiths
I don’t know if it’s different in other states but when you go for a visit in WA you come out of your prison greens and you get put in a grey jumpsuit and they zip it up at the back with a cable tie.
I’ll start with the smell. It smelled like unwashed dirt and energy. It was horrible. It was everybody else’s emotion from their previous visits – all the crying and the laughter; all the hope and the failure; and it was all trapped in this suit.
Those jump suits smelt different to other jail clothes – it really caught me off guard. The suits smelt like visits, and they smelt like anxiety. The visit room is always buzzing with anxiety. When you’re in there, you don’t know if the person is coming so you go to the visit room and wait and 90 per cent of the time, there are three to four guys whose visitor doesn’t show up for whatever reason and you can see it on their faces after a certain point they know it. The mood was very tense and anxious, and these feelings also get stuck in the visit suits.
They cut the back of the cable tie so you can’t fiddle with it or the person who’s visiting can’t do anything to it. I felt like I was in an asylum. I felt like a mental patient and I couldn’t focus. During the visit, I completely lost everything I wanted to say to my parents.
Looking back, mum was heartbroken. She was asking me, “How are you? How have you been?”. And I just couldn’t talk to her properly because I was so taken back by the fact I got cable tied like an animal. I felt like my power had been taken away from me, made to feel like a mentally unstable person in front of my mum when I wasn’t.
I feel like the energy of the person wearing it comes out into the water when they get washed, so they’re all continuously washed in this big tidal wave of energy that you do and don’t want to feel. You could be sitting in the visit room talking to your partner saying, “Oh my god, baby, I’m gonna get out in three days”. And the person in a jumpsuit next to you or after you could literally be being told that their loved one or their dad has died in the same visit room – it’s crazy.
It’s like all the feelings are just like compiled into this massive ball of energy, and then it’s almost like when they get washed the cycle just goes on and on and on. I hated going through the whole ordeal of getting into the suit, getting it zipped up and then clipped. It was impossible to get an hour of some form of normality in that suit.
Another way to describe it is like a herd of sheep being grabbed and cable tied at the feet to be sheered. We’re expected to let our emotions out and see your loved ones, only to be herded back an hour later to life of muster and prison foods.
People don’t talk about it much, but the time after a visit can be a horrible time to be a prisoner, especially for the ones who have young kids.
I hope this has given people some insight into how hard it can be at certain points in your sentence. So stay free and if you’re reading this from inside and it has hit a nerve, use it as motivation to see those loved ones out of prison for the rest of your days when you do eventually get out.
The Fence
By Renee McNab
The prison fence is something you can never ignore. There were so many of them, but the one surrounding the yard where I was housed stayed with me the most.
No matter where I stood, it was always there. At times it made me feel like a caged animal, but other times I’d find myself sitting against it after muster, staring through the metal grills and wondering what was happening in the outside world.
I’d sit there wondering what my kids were doing at that exact moment.
Did they remember me?
Were they disappointed in me?
I wondered how my mum was coping and whether she was disappointed in me too. Life was still moving on without me, and all I could do was imagine it.
Looking back, I found myself behind those fences more than once because of the choices I made through addiction. But during my final incarceration, sitting against that fence, I finally admitted enough was enough.
For the first time in my life, I stopped making excuses and accepted that if I wanted to stay free, I had to get clean and change my life.
Prison has its own sounds.
Officers calling out people by their last name, gates opening and slamming shut, keys rattling, people lining up for muster, and voices echoing across the yard through the speakers.
Those sounds became part of everyday life, but they were never the sounds I wanted to wake up to.
I missed hearing birds chirping outside my bedroom window, my kids’ voices, my mum, and my dog’s paws running across the ground.
I missed the little things like lighting my favourite coconut and lime candle and the flavours of proper home-cooked meals shared around the dinner table. Especially my mum’s signature fettuccine bosciola, instead of eating bland prison food from an aluminium tray.
One memory I came back to often was Bondi Beach. It was one of the last places I visited before I was incarcerated.
I remembered myself walking along the sand, feeling the warmth of it beneath my feet, smelling the salty air and listening to the waves crashing around me.
More than anything, I missed hugging the people I loved for longer than the few minutes visits allowed.
That fence reminded me every day of what I had lost, but it also reminded me of what I still wanted and what I was capable of.
People often think rehabilitation starts when the prison gates open.
Mine didn’t.
It started while I was still standing in that yard, looking beyond that fence and making a promise to myself that when I served my time, I wouldn’t waste it.
Every day I looked beyond that fence, I imagined the life I wanted to build. Not a perfect life, just an honest one.
One where I could sit with my family, make amends over time and never again take them or my freedom for granted.
Of course the fence never moved.
But I walked out of those gates for good and have never looked back all these years later.
And I wish that for as many people as possible, especially the amazing women I did time with.
Watching Rust
By Ashleigh Chapman
I was standing by a glass window surrounded by metal and concrete, inside and out. The same view for two years. Only one thing changed over the years, the metal. The metal on this stationary bike I had only used once. I spent two years watching rust.
Rust was growing on the stationary bike, taking over it. It started off on one small spot then over the years spread to the pedals and the handles. The sound it produced when you would try to move the bike was loud, metal on metal, when you had your time in the airing yard. A screech, like nails on a blackboard.
And this very distinctive smell when it would rain. If you were close enough you could smell the rust, you could see the leaking of the rust dropping down onto the fake grass. A light brown liquid.
I would try to turn the pedal with my hand, and the residue that would end up on my hand was brown and yellow. A stain that was hard to remove. It is a place built on a mask, fake and pretentious and lies that it rehabilitates. You live there, you see the rust, you watch it. Not just this stationary bike but the entire place. Rust waiting to crack. Sometimes I think the rust has been absorbed in me. That this place has taken over and all that is left is brown, yellow rust.
Cracking, slight imperfections made up by a smile and a happy demeanour just as fake as the prison portrays.
But I think back on looking out the window of my solitary confinement cell and think of the rust.
Why was something that was not waterproof kept outside? How much money did this stationary bike cost? Who designed it to rust when water hits it?
Over the two years I spent in solitary confinement, how can this rust on this one stationary bike be linked to how I see the system and how I see myself. Is my autism spectrum disorder responsible for my sensory experience of the rust or is it a metaphor for how my incarceration could be summed up? I now find myself doing research on rust, like who first discovered it, why it is named rust, the makeup of the chemical compounds and how to get rid of it. Reflection research in all its forms. A psychological exercise to free my mind from this hypothetical rust. In 1788, rust was first observed by a British scientist. That is 239 years ago. There are many ways to come up with something to stop rust from forming. This is like the system - there are many alternatives to incarceration, but are these alternatives used? In some forms, in some ways, yes.
Why place a metal item that is not waterproof outside in the rain?
Why place a human being inside solitary confinement?
Two very different questions, same silly reasoning.
Is placing this non-waterproof stationary bike outside in the solitary confinement yards an illusion? Everyone knows physical health is very important for mental health and therefore positive behaviour. Is this illusion to show the world that we are adjusting to improve mental health outcomes for people incarcerated? Show rehabilitation in its smallest form? There is no other reason that I can think of that taxpayer money meant to be used to improve health outcomes and aid rehabilitation is used to purchase a stationary bike. A stationary bike that is rusting as it is not waterproof. I spent two years watching rust.
Date Published
October 29, 2026
By Landon
The faint upside is that the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter every day! Every day done is another day gone.
ISSUE NO. 28
•
2 MIN READ
By MJ
When I get released at the end of this year, I am faced with a massive uphill climb with barely a rope to save me.
ISSUE NO. 27
•
2 MIN READ
By Jonathan
When I was first transferred to PPP in 2000, I was warned about the dentist colloquially known as ‘The Butcher.’ I attended the dentist for a sore molar.
ISSUE NO. 27
•
3 MIN READ
By Andrew
I finally finished my VPP (Violence Prevention Program) in late June. It was one of the wisest decisions I ever made.
ISSUE NO. 27
•
3 MIN READ