In 2005, Bulletin journalist, Adam Shand wrote that the notorious H Division in Melbourne's Pentridge prison had been home to Frankie Waghorn and mates like Mark "Chopper" Read back in the 1970s.

It was the toughest prison in Australia but even in solitary you found a way for simple pleasures.

A group of four adjacent cells, two up, two down, shared the same plumbing.

If you scooped out the water from your toilet bowl, you could conduct a four-way conference call for hours each night.

Communication was four blokes with their heads down the toilet.

No wonder life outside seemed so strange.

Those who break the law are condemned to spend time isolated from the rest of the community.

For more than half of Victoria’s criminals that place of isolation is Pentridge jail.

Little information escapes its walls and what does contains allegations of bashings, homosexual rapes, drug trafficking and bookmaking.

The Ombudsman, Mr Geschke, has recently made another criticism of the harsh conditions in the jail’s remand section.

Yet for most of us it’s hard to imagine what everyday life there might be like.

It had all the trappings of a “snow job”, a Government attempt to paper over any cracks at Pentridge. The Minister for Community Welfare Services, Mr Jona, eventually agreed to let The Age inside the jail but he and a superintendent were to conduct the tour.

The shadow boxing in the superintendent’s office beforehand made it clear that politeness removed, the media should be treated a bit like a prisoner – with suspicion.

But it didn’t turn out like that. The minister and the deputy assistant superintendent of Pentridge, Mr Joe Eftemeyer, did not seep anything under the carpet. Our inspection included the best parts of the jail – the showpieces of penal reform. It also included the stuff of nightmares.

The old bluestone prison is like that; there is no simple statement about Pentridge.

We entered Pentridge’s southern gate in Urquhart Street, Coburg, where we were searched and scanned with a metal detector, a procedure to be repeated several times.

After initial sparring about the role of newspapers Joe Eftemeyer, a tall lean man in his thirties, suggested we start at the classification centre.

Here, around a small horse shoe-shaped table in a room only just big enough to take it, a committee meets each Monday to decide which jail each new arrival will go to.

Pentridge is not one jail but four.

Each one Central, Southern, Northern and Jika Jika, has its own divisions, its own governor and its own regime.

A huge blackboard on the wall reveals that at the moment the committee has little flexibility. Pentridge is packed.

The board puts the present Victorian prison population at 1878, the highest level for about eight years. Pentridge is holding more than half of them – 976 men.

The blackboard shows that country jails, are tight, too. Ararat, for instance, has 197 inmates, only three below capacity.

All the Pentridge divisions are at or near capacity except B division, which is beyond it. The official maximum is 134 men the current muster column shows 135.

As we head out an officer is filling in a form on a new arrival.
“Children?”
“Yeah, two”
“Where do they live?”
“Dunno. Haven’t seen them for four years.”

Outside Joe Eftemeyer suggests we should visit G division. Mr Jona agrees. A uniformed officer unpadlocks the heavy steel gate set into the bluestone wall and we enter the large grassed courtyard of G division. Several prisoners are doing gardening chores or leaning on their tools. One man on his knees is smoothing and patting wet concrete with his bare hands, making a path.

There are 55 men in G, one below capacity. Eight of them are serving “Governor’s pleasure” which means they may be there until they die. The officer in charge explains that all the prisoners have “some form of psychological problem”. Some are there for protection from other prisoners “justice”. A name that catches the eye on the roll board in the office is J. Megson, a recent arrival also known as “Mr Baldy” because he was accused of shaving the heads of little boys he was convicted of abducting. “We have no particular problem protecting him,” the chief officer says.

A sign on the occupational therapist’s door opposite the chief officer’s says “Towards independence.” Most of the handling of G division prisoners by male psychiatric nurses, the uniformed warders keeping in the background.

We walk through a group of gardening prisoners and are shown what is called the day room. The floor is the bare concrete, the walls grubby, with a few high windows partly covered with old rags. There are a few wooden chairs and a pool table. The striking end of the one cue looks as though it has been rammed had on the concrete floor.

The dining room has old wooden tables, topped with some of the first laminex to be made. Each has four wooden chairs. A slops bucket and sink are on one side. The impression is of greyness, there is no other colour.

To get to the cells we take a diagonal path through the exercise yards. There are three of them. In the biggest there are about 30 men. Several pace up and down singly or in pairs. There is nothing but concrete, high wire and a few benches along the walls, some with men lying full length. It is very quiet. In a yard to the right there are only three men, pacing separately. “A bit loony” the officer explains.

The smallest yard, with an iron mesh roof and rolls of barbed wire around the edges, leads off what’s called the observation cell a place for particularly difficult men. It is empty today.

Inside the block to the observation cell: it has a single mattress on the floor, folded in half. When opened the mattress fills the cell. Apart from a stainless steel pan and blankets, that’s all there is. The standard cells in the rest of the wing – and in most of Pentridge – measure 3 metres by 1.9 metres. If you swung a cat you would bash its brains out. The walls are painted dull beige. Each cell has a bed, mattress, bedding, stainless steel pan and cold water tap.

Some cells have nothing more than this. At least 15 hours of each man’s 24 are spent locked inside them. The continuous pacing in the yards becomes understandable. A few cells have been done up by their occupants, with coloured bedcovers, television sets, pictures of nude women from magazines, fish tanks. Fish are the standard Pentridge pets. “The cells are what the prisoners make them,” an officer explains. Relatives must provide the “luxuries”.

Along the corridor, past open showers slightly recessed off it and into the “wet cell” the walls are rounded and have a brown laminated paper on them. There is a drain plug set in one corner of the floor so the cell can be hosed down. The mattress is on the floor and the blankets are covered with a heavy quilted grey canvas so a man intent on suicide cannot tear them. A paper cup and plastic knife, fork and spoon are on the floor beside the mattress.

As we are going out, a warder mistakes me for Mr Jona, who is a few paces ahead. “As you’re here” he says “couldn’t we get an exhaust fan for those showers? When they’re going the whole wing fills with steam and you can’t see a thing.” Another officer points out the Minister, the warder claps a hand over his mouth, and there is some nervous laughter.

From G we walk to F division, home to 160 men and four below capacity. The main concrete yard is pretty full, partly because repairs elsewhere mean remand prisoners are there, too. Some prisoners have washed clothing and hung it out to dry on the high wire fence. Several men are pacing the yard, others sit and stare from benches. The looks are not welcoming.

Through a locked gate and down some wet stone steps into the Pentridge laundry, a former horse stables built in the 1840s. One wall is made of corrugated iron sheets now rusty. There is water o the concrete floor. The washers and steam rollers look as though they have come from a museum.

It is a sought-after place – the 27 men working there have something to do with their time. The Minister explains that, although the equipment is ancient, modernisation would have drawbacks: there is no involvement in just pressing buttons.

In negotiations with the Minister’s office before The Age visit – the first of two, each lasting several hours – we asked to see some dormitories. There have been various allegations of pack rape in Pentridge, mainly in the dormitories. Joe Eftemeyer took us to one in F division.

The death cell, in another part of the jail, would be a far nicer place to spend one’s nights.

There are 22 iron bunks in the room. At one end, facing the beds, there are two lavatories with low partitions between them, but no doors. At the other end a sink with a tap. The windows are set very high, too high to look through. Apart from the beds there is no furniture at all.

Each bunk has an extremely old mattress which flops out over the wire frame, making the metre of space between the bunks even smaller. Blankets, sheets and pillow are stacked at the foot of each mattress.

The officer in charge agrees that once the 44 men are locked in at 4.30 pm each day (“dinner in Pentridge is usually about 3.30) the warder on duty can see less than a third of the dormitory through the iron bars of the only door. Straining, I could see only eight of the 22 bunks from the doorway. It is not hard to imagine the intimidation and sexual attack that some prisoners have alleged, or why someone who had to return there each night would be frightened to allege anything at all.

“We try not to put young people in here if we can help it,” says the middle-aged, unsmiling officer. Asked what sort of prisoners are in he dormitory he says only: “Sentenced, trial and some remand.” A prisoner in the course of a trial or on remand awaiting one is an innocent man.

Joe Eftemeyer and Mr Jona agree that the dormitories are bad. One day they will be replaced, but that requires taxpayers’ money.

The main recreation area is a happier place. Volleyball and tennis are in progress on the asphalt courts. The prisoners, many of them from the remand section, seem to play power rather than finesse tennis; the threadbare yellow balls are hit with incredible force, never mind the direction. Tennis is less innocent than it used to be. Officer are alert for extra balls thrown over the bluestone wall that have been found to have a razor-cut in them, concealing drugs or other contraband.

On the way to the maximum security division of Jika Jika, we pass a small triangle of ground with well mown grass. There is a low stone wall around the triangle, serving no purpose other than to divert you from walking on the grass. Below this ground, unmarked but in a box covered with three bags of quicklime, lies Ronald Ryan, buried 14 years ago. Remains of other prisoners executed when hanging was more fashionable lie around him.

Further on a wire gate carries an official sign warning prisoners that it is a restricted area. There is also a touch of Pentridge humor. A prison-made car numberplate also hangs on the wire. It reads P — — OFF. JIKA JIKA is a modern, self-contained jail within the old bluestone walls of Pentridge. It was opened two years ago this July and cost $7 million to build – a bit more than $130,000 for each of the 54 prisoners it holds.

It is surrounded by a high, heavy-gauge mesh fence topped with gleaming razor wire, so named because it has extremely sharp triangular points on it rather than old fashioned barbs. Posts which emit an “electric eye” beam are set about three metres inside the main fence.

Once in the main gate an officer in the control box asks the four of us for identification and says we must step into the box separately to be searched. Mr Jona is slightly embarrassed because he has nothing to identify himself.

We are searched thoroughly and gone over with a metal detector again, including the officials. “There are no exceptions, even the Queen would have to go through this,” Mr Jona says with some pride.

The uniformed officer in charge, a tall, powerful man with a red moustache shakes our hands. He looks a bit harassed. It is clear that the visit was not pre-arranged.

Jika Jika (an Aboriginal name for the Coburg-Preston Northcote area), won the “excellence in concrete” award from the Concrete Institute of Australia in 1979. A Division of Correctional Services booklet on the jail says: “The choice of material was ideal in terms of satisfying the security, fire-resistance and water-proofing requirements and with proper use of he exposed off-white concrete surface has provided a light, sensitive approach to the exterior of the complex.”

We enter through a bright yellow, heavy steel door. The tall officer opened it by barking into a walkie-talkie: “Open door X” (actually he uses a number). The door slides open with a pneumatic whoosh. Inside he orders: “Close Door X.” It whooshes shut, then he commands: “Open Door Y” another heavily framed door with an upper panel of thick bulletproof glass. The process has to be repeated three times before you get near the heart of Jika, the room controlling all the doors, as well as the cells.

In the second door lock we are delayed. A prisoner wearing a turquoise track suit is in the door lock ahead of us accompanied by two beefy warders.

He is Barry Quinn, convicted of two murders and one escape (through a window at Fairfield Hospital where he was under guard with suspected hepatitis – he was free 69 days). Quinn still has shoulder length red hair and a drooping moustache. He is only about 165 centimetres tall and is dwarfed by the warders. Quinn has just had a visit from a middle-aged woman who was leaving as we entered. The turquoise track suit is prison issue for visits. He will now be stripped and searched before changing back into the standard white overalls.

While waiting we see the visiting boxes, a small room divided by heavy-glass. Conversation is via tiny speakers at the base of the windows. Even in a jail with such all-pervading security, prisoners find ways. Windows in the “boxes” have recently had lines of silicone filler injected around the steel frames – the gap was just wide enough to pass a sheet of paper.

The two officers who have taken Quinn back to his cell return carrying his visiting suit. Asked how a prisoner could ever get a weapon into Jika the tall officer says: “There are ways. I could make a weapon here (we are in yet another door lock, nothing but solid concrete), you can even make a weapon using parts of your body.” He doesn’t explain.

“The only way to be completely safe and secure in here is to have the men tied up in a corner and spoon fed. That would be inhumane.” Top security and human dignity are not very compatible. All the prison staff spoken to (there are about 500) during two long visits seemed to be well aware of the conflict.

The officer says he cannot discuss what happened in Jika on 30 April when Glen Davies, a rapist, was killed in one of the exercise yards. The officer was on duty that day and has to given evidence in the court case to come. Edwin John Eastwood, a convicted kidnapper, has been charged with the murder of Davies. From snippets of conversation overheard it seems that Eastwood is on a hunger strike. He’s been on a hunger strike before.

One officer says it’s not a Bobby Sands type of fast. “He mightn’t eat the regular meals, but he’ll have stuff from the canteen buy-up”, the officer claims.

At the heart of the wing are two officers in the glass-walled control room. Beyond is an enclosed catwalk overlooking the concrete exercise yards. We are in a six-prisoner wing of Jika; the other four wings each hold 12 men. Above the whole place the roof is heavy steel mesh, set in irregular panels so a helicopter could not land.

In the yard below are three men. The yard is about half the size of a tennis court. Two men in white overalls pace together, turning rhythmically at each end. One has a blue coat draped over his shoulders. He is Alex Tsakmakis, 34, convicted of one murder and two attempted murders.

The third man is wearing only underpants, despite the extreme cold. He also has a blue, Borg-type headband with “Eagles” written on it in ink. He is running around and around the small yard, and has built up quite a sweat. Because it is so small the jogger is almost permanently turning a corner. The scene would be funny were it not so sad.

Of the main yard there is a small area called a “passive yard”. It has tanbark, a bench and a few small shrubs. Some prisoners grow herbs in small plots.

As the tour is leaving, the jogger, still in his underpants, sees the Minister as he comes up a ramp to his cell. He calls to Mr Jona, who goes over to the glass door. They shout to each other through it.

It’s a strange sight, the Minister in a dark grey flannel suit and tie, the prisoner almost naked. The prisoner is trying to make a point about remission on his sentence. “I’m only a petty thief,” he says. “I know I did try to escape, but. . .”Mr Jona says he will examine any points the man wants to make, and he should write to him at the Ministry, he gives the address.

Asked why a petty thief is in Jika, a warder says: “He drives other prisoners mad, and they deck him. He won’t mind his own business.”

We are already through one locked door before realising that we haven’t seen inside a Jika cell. The tall officer says it’s no trouble and takes us back.

On the opposite side of the corridor from the jogger’s cell a prisoner is screaming and yelling. “You’re always picking on me, why can’t you leave me alone,” he cries.

He is Shane Ward, a 24-year-old convicted for rape and for stealing a wallet from a man at the point of an imitation pistol. It is coincidence that we came into this wing of Jika, but I have met Shane before and have studied transcripts of his court cases and spoken to his family and various lawyers. Some feel that he may be innocent of the rape – but can’t prove it. I mention this to the senior officer who says: “That’s none of our business, all we know is that he has been put here by a court of law.”

We go into the cell of the jogger who is in the shower that adjoins the cell. It has a see-through plastic screen. He’s only too pleased to see us again.

In many ways Jika is on eof the best parts of the Pentridge. The cells measure 5 x 2.3 metres, nearly twice the size of the warren-like holes in the old parts of the jail. There is a large, fixed window at eye level, a comfortable bed, a lino-topped work bench, air-conditioning and heating.

The jogger has a cassette player and a guitar in his room. On the bench, neatly written into an exercise book in a song he has written about the shooting of John Lennon.

On the way out, Shane Ward can be seen sitting curled up in a corner of the corridor outside his cell, his head in his hands. Jika prisoners are able to spend up to 15 hours a day out of their cells, either in the exercise yard or a day room. They have to eat in their cells and they get the same food from the central kitchen as do other prisoners, but they don’t have to eat it, like the rest, at 3.30 p.m. Microwave ovens in the wing mean food can be eaten much later.

This is also possible because the 47 officers who guard the 54 prisoners work I two 12-hour shifts; in the rest of Pentridge there are three eight-hour shifts.

But despite the cleanliness, light and modernity of Jika, the lasting imprison is of a silent, characterless place. Mr J. O’Sullivan, a spokesman for the Victorian Prisoners’ Action Group, has said of Jika: “. . . air conditioning and 20th century plumbing tend to lose much of their appeal when accompanied by modernisations like sensory deprivation, indefinite isolation and psychological disorientation.”

Some prisoners who have tasted life in Jika and in the horrendous conditions of H division have said they prefer the latter. One senior officer in H division confirmed this later. “I think it’s because they have more direct contact with us. They can talk face to face rather than through an intercom, or glass door most of the time.”

After leaving through Jika’s whooshing doors, the tour continues to H division, Jika’s predecessor as a maximum-security section.

Through another locked gate we enter H division, are signed into a book and searched and scanned yet again. The scanner makes a loud white as it reaches shoe level, but the jovial officer says it’s only the steel reinforcing in the concrete floor. He is an enormous man with a barrel chest and upper arms that strain his blue, short-sleeved shirt. He almost has to angle his body as we climb the near-vertical steel steps to the walkway that looks down on the caged yards.

There are several small yards in which men are pacing, sitting or working at putting hairs into broom heads.

The zoo analogy fits so well; the mindless pacing, the lack of anything of color or beauty, the omnipresence of rusty steel and cold, worn stone.

As we are about to leave the catwalk a heavyset man in a white T-shirt calls up to Mr. Jona. “Can’t you do something about our washing machine, Mr Jona? Our one has had it.” Mr Jona says he will look into the matter.

Another of the four men in the yard calls up to the Minister. “Can I ask about a day visit? I’d like to see my kids.” He, too, is powerfully built under his T-shirt. He has black, wavy hair.

He seems relaxed enough and is smiling as he chats to the Minister, but there is a rather fixed look to his eye.

Mr Jona explains that visits have to be earned. “How long have you been in?” he asks he prisoner.
“Eighteen months.”
“How long have you got to go?”
“Twenty-five years”
The Minister looks a bit stunned.
“No harm in asking,” says the prisoner with a grin.
“No.”

“That’s Peter Vaitos,” the big warder explains. Also known as the “Silver Gun Rapist,” Vaitos 33, was found guilty on 10 charges of rape, one of buggery with violence, one of attempted rape, three charges of aggravated burglary, one of burglary and one of assault. The fact that he and the other prisoners can chat openly, almost insolently, to a Government Minister is revealing; clearly they wouldn’t do it if they were going to be thumped by warders afterwards.

Another prisoner in the yard with Vaitos has a familiar face. He is pacing with another man and wears a heavy blue coat. His head is almost shaved of black hair. He is Paul Haigh, convicted of four murders, one of which involved a young woman being stabbed 157 times.

Somehow the cages seem less offensive. Since the advent of Jika Jika. H division has become mainly a holding area, a place for punishment for breaches, or protection from bashers.

From H to J is a huge jump in prison systems, if not the alphabet. While the former division is said to be barbarous by prison reformers, hardliners in the community have attacked J division for offering conditions better than many motels.

J has 35 inmates, its capacity. There is a waiting list to get in, but turnover is very small; most of the inmates are doing long sentences and have graduated to J through good behaviour over a long period. They are known to the rest of the prisoners as “silvertails” because of the excellent conditions. One of them, Billy “The Texan” Longley, convicted of murder, was out for the day – giving evidence to the Painters and Dockers inquiry.

There is none of the tension of other parts of Pentridge. “The place virtually runs itself,” says the chirpy chief officer, “they know that if they do anything wrong they will be out of this place straight away.”

The group visits one man’s cell in the division, built two years ago. It has its own shower cubicle, comfortable bed, toilet with seat and lid (rare in Pentridge), power points, recessed lighting, space for TV and radio, cupboard, carpet, and a fixed, eye-level window looking on to a yard, Conditions are similar to Jika, but without the feeling of being on another planet.

Security measures are still tight, but there is much laughter and joking. One officer says: “Conditions rub off on officers just as they do on prisoners. Staff sickness has dropped 80 per cent since the new J opened.”

They are wary of praising the place too much; they know that at least part of the community would prefer the harsher approach to prisons. But they strongly defend the introduction of individual showers in cells. One officer says: “So much of the stabbings and rapes happens in the steam of communal showers, and the cost is not so great when you consider how many shower hoses and tap fittings get ripped out. Showers are a security measure.”

The older officer says the man whose cell we are in has spent 23 years in various jails. “He hasn’t put a foot wrong since he’s been in here. I remember the afternoon I first brought him to this cell. He spent the whole night staring at the sky through that window. At one stage he called me to ask what a red flashing light was; it was an aeroplane. And he stared and stared at the Moon. He hadn’t seen it once in nearly five years.

THE PENTRIDGE ALPHABET
A - short and long-term prisoners of good behaviour
B - long-term prisoners with behaviour problems
D - remand prisoners
E - similar to “A”
F - remand and short-term
G - psychiatric problems
H - high security, discipline and protection
J - long-term with record of good behavior
JIKA JIKA maximum security risk and for protection