A disgrace to her uniform and dishonourable conduct towards the memory of thousands of hard working, honest prison officers from yesteryear
I do not know Ms Lauren Oliver, the Director of Brush Farm Training Academy. To the best of my knowledge, I have never met her, nor do I particularly want to. You can imagine my dismay when I received an email from a good friend that contained an article from the Sunday Telegraph dated 26th June 2016, page 40, written by Jordan Baker. The article focus, as I see it, was on Prison Officer Recruitment and Training. Ms Oliver referred to Prison Officers from years gone by as, “Those old fat white guys wouldn’t last very long these days”. She continued on, “That’s the old culture, our staff is fighting so hard against that”. Further she inferred we could not de-escalate a situation and went on to state, “Modern guards have to be good communicator’s, and fit enough to respond to an emergency”, surmising my generation of Prison Officers could not.
I found her quoted statement’s instantly racist, offensive, degrading and completely ill informed, in fact she is totally wrong. She has also dramatically reduced the status of her own trainee’s by referring to them as “Guards”. When I trained Prison Officers in 1978 and 1979 I trained “Prison Officers” not “Guards”.
This lady has no understanding of the history of prisons in New South Wales. Prison is the oldest occupation in Australia. Just to enlighten Ms Oliver, in January 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip landed on the Kurnell Peninsula following a gruelling eight months at sea with a fleet of 11 ships with 1,030 people on board of which three quarters were convicts. He was Admiral of the fleet and his flag ship was HMS Sirius. It is not for me or Ms Oliver to be critical of how the convicts were treated in the late 1700s; it was the way prisoners were treated in those days by law, other than to say the system was very hard, nor is it ok for Ms Oliver to criticise my fellow prison officers of my generation of the 1970s and the early 1980s, other than to say “It was a hard place for hard men”. The way we carried out our duties was strictly by way of the Prisons act, Regulations and Prison Rules, in other words we were legally bound in the operation of our duty. We were all very proud of the way we conducted ourselves and still are, and rightfully so. I reached the rank of Senior Assistant Superintendent and was among the very first of the Executive Prison Officers to be Commissioned by the Governor of New South Wales in 1984.
As for her reference to, “those old fat white guys”; is Ms Oliver aware that Australia had a White Australia Policy up until 1973 and in 1975 the Whitlam Government introduced the Racial Discrimination Act. All of this did not stop the Department of Corrective Services from hiring a number of European, Indian and of course Australian Aboriginal Officers, in fact she may remember one, the previous Commissioner of Corrective Services in New South Wales, Mr Ronald George Woodham. The last time I looked, terms such as, “Those fat white guys” were in breach of the Anti Discrimination Act.
Ms Oliver and her softly softly, touchy feely way of dealing with crims is a complete failure. As a result, the whole modern penal system is nothing short of a joke.
The Australian population in 1976 was around 14,000,000
The Australian population in 2016 is around 24,000,000
An increase of about 71%
The NSW prison population in 1976 was around 4,000
The NSW prison population in 2016 is around 11,000
An increase of about 275%
How does Ms Oliver explain the following simple facts? If the Australian population has only increased 71% in forty years and the number of criminals under her care has increased a massive 275% in the same forty years, the current prison system is long overdue to have an enquiry into its failure, and perhaps the recruitment and training methods of Ms Oliver.
The Government’s resources which are funded by the tax payer are being wasted on “Bull Shit” programs. Ms Oliver proudly proclaimed she was going to be training 1400 “Guards” this year. Well hell Ms Oliver, in 1976 there were only 1500 prison officer’s in the whole of New South Wales.
I would suggest Ms Oliver that you think before you open your mouth, and consider those hard working, honest and brave prison officers whose good name and reputation you have deliberately chosen to besmirch.
I would also suggest you read my books “It’s All in the Fall”, “Cutting the Bars-Volume 1”, “Cutting the Bars-Volume 2”, and “Cutting the Bars-Volume 3”, to enlighten yourself as to what the prisons were really like and what the officers had to contend with in the 1970s and 1980s. I may suggest that it is you Ms Lauren Oliver that would not last very long at all in those days.
This I believe
PETER T EGGE
I most cordially invite Ms Oliver the right of reply, or indeed to offer her apology to those like me who were so hurt by her stinging, flippant, uneducated remarks.
