This is an off the cuff sort of essay in response to my immediate life and its events, in which I happened to find myself attending a public lecture. It was written the morning after the lecture. The work was written with an audience in mind of the academics and other professionals who also attended the lecture, and other academics in the field of sociology. I hope to be enabled to rework this essay, as it is here essentially still only in a first draft. I am able to change and reduce it into a journalist type article if anybody wants to publish any of the concepts in it within their own word limits. Thanking the Brisbane Institute organization for providing their public lecture series each year, if anybody would like a transcript of the lecture which I refer to, it can be purchase through the Brisbane Institute web site. Mashallah this essay, exactly as written in first draft, happens to fit into the space of blank pages at the end of another publication which will be going to the printers at any time now, and so probably before you are reading this, it has been published as this first draft, in endnotes to the publication “The Christmas Which Never Came: Through the Strangeness of Stangers; but for a Boy with a Book”. The ideological principal in which this thesis manifests is that of perception of the greater advantage always being in refusing to lay blame. It is a general observation, of and about, men whom have been in prison, focusing here on men only because they are the majority of the prison population and so I have met a larger sample, that they leave prison acculturated into belief which enables them to surmise that capitalism is totally dependent upon crime. Therefore, they either become angry left wing voting insolent unionists and unemployed, or they remain criminal. In fact it often is the case, that because of that division being sustained, many of the far right wing supporting criminals, will happily mask themselves as trade unionists, and the left wing who are more likely to be wanting to reform their former behaviour, are as likely as not to portray themselves as very mainstream right of center type folk. They get out and perceive that most of society are ignorant of things that they know about in respect of the economy, such as money laundering, and well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Yet the majority who are psychologically stable upon leaving prison, genuinely want not to re-offend, and are genuinely inclined toward the left wing, just very skeptical about the organized left’s capacity, not surprisingly. Many might want to dispute this, and it is not likely that I will be able to provide you with those ex-offenders whom might be able to validate my assertion. They are still, as I explained, really acculturated into the prison climate, in which they fear for their safety if they tell what they comprehend, that is, unless they happen to have got out within a significant volume of social credibility among the other inmates. That sort of social status is not readily able to be defined without implicating persons whom do not need to be implicated. Last night I was at a public lecture being given by Keith Hamburger, the former Director General of Corrective Services here in Queensland, and whom is attributed with having made a swath of reforms in the prison world, which today prisoners speak out against the repealing of. His contribution seems to have been mainly around a phased process of release which enables an inmate to found security in the outside of prison society ahead of their release. Last night he spoke about the need for preventative work, so that Australians are not enabling that a new generations of believers in crime can be raised. He did not speak about the fact that prison context genuinely engage in a real acculturation process and not only a socialization process. That is what I will be writing about here. First we need be clear in our own selves about the difference between socialization and acculturation, since not all of us have a degree in social anthropology. A process of socialization is what enables us to attune with how we are being expected to behave in any social context. A process of acculturation is what defines to the innermost core of our psychiatry, what we are able to believe in as real. The difference is fundamental, and can not be understood by persons whom have not experienced more than one culture. The fact that prisons establish their own culture is a distressing fact of modern reality in the world as I know it, within both mainstream Australian culture and traditionally oriented indigenous culture. How that is being conducted might be even more distressing at times. Keith Hamburger spoke about the success of the Mission Australia sponsored Pathways to Prevention Project, and about the need to source means of funding it so that it, and programmes like it, can manifest as a significant social force in Australia. Nobody could disagree. Within that framework, of a unison of belief in the need to engaging in providence of resources for preventative strategies, what happens next, and why was the public meeting so well attended by persons from many various social backgrounds, a fact somewhat less usual perhaps for the Brisbane Institute’s public meetings. That crime rates are rising is a fear we all hold, including any real criminal. This is the first significant point that is often missed out. If a person is a real criminal and has no intention of ceasing their criminal activity, then it is in their interests also to eliminate their competition, and so they will also be wanting to minimize every possibility of increases in the crime rate. While we law abiding left wing citizens might not like to have to face working aligned with such persons, best we register that their interest is already aligned with ours. One of the audience asked a question from the floor which was well minded and supported, in respect of the worth of any previous solution based crime prevention project. What the whole room assimilated was that there have, in Australia, been many models of crime prevention and pathways into such social contexts, but that those projects which have been studied by sociologists and are proved to be successful, seem not to manage to survive beyond the few years it takes to measure that pheasability accurately. Yet it never seems to happen that then we all forget the matter, but we rather, as a whole society, tend to look next for what can be done even better, and the resources go towards a new pilot study and new research to be conducted, without that which we seek to improve upon being enabled as a sustaining success rate. Why is this happening? Is it that the programme delivery is being left up to individuals who have neither a sociology degree with a masters in clinical psychology, or had done real time in prison, and so have little understanding of the material they are working with beyond basic handing out welfare provisions? I am not here setting out to damn the charities, the school teachers, or the youth workers, etc, whom are usually left with the hands on work of programme delivery. But obviously there is a whole societal response which needs to be put in place, and which can not be left to fall victim to the lack of resources in already under-funded educational contexts. I want to use that umbrella of an ‘educational context’ to define much of the work which happens in the welfare sector. Most of community development work engages in the delivery of elements of education, and the principal is that when a recipient of charity is educated in the more worthwhile uses of that charity, then they are less likely to need to ask for the same again. It is a principal being put to work with marked success in developing nations, and it is correct to assume that the less educated Australian workforce, who are accustomed to living off only centrelink benefits, needs a community development strategy in place. Maybe the farmers might need such a thing also but, and many others of us also. Consider that difference between farmers and those standing in City dole queues. Farmers know their own stuff. They know what work they need to engage in to succeed, although they might like to be better enabled to facilitate real agrarian economy based alterations in favour of climate change, rather than only be blamed by the greenies for not all already sustaining the permaculture ideal. They are very unlikely to become a criminal to obtain their income, even if the weather is preventing them from obtaining any other income. They are not afraid of the need to labour physically only to survive. Yet here is a strange correlation, neither are men who have been in prison. One of the things which Keith Hamburger was mentioning, was that the children whom are growing up in situations of exposure to criminal attitudes, are often being socialized to anticipate that there is no work for them, and no means to be safe outside of the low paid level of organized crime contexts. He did not put it quite like that, but I can. What his lecture suggested, is that the children who are at risk of becoming perpetrators of crime, need to be somewhat segregated from those adults whom are actively engaging in crime, or whom have been in prison and are now in prison. It was not overtly stated, but it was the underlying suggestion. Yet what that flavour orients the whole analysis to is something of an impossibility. Perhaps that is why our many successful pilots are not going anywhere, because of a whole societal attitude to what is necessary in order to break the cycle of familial patterns of criminal behaviour. Consider the distinction between how a politician might want to enable families, and how a politician might want to enable communities. At the bottom end of the social spectrum, societal ills are being sourced to the family. Therefore community work is funded for those persons. At the end of the social spectrum of being upwardly mobile, if there is such a thing these days in the light of potential future downsizing of many sectors of the economy, people orient their own credibility and worth as though fully in origin of family and family values, yet they actualize a significantly larger dependence upon their community than can persons in that bottom end of the socio-economic structure. Folk in the dole cues rarely rely upon their acquaintances, since an old school tie might lead them into the trouble of not being able to source which part of the organized crime spectrum you might be dealing with in a new context. Here I will assert a fact which is potentially very controversial. Such new contexts as in which a youth might need to navigate through a new set of criminal affiliations, include the acts of accepting charity and the support of programmes such as those offered by organizations like Mission Australia. I have no qualms about reporting this as fact, because I know that I can not myself obtain a free meal from the charities which offer such to the homeless, without having to negotiate a status among the criminals in attendance. Just that fact of having to negotiate a rank, so as to stand in a queue without risking being raped or bashed, is enough to brand a person as a criminal. This is, mind, at the extreme end of society where such things manifest a bit more obviously. The community is understood by the sorts of people who might never even know of the existence of the Brisbane Institute, to be that social function by which your acquaintances brand you with a status of what you are worth being given. In my experience, validated also by a significant number of others, the Salvation Army is the only modern major charity in Australia which is not enabling in its own internal culture, of that street culture of needing to be known as a criminal so as to get charity. Many, and most, persons whom attend such contexts and who accept such charity that is available, whether food parcels or participation for the children in crime prevention strategies, never commit any crime. Yet their children are still being exposed to the criminal mode of socialization. What is happening in the prisons, is that the socialization practices of the street, are being acculturated into the adult male population, such that they become unaware of the extent to which they further such socialization after they are released. That is occurring usually through very ill minded practices. Many engage in a form of false initiation which might include asphyxiation similarly to a full immersion baptism engages, and so facilitates modification of what the momentarily asphyxiated person registers in their mind as a real fear. That is as well as the usual sodomy and violence. I should here say a little about the sorts of persons whom have reported of such things to me directly. I regard my self in a privileged position to have met as many as six distinct men whom have been in prison and whom have founded their experience in a self knowledge of remarkable clarity. Yet those six men, and a significant number of others whom I know, through social conditions in which my basic knowledge of sociology psychology and anthropology have been essential to my own survival, are not likely to have told me any real fact without also having asserted to me that they are known in prison, among other inmates, to have killed for less than what I might all too easily by accident have taken into my own regard about them. That is not to say that they really might want to kill me, after all, my absence from society would be noted, and my acquaintances become suspects. In fact they really seemed to be only saying that to me so as to protect me from any possibility that any other person recently released from prison could kill me. They are all acculturated into belief that there is no way to live without being causal to the death of other persons. Yet those of them with the stronger psychology, are internally enabled to combat that idea and combat the process which imposes it. If they are not big and strong, then they are those whom have taken the whole blame for the situation upon their own lives. That is, they have fixated upon the idea that there is no way to sustain life without constantly engaging in behaviour which is causal to their own death. Therefore a drug problem is rife. Obviously, the major way in which youth are socialized into criminality is by their curiosity about what drug use might be like. Many many of us might have taken part in social situations in which we at least have witnessed marihuana being smoked. I mean, even my mother complains that once a lady lit up a joint in front of her at a dinner party. Many well to do parents of teenagers have faced the fact that drug sales are a part of the reality of the private school sector also. Lets face it, why we fear to leave our houses unlocked these days, is not because of what we see on TV so much as because of what we know about among our immediate acquaintances, and dare I say it, also our friends and relations. Meanwhile the TV encourages us to believe that grog is not so bad as all that, but sure enough, learn what is it like among those families who consume no alcohol at all, and you will possibly find a different set of statistics about what is socially knowable and what seems to be unlikely, etc. Yet look into this sort of social regard even further and you might find that the families who are not drinkers or smokers, and do not even consume any caffeine including in chocolate, and then also not even any health food related drug products, but are in their social status just plain old fashioned straight as a die, just can not believe that the criminal world could really exist in its modern present day form. What I am stating, is that criminals themselves are attracted to every instance in which they perceive that another person is engaging in behaviour which might be unhealthy for themselves, for their family, and for their community. A criminal sitting at a bus stop is far more likely to monitor the behaviour of a teenage girl in a short skirt than a teenage girl dressed like a modern day puritan. That criminal might not even want to rape either girl, but is rather only pursuing the idea that everybody has a crime happening in their mind, and so to feel less of a criminal themselves, they only need find what other criminal activity is happening around them. It is that mentality which is causal to perpetuation of crimes such as rape, the ‘she was asking for it’ set of ideas. The rapist might know that she didn’t really want to be raped, but believes that she was already openly exposing in her own mind a predisposition for sinful behaviour. One of the more obvious mind function anomalies among those whom have been in prison, is that of being very very wary about word use, and what words can imply incrimination with. I will here use the most basic, and seemingly bizarre example. If a person whom has been in prison, gets an image in their mind of a “blade of grass”, they might immediately first seek to place it into their real world experience, because if there is no such picture perfect blade of grass existing in their limited world of the experience of prison, and recent memory of life, then what could it mean. It might mean that they themselves are being accused with having a blade, or with having grass, as in cannabis; or, in might mean that they need to accuse somebody else of having either a bladed weapon or plant substance drugs about their person; even worse, it might mean that they could be at risk from a blade and from drugs if they can not identify what the image is caused by successfully. Meanwhile, here outside of prisons, most academics who develop programmes for prevention of crime, might often mentally associate with any number of blades of grass, and take the meaning to be any variation on any and more of the following themes: question will that species grow successfully under eucalyptus; question is the lawn in need of mowing; question is the neighbours homegrown wheat grass really making yummier wheat grass juice shots than can be bought in town; note, that the grass is greener is not always real. Now clearly I have made a very simplistic contrast, but it is not unrealistic for that form of difference to exist. What is notable in the positive respect of how a prisoners psychology is factually stronger than that of a person whom is always enabled to freely associate, is that the strength inherent in the cultural value of sustaining belief that what we might imagine has real world relevance. So here I would like to make an assertion about what is succeeding in the prison communities. That being a process of acculturation, in which two very distinct things are occurring. The first is the enforcement of often unnecessary tolerance to poor conditions and poor expectations. The second is that the survival of that process is being enabled by a set of what are essentially indigenous Australian cultural values. To believe that our Dream mind is related to the real world, is what Aboriginal culture enables. Yet usually not in the conditions present in the prisons. Usually that believe needs to be fully accompanied by a whole set of almost invisible social structures about whom might be able to relate to whom and how and why and in what contexts and about what matters. That is, only with real traditional Kinship in place is it actually possible to engage in a thorough Aboriginal cultural psychology practice. The man in the prison will need to locate who has threatened him with a blade of grass, and whether it might only have been his own imagining. In the first instance, perhaps one inmate saw a blade of grass and associated it with the word blade, and began to use his memory of the image of what he saw as a threat, even if sort of by accident. But then such associations can become founded in false fears which self perpetuate, until one day somebody gets stabbed for having thought about the green grass of home, as it were. That difference between that sort of psychosis, which places survival in prison into the context of needing to become a boarder-line psychotic type personality disorder, and real culture, is not actually that much, but is a very significant difference. The notion of managing to place every Dream type image into the real world, which is central to Aboriginal culture in its original form, is sustainable only by a mass unity of effort not to try to imagine or Dream about any fact other than what already is evidenced to be existing in the world. The reality of sustaining mental stability as an inmate of a prison is that any man with a traditionally oriented Aboriginal perspective stands a far better chance. Aboriginal culture perpetuates a sound mental self discipline which is at the heart of what many non-indigenous persons fear about Aborigines. So now I have added into the spectrum of social considerations, that the indigenous population has a major stake beyond only that of being more oppressed. That is as well as trade unions having a stake, and farmers being unlikely to want to orient into that sort of analysis, but probably being better attuned with solution finding options. We can easily assess that the conditions in the prisons, the conditions which cause a person to be convicted of an imprison-able offense in the first place, and the conditions of re-emergence from prison into the mainstream oriented community, are of value to each one of us in respect of how each our own daily experiences might, or might not, be effected. Let me offer just one suggestion of a potential solution. That those farms which are struggling under the influences of bad weather for farming, might be finding time to consider the real needs for land care based work, including all the sourcing of materials required for real conversions to ecologically sustainable technology and farming techniques. I happen to believe that Australian farmers are, in study investments, well ahead of the rest of the planet at developing solution based methods for ecological sustainability. And sure enough we all want to be doing that carbon balancing equating thing, even if only so we might excuse ourselves driving the car rather than catching the bus. Remembering of course that when a farmer drives his ute, everybody who is clothed with his sheep’s wool, or has on their plate for dinner parts of his produce, are benefiting, so his use of a motor vehicle is a cost at our dinner table every night and not just against his own efforts for the ecology. This idea seems a bit remote from prisons sure enough, but that is the point. Prisoners are enormously prevented in their immediate physical context, which is a basic fact which facilitates psychosis. Every Aboriginal person knows that if you can’t slow down the speed of your fear, you just have to go bush a while. The basic suggestion then, is that a system of government grants can be provided to fund full conversion for farmers into becoming enabled to change their basic practice into an improved carbon trading balance equilibrium, perhaps in stages, and a portion of the resourcing could be through providence of the labour of men whom are inmates of a nearby prison. It seems almost too good to believe in, the sort of ideal which we all know is a good one, but all have our minds full of conundrums about what is likely to be bureaucratically, politically, or managerially difficult. Let me say point blank that the conundrums which seem to incur a false ideology that such ideals are unworkable, are crap. These sorts of behaviour modification strategies are known to be working to immense positive effect with teenage boys, between the indigenous children who get out their picking tea tree and distilling the oil, and the Prince of Wales Awards, we know that these sorts of strategies work and are worth the expense. Consider that a family, neighbourhood, special interest group, or community, whom have a recently released former prison inmate among them, might want to be able to provide him with a level of dignity in his story about what his life has been like inside a prison. Because if everybody can inform their children, that this formidable character, such as prison tends to make of men, was working to stabilize the hole in the ozone layer, as he way of paying back a debt to society, then surely every child who he meets is being prevented from regarding his company with awe only because he knows about crime. Our young people will not be able to help themselves but be in awe of some of the men whom are released from prison, so lets give them something about those men to truly respect. Today inside prisons, the living conditions are in a few strange sort of time warp. That is the consistent impression I am being given. Expectations of providence for basic humanity are well ahead of what the outside community is even realising any need for. So far ahead that by the time everybody else catches up, especially the politicians, there is already stabilised a method of coping with the despair around needs not being met, in which prisoners and ex-prisoners, are unlikely to want to trust that a new government programme can be trusted. Again this goes back to the difficulty of survival depending upon an element of psychotic comprehension. When I say psychosis, it is not that every psychotic mental process is all the way blown into a delusion, but that the nature of psychosis is to think too far ahead, or behind, of what is immediately relevant. That fact causes that prisoners whom engage in tertiary education while they are an inmate, are often attracted to the study of psychology. There is an array of phenomenon through which the idea of a time warp in work to prevent crime can be related to. For example, last night the lecture noted that twenty years ago or so, costing was done which proves that having ten one hundred bed prisons is no more expensive than having one thousand bed prison, yet the Queensland Government plans a four thousand bed prison of the sort that are being phased out in the USA as unsuccessful. However, whose success was being measured was not the topic of discussion last night. Yet how the work to prevent crime is relatable to the research proving worth in specific models of that work, demonstrates clearly that something is out of time with its own perceptions of the real world. So it is any wonder then that inmates side with the criminally monitored processes over the government monitored. Belief in the whole concept of mental time warps is part and parcel of a criminal mentality, and when criminals witness evidence of such among those whom purport to be aiding them to get out of the criminal world, why of course they will be extremely suspicious. It was also mentioned last night that there is real evidence of the fact that building prisons encourages the Judiciary not to seek solutions external to imprisonment. Now in the instance of letting a private company which builds prisons to profit from, into the system, is it not the case that the whole sensibility of those in prison will only be further encouraged out of the mainstream sensibility to reality. A systemic pattern can be traced of failure to assert to those in prison and their families, what is the reality which most of mainstream Australia shares, without that assertion of reality being punitive. Nobody believes in any cultures which has no positive influence, and that point made in last nights lecture is the driving force behind most of the best of the work done in crime prevention. So what we have, in that context, is a group of potentially dangerous persons, the prison’s inmates, whom are conscious within a belief that anybodies mental health patterns can become caused to be dangerous for one another, and whom are then, if they can manage it, also studying psychology, and making their own minds often more dangerous. There are those prisoners whom are effectively only making themselves into weapons which can inflict mental illness upon one another. Yet there are also those prisoners whom have studied psychology and managed to cure themselves and other prisoners of mental illnesses also. Therefore, there is no worth in any prison warden attempting to ban the study of psychology. But you can see that I am painting further into an emerging picture of actual acculturation rather than only socialisation happening within the prisons. Who is holding the keys of what defines sanity and insanity among prison inmates? I know men whom were clinically insane at the time of entering prison, but because of good community supports were able to avoid being tagged with that label in prison to their advantage. Men fear being a psychiatric patient in prison more than they fear maximum security in my experience. I also know a man who has been in prison as a psychiatric patient, and his own mind is today, and was then, fully stable. He became branded with that category by other inmates, as well as by mainstream society, who might brand many in prison as insane, but in prison he became branded for refusing to adopt the prison acculturated belief system. Given the outlook of a cross cultural analysis, and that there is being indoctrinated a culture of crime, it would seem to be the case that an argument exists for continuing to exclude ex-inmates from other community settings after they are released. But there are statistics I read only recently, and an apology that I did not then immediately source because it is unlikely that I will find the internet source I had read from again, which indicate that there is much more social danger from, and to, a non-indigenous who is recently released from gaol, than from, or to, an indigenous inmate upon and after release. We must wonder why this is, when most living conditions are usually so much worse for the indigenous population. Let me suggest that the answer could be only that because the Aboriginal community will not deny any man his basic dignity, no matter where he has just before now been. It is a basic psychological principal of having a healthy and safe community, that every individual is deserving of some quota of dignity, even if it is only that dignity in having faced the music of past error. In the mainstream population, for example, women are unlikely to want to engage in a relationship with a man who has been in prison unless he is now well to do. Yet in the Aboriginal population, the whole community orients into assuring any man who has recently been inside a prison, that there will be a woman around somewhere who will make herself available for his immediate needs, without anticipating him to pick up the standard of her own life that much. She won’t even need to be a prostitute, just some wife with an absent husband and grown up enough children, who has realised that the whole community is far better off when men who have been in prison are just simply accepted as they are. In fact, the actual manifestation of that social regard has such worth that not many Aborigines or non-Aborigines can really discern which Aboriginal men have been in prison, but only tend to assume that it is most of. Which men they are is a less significant fact, to many, and not always from a racism which assumes that every Aborigine might have been in prison, but rather from the community effort to afford those men the re-blending with the rest of Aboriginal society. Many non-indigenous men who have been in prison are taking advantage of that basic premise existent in Aboriginal culture, in which to base their own social credibility once out of prison, or while under any police investigation. This fact is to the enormous worth of the Aboriginal population. Place it into the context of our nation state having begun as a penal settlement, and the fact that over time, a pattern is emerging of the indigenous population having absorbed the worst of what the British brought, and having begun already to sustain a major social recovery from that. The Aboriginal community, have always also oriented into that same sort of pattern, over many generations, in respect of the farming techniques and species brought to Australia by the British. Thereby, we as a whole society, can only undermine our standing as a nation, as Keith Hamburger provided data in respect of with the prison statistics, unless we truly value and respect that heritage which provides men with their most basic human dignity no matter what might have befallen them. Now think about this fact. I am informed that on average, in the not too distant past, a man in prison might spend, by a combination of deductions from a Centrelink income and being allowed to hold onto a bit of pocket money, perhaps as much as seven twelfths, to be precise, of his total income for the whole time he is in prison. So even with only a government pension, he is saving. Then once he is back in the community of persons whom have never been in prison, what fools we must all seem to be with our excessive wants for what money can buy. That is, if he is a good survivor. If he is weak minded, then he wants what he sees and sets about to get it by whatever means he knows. Think further into this point and what it means. His savings can do him no good while in prison. Though if he is in there for long enough he might overspend when he gets out, or he might set himself up in a small business, or he might even take out a mortgage on a house, and these are things which have happened. Clearly it is a good policy of the prison department to ensure that he has a healthy bank balance upon release from prison. Though if he spends it all on the drugs, that cost twice as much out of prison, than what he pocket money kept him addicted to in prison, then in runs out fast, he still wants the drugs, and he is far more likely to engage in crime. But that is not because he has money upon release that is because he could buy drugs in prison. I don’t know how much tobacco costs in the prisons, but somehow the costs of legal items are hiding that money is being spent on drugs, and the cheapness of drugs is hiding how much drugs are available in the prisons. I hope I never have to learn about how the drugs get into there in the first place. Who ever can supply the package that needs to be removed by acts of sodomy committed against men when first an inmate, is obviously that indefinable in the picture, otherwise the whole set up would long before now have been prevented. However that portion of the whole fact, is not that which you really need to think about just yet. What can more immediately bear consideration for those of us out here in the community wanting to be able to raise children without fear of crime, is that the men who have been in prison have no real way of evaluating the worth of monetary currency while they are inside. They can not evaluate the worth of money as currency, and neither can they evaluate the worth of the social capital which is assumed to underpin savings in the bank. Their social capital while in prison, is a whole different ball game to what has value in social effort and social knowledge for us here outside in the more normally alignments of the times we live in. So it becomes then quite auspicious for a man in gaol if he can arranged to be studying psychology. He can then manage his own mind better, and that of who he forms allegiances with. I know two such men who qualified at some level in social work and clinical psychology while inside prison, and both happened to have been featured in the ABC 4 Corners programme Out of Sight, Out of Mind, which in the late eighties, motivated Australians to listen to the Aboriginal community and then demand the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody. It seems to have been a part of the arrangement of what made it safe for them to tell their story, that they had to be given what would enable them to have a higher status among other prisoners. This fact is not relevant around those individuals and their own experiences to the same extent as it is relevant around why that sort of tertiary study is enabling and influential among the population of prison inmates. I have suggested that many such men are becoming weapons for causing mental illness, and it is within my experience to know that the world of organised crime imposes prison like conditions upon men and women to cause people to become criminally oriented in all affiliations. We might all have seen the television programmes about the Russian prostitutes being mentally tortured to force them into prostitution and often also drug addiction. But we do not all know that our own Australian rape crisis centers have catalogues, where files have been kept, and where women actually feel safe in making their reports depending upon who the staff are, which illustrate that the sorts of social conditions which are documented in modern North American psychology and psychiatry, as being causal to diseases like multiple personality disorder, are present in our own social environments. How many of you who look at the women who prostitute themselves in pubs and feel shame for them, are able to recognise that she might well have been raped repeatedly, and been ritually abused, to cause her to behave as she is, for the cause of whoever it is profiting by the drugs she might sell alongside any money she is paid for prostituting her body. There are even examples of women whom were forced to have children, knowing that their children would be taken away from them, by men who knew that more money can be obtained through a prostitute who is a mother, because her internal muscle function is stronger after childbirth. This is a real fact which has been reported to me by two seperate women. The first told me about her story of her own volition, and the second I asked about the situation more generally, after I had experienced a man assuming that maybe that was why I also had become a mother. I am not mentioning these facts so as to capitalise upon any shock value, but because the researchers, and other professional experts in the field, are often not in a position to be able to find out such details. What happens to a person whom has been in the situation of being victimised into such conditions, is that their fear of telling the real story, surpasses all other fears. That is what the perpetrators, that is, the real criminals, who are often quite well off through high financed drug sales, are setting out to cause. They set about to prevent that a community can relate to fear of their own criminal behaviour, but causing that another fear is implanted into the subconscious, which overrides the more normal fear. That is why I am telling that what is happening in the prisons is a process of acculturation. Yet in the prisons is the cutting edge of that process, and that includes the processes by which men themselves are finding ways of accommodating what has been happening to them. Facing the music is real for many who are in prison, but that music which might be ringing in their ears could be only a constant dirge. There are ways to recover from the worst forms of abuse, however all studies done to date which I can find any evidence of, suggest that there are different degrees of mental recovery able for different persons. If the full level of physical as well as psychological abuse, had been used within ritualised negative re-inforcement behaviours, to incur a mental health disorder which is like a mild version of a multiple personality disorder, such as is being done to many prostitutes all over the world, then there is no possibility of even commencing any recovery work until physical safety can be fully guaranteed. Otherwise the mental health condition only worsens. I have witnessed examples of this among Aboriginal men whom were abused in prison and then engaged in traditional exorcism type healing. The worth of the Rainbow Serpent mythology is that the Rainbow Serpent has always been know as the sort of person who can sustain their mind without loss of self knowledge within experiencing the form of psychological abuse common among organized crime. There is however another form of psychological abuse which is worse than even the full scale of abuse which can impose multiple personality disorders. The worse form tends to require sexual activity to have been engaged in, that that is the key to it. There can be caused a sort of feedback to happen in a persons mind, of parts of their own comprehension of reality, yet happening to occur at a different time from when their mind needed that specific comprehension. The person can not sustain sanity unless they begin to recognize that such is what had been happening, and can also trace the source of which sexual partner, and usually then also another sexual partner of theirs, engaged in attempting to disturb the first person’s psychology. Not many persons whom have had that form of abuse inflicted sustain real social integrity in the mainstream or in any other context. Yet there are instruments of teaching within the world of Religion which can train the mind into mentally combating that pattern. The only other alternative provided to the victim by the perpetrators, is that of using specific drugs purchased from particular drug vendors. The whole of what is manifesting then, is that youth become exposed to mild levels of ritualized behaviour and mild levels of the enforcement of attitudes which are causal to a multiple personality disorder. The more upward mobility a person attains within the world of organized crime, or just ordinary drug purchasing for those whom are not professionals, then the more force is used to impose the structures of a multiple personality disorder. The implementation of the feedback sort of manifestation of mental illness, is not normally done to a person unless that person had began to talk too openly, or showed too many other signs of being able to refute and repudiate the more regular criminal conditioning. So it is like a punitive measure in mental health which criminals are using to regulate criminal industries, including of course the prison economy. The way out of the most extreme problems, is real, but is not possible without sustaining very thorough belief in Religious method. Curiously many criminals believe that the psychological techniques they are putting into use today, were extracted by Nazis from the Jews in concentration camps during world war two. What also seems to have manifested is that the form of mental pattern which is most often associated in Aboriginal culture with incest as defined in Kinship Law, is these days happening to many more persons than have actually engaged in such behaviour. It is as though the mental health problems associated with specific behaviour, were being forced upon many more persons than are engaging in that behaviour. Because of this, we all have to take upon our selves a social regard that ordinary families and the broader community, is in fact engaging in real concentrated efforts in self discipline. When that credibility is awarded to those in the front line of defending our right not to be criminals, then everybody, but especially the youth, are better protected. The way out of the worst of the mental health issues which criminals are adept at imposing, is to concentrate the mind in accurately evaluating every input, so as to detect if your own physical body had been already a party to what causes the input or not. That is where Religious method is most effective. If anybody reading would like to learn more about that form of abuse which causes multiple personality disorder, and the work towards recovery from it, try the internet, but bear in mind also that many traditional cultures are far more adept at enabling recovery than modern psychology usually is. This speaks to the fact of why there is being sustained a whole different framework of belief by those whom are in prison now and that they also sustain such upon leaving prison. What is necessary then, is for that system of belief, where it is not criminally motivated, to be enabled in the mainstream economy. Usually the two forms of mental abuse I have peripherally here described, are imposed hand in hand, but it is useful to distinguish the two distinct patterns from each other for the purposes of recovery. Keith Hamburger spoke about why we ought not just ignorantly assume that locking a man up can cure him of criminality. He spoke about the brutality which many men in prison have experienced in most of their lives prior to entering prison. He blamed their families. I do not, because I believe that it does no service to the prison population to encourage those men to blame their mothers for what is happening to them. In fact, upon release from prison, if they can not escape from having been conditioned into mother hating, then they can neither engage in successful personal relationships, and are all the more likely to re-offend. However, what was notable in last nights lecture, was that Mr Hamburger spoke seriously about a model of reforming behaviour which is an educational model counter-posed to a pedagogy, which is the basic system of learning in which most primary schooling education is today fixed. It was asserted that we assume that we can simply re-train men, by locking them away from the rest of us, into a better way of regarding the world and their own place in it, and the assertion was then that if we rely on that assumption we totally fail. I agree wholeheartedly in that fact, and believe that every adult is fully well oriented into the dearth of real world education in usual pedagogy teaching models. That understanding is a simple as knowing that learning the times tables by rote is not why you really want to find out how much it might cost to buy three apples instead of one. So why men might want to recover from having been acculturated into a false reality while inside the prisons is the question. Why might just be that they are not wanting for other family members to wind up in a prison. The reason why men recover once out of prison is far more family oriented than it is community oriented in fact. Communities which are artificially created to service government funded programmes, which are, in turn, directed by a different community, tend to be a potentially dangerous group of persons to label with the title of being a community. Consider what their common interest is. You might object here to my analysis and tell me that there are real communities already existing which the government funding programmes work with. For example, there is the community of voters who encouraged the politician to speak out in favour of voting for funding, and that can be inclusive of the community around families with a member in prison. However it is usually a broader subsection of the community of voters whom can actualise enough pressure upon a politician to act. More likely it was the community of bureaucrats who field complaints from the public, who were earliest motivated into providing the politicians with a reason for funding programmes to prevent crime. Those persons are in turn supported by a community of academics whose research is oriented into scientific investigation of what the more general community, and government funding bodies, find relevant. Then there are also communities of journalists who can impact the whole picture. The community of businesses which want to prevent crime against their business is a large player in influencing politicians. However, the actual persons to whom the service of a crime prevention programme is likely to be delivered, are not likely to be who initiated the development of ideals as to what programme delivery should supply. This is one of those facts that many bureaucrats and academics almost just about anybody is often able to point to as a failing of modern democratic structures. Yet in this instance of working to prevent a specific section of the community, and working to prevent them in exactly what motivates them into manifesting as their own community, the reality of the decisions being a top down process is very stark. What could possibly change that and make for an effective consultation, can only be if there are already portions of the said criminal community, who want already that their children will be prevented from also engaging in crime. Yet if we are not consulting with such persons, how can programme delivery become effective, unless we just inhibit our own innate want to respect the essential humanity of even criminals. You can thus comprehend how readily it is that folk who work among the criminally behaved tend towards de-humanising the families who have found their only safety among the criminal world. That process of de-humanising then lends itself to accusations of criminality from the criminals, and so there are many many subsets of persons in society whom are vulnerable to criminality being imposed upon their children, but who are not in fact actually likely to ever commit a crime. The question of who it is that is really “doing crime” is a question most of us tend to leave only to the police, but the fact is that criminals have the bigger vested interest in knowing who everybody is who is doing crime, and also tend to have more accurate information than police about who is actually guilty of what crimes. The police have a wage, but the criminals whose industry is almost identical to policing industries, are not paid unless they come up with accurate and tangible information. The kids all know that it is a problem we all face, that one of, ’she bought the drugs from me so I am made valuable because I am who owns the empirical evidence that she was wrong to’. Who ever can get away with that form of attitude is obviously also flaunting that they themselves have a degree of protection not afforded to who they sell drugs to. Therefore they make all their buyers vulnerable, and that is why many drug users anticipate that a sale of drugs comes along with understandings about police protection. A mutual agreement not to tell tales on one another, if you like. Yet that very mutual agreement is also a buying in to the patterns in which every person whom has any known criminal associates is often socially de-humanised. This is relevant to the ideal of letting convicted criminals do their time inside, by being enclosed through the remoteness of location rather than by walls. That ideal of engaging the gaoled in labour which is regarded as having a real social value for all of us because somebody has to and nobody is likely to suddenly start paying good rates to farmers for producing field freshly planted with crops of trees in between the breadth of the combine harvester, that will hold the soil in place and take five hundred years to become the carbon emission sink they were planted for. Now having opened cans of worms aplenty here, I will tell you that I am not likely to want to close any, or likely to let my words form into any easy conclusions for you. I have suggested just another ideal solution, which might be no better at all than any previously thought about and even tested in pilots studies. The pheasability research is where most of these sorts of ideals come a bit unstuck, but only because investors are wanting to invest only in what will generate a material financial profit, rather than focusing upon social profits, and the gain for the future in reducing crime, not to mention sustaining a healthy atmosphere. So I will wrap the whole up rather by saying that unless there are more professionals who are themselves resourced financially by wages to work in issues such as this; but whom also have been able to let themselves realise that a culture is being imparted in the prisons, and that it is a culture which is normally disabling of becoming a well respected professional; yet, this is, that unless there are more such professionals whom can understand what the different perception of reality is, which men and women who have been in gaol, and who have been socially associated with the imprisoned, are believing in; unless there are more of such professionals, then the worth we all invest in projects to prevent crime will not be able to bear the long term fruit of safe communities which we all need. Perhaps even just begin that process by believing that the real criminals are who might just notice with me writing this, that they are becoming worse off by having been perpetuating criminality as a social standard. You all might well object to the notion that there is an actual acculturation process in action in the prisons. In part I can myself defeat my own description by announcing that often it is not that inmates are being taught in a new mode of culture, but that they are being indoctrinated into a cult. In part that is real, yet in part also there is a set of real cultural values being sustained. As I have written already, the real cultural values, present alongside that cult of crime, and the crime related underclass, are indigenous; but that cannot be mentioned without also providing the information that it is that indigenous sensibility which sustains any inmate in every effort to avoid re-offending. The most corrupt persons whom might want most to deny that fact, will also be whom are themselves most reliant upon such metaphysical handouts from the Aboriginal culture. In a way this whole analysis is only one portion of the larger analysis of a society which is in its upper echellons totally dependant upon such handouts of the spirit of reconciliation and all that. What enables that I can inform you that there is a system of real culture at an interplay with the criminality of cult like indoctrination, is that there is a central story upon which believers in the culture of prisons depend. It can be accurately related into the whole study of the anthropology of stories by correlating it with a number of well known myths. There is also a known Aboriginal story cycle which amply demonstrates that correlation, and many in fact, but all of are very locationally driven, bound, and relevant, and the believers in those stories do not want that their dreams are the ones so very particularly depended upon. The other correlations are obviously of Persephone, of Venus, and Queen Kunti in Mahabarata. There is even a Surah in Qur’an through which the cycle of Dream scapes can be related, which is known as The Nightcomer, in English translation. It is specifically also about the effect of the planet Venus in the night sky. I can even assert that any professional whom will want to be able to relate there research mind better to the actual criminal world, might like to undertake a little portion of anthropological type field work within this spectrum of understanding. Have a look through the belongings of criminals and ask what the most treasured objects represent, and you will find out that a real story cycle is present. This presents us with a better perspective upon work in crime prevention. Because if there is a cultural basis for belief in reality among criminals which is not actually dependant upon crime, then there is grounds to work upon which are the grounds already known and established by the communities and families whom are already in association with the criminal world. Consider the immediate situation here of the City of Brisbane in this respect. Before world war two, it was really only like to being a large but sleepy country town, so says all the literature at any rate. Yet today it is within the spectrum of the top level of criminal and policing activity. That is a frightening reality in anybody’s book. It is worth noting contrasting the Cities of Canberra and Brisbane, for me since I have lived in both, but also many folk I know in Canberra are also somewhat familiar with Brisbane. Brisbane is alike to being a group of very neatly and closely tied, parochial and small town minded people, grappling with having manifested a major metropolis. I do not mean that as a slight against Brisbane’s old families, neither the wealth or the poor, because that parochial way is what protects every small town’s children. Yet is it effective when faced with the anonymity which a City can mask people with? Now contrast that to Canberra, where I lived longer, which is has by far the smaller population, and where I truly feel more comfortably anonymous. Canberra has a big smoke cosmopolitan minded and sophisticated establishment managing what is essentially just a big country town. Canberra has lower crime rates and a far lower rate of imprisonment, among the better in the world, while Brisbane’s is among the worst in the world. Yet Canberra had no jail, but in Canberra crime manifests a more obvious evidence base and simultaneously is less flaunted. The evidence base is critical. Somehow here in Brisbane there is more money being spent upon cover. Canberra has had also the benefit of a lengthy period of federal government control, in which the Canberra population was used as guinea pigs for any number of pilot projects designed to find out what sorts of government funding will be effective. Canberra has far less tourism and a higher graduate population, but also less industry, so is very heavily dependant upon being the capital city. There is a challenge I am setting here for Queenslanders. Can the population of this state turn Brisbane around because of that parochial attitude which is essentially a factor in all protection of children? The trajectory Brisbane has been on is one we all recognize in its nature as that which must be stopped. BrisVegas is perhaps not called BrisVegas only because of the gambling quadrant and all the associated entertainments, but the criminal accompaniment is what really makes us relate to that name. Because of a self recognition of being under the influence of the ills associated with a tourism and gambling debt dependant economy. Yet if we take that trajectory in the longer term contexts of Aboriginal Australians, it is somewhat less frightening, simply because there are longer older and larger stories through which we can all relate to the immediate situation. The past seventy odd years are not a whole seven portions out of twenty two, of the history, but only that portion of the worst of a far grander historical status. It is no wonder then that Aboriginal men are more adept at not being indoctrinated into the cult of imprisonment. Often that adeptness itself sustains the status among criminals of being one to abuse all the more thoroughly. Yet the actual Aboriginal criminals, those who really are wanting to do crime rather than only those who are set up into such identifications, and who sure enough were here also before seventeen eighty eight, tend not to keep trying for so very long as those whose communities are newer to Australia. Bear that in mind. It is how to related to the facts about our culture being an immensely psychologically resilient culture, which is the foundations of why it is the oldest living tradition. It can not be quelled even by those most sever conditions present in the prisons, and where, in fact it can be proven at the bones of its real worth. So what relevance has that worth then to the notion of our fear of having manifested a BrisVegas in our sensibility to the world? Perhaps since it is only a very recent phenomenon that Brisbane has been on this trajectory, which locals often actually place as an older feature of life in South East Queensland, and relate to the road building work, it might be one which is more rapidly able to change for the better also. That is what the ideal I write towards is all about. Let us then, whoever are the group of persons whom are concerned with the content of this writing, perhaps as a unity of the integral components of any health society, just as Mr Hamburger has suggested in respect only of a few persons who have already established themselves at the forefront of their professional field, make an effort in coalition with each others motivations to provide real justice outcomes at least for our children and the youth. An effort in preventing that they are learning only to face a world in which anticipating crime is a part of realistic expectations. The trajectory which this City seems to have been on is one of not fully identifying the nature of the problem. So many solutions have manifested and been successfully piloted, and was it only that there was no longer term funding that they fell to the side, or was it also about the real world worth of participation in such projects? For example, there are folk like me out there in the real world, who have no tertiary qualification, yet are intelligent witnesses, and who might just be picking up a sizable amount of education from the TV, internet, and in public libraries even. Are those existing projects in crime prevention geared towards discriminating only on the basis of income, since in that they would be inclusive of me and much of my own close family, but when we have no need of. Often when a trial or a pilot is socially engineered, if it was not at the outset enabled through having been a need asserted by persons already under the influence of the criminal context, then those who participate might only be that same group in society who always participate. The single mothers who used to be those who held down a couple of part time jobs while also doing a socially respectable job of raising their children, for example. These days we all have a pension, and so need not be worked off our feet and reliant upon the neighbourhood for childcare, but we are often who get our children along to all that society will provide for them in measures to prevent cyclic poverty. Yet this is a group all the same who will be in the front line of crime prevention, even if forced into such functions only because of where the government can afford to locate us in public housing. That is clearly again very simplistic, but it is also an analysis of social worth in respect of how to help those folk who just don’t really notice that they have a need for help or that there is any help to be had. The sort of folk to whom public meetings of the Brisbane Institute, are not only worthless to know about, but also are regarded as a bunch of persons too far out of reality to be worth considering. That is the reality of nappies, of men insulting the children, of everybody fearing violence, and fearing how to provide more money for whoever is about who is closing in on that bit of a drug detox in which nothing is relevant except pain and pain relief. A sort of real world facing the facts, but in a world in which the only investment has been that of the criminals who profit from drug sales. Changing those sorts of communities is hard, but is the task that must be faced. But how can we face that without clearly delineated evidence of what the real problems are. I mean there are of course all the statistics, but are we even asking the right questions at census time. In another cultural paradigm, the right question might be “have you experienced a psychological effect in which your own body feels as though it is a tree”, and that sort of question might actually be very relevant to those who monitor the social status of other men in prison. But I am not here going to challenge any mainstream academics that far, just far enough but. Think about what is it in the behaviour of children who are at risk of becoming criminals, which identifies them most obviously as being at risk. Are you yourself ever exhibiting that exact same behaviour, but with more money in your pocket such that you seem a bit saner because you might have already had the reason of a real need. I have made a very strong implication there, or even set of implications. What drives the whole system in which a man will leave prison convinced that crime is what stabilizes capitalism? Perhaps the seeds of such a belief were already well and truly planted in his having grown up with less money in his pocket than others are showing by their clothing, by what they eat, where they go, and what they esteem each other because of. When we as a whole society can address this issue, it will be natural also to be addressing the issue of the immediate needs of the ecology.
This is a first draft as finished 2.26 pm 10th October 2007.
The lecture was at 6pm 9th October 2007, here in Brisbane, Australia.
If anybody would like to download a PDF file of this work, or purchase a paper copy, then leave a note in the comments screen below and I can make a lulu.com url available where the work can be bought.
