Jika Jika Maximum security unit

Jika Jika
Maximum security unit
Time is punishment enough.

pic courtesy of theage.com.au

In memory of:
Ricky Morris
Jimmy Loughnan
Robert Wright
Arthur Gallagher
David McGauley

Why would anyone attempt a webpage on undoubtedly Australia's worst high security division... And some of It's most notorious inmates?
Simply because... right now as you read this, there's men and women being denied Christmas at home.
I'm not here to deny major criminals should be punished, but everyone fucks up in life sometime or rather, and of course unless the crime is towards children or women... I'll raise a JD to any poor bastard incarcerated
Merry Xmas!
Dave;)
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Ricky Morris

A website in Honour of 5 Brave men

Jika Jika - (K-Division Pentridge)

It would be bloody nice to 'click' on a link to see the truth about this hellhole.
H Division, Jika... I don't know how the Government of the day got away with it.
...It's something out of Boltes book... Let's go back to 1969 for a second.
H(ell) Division was perfect for any poor soul in his eyes.
.
Q."What did you do the morning Ryan was Hanged Premier?
A. The three S's I suppose... A shit, a shower and shave".
Wouldn't it?
Well... Ricky's sister Cheryle, is doing something about it!

Imagine if someone in your Family was locked up?
..... and they escaped Prison.
Ricky did just that! He was a brave and honorable fellow!
Ricky's sister Cheryle is an extremely proud Lady.
She has made a website dedicated to her Brother Ricky.

He was put in the worst Division, in the Hardest Jail in Australia...
...and He did something about it!
Which sadly, cost himself and 4 other men their lives.

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'If Governments are going to lock us in cages
and allow us to be treated like animals,
society should not expect us to act like men!'
Garry David Webb. J Division HM Pentridge Prison, 1992.

Jika Jika was a sensory deprivation unit built inside Melbourne's Pentridge Jail in the 1980's.
It was a climate controlled, pre-formed concrete 'Jail within a Jail' for Victoria's most hardest and long serving Prisoners.
Jim Kennan was the attorney-general and Minister for Corrections who ordered the closure of the Jika Jika maximum security section of Pentridge Prison immediately after the 1987 riot and fatal fire..

'It was an 8.6 million dollar white elephant'
Edwin John Eastwood

The design of Jika Jika was based on the idea of six separate units at the end of radiating spines. The provision of useful industry remained a problem that was never really solved. The other major problem was the number of staff needed to administer the unit. The electronic doors, closed-circuit TV and remote locking were all intended to keep staff costs to a minimum. The furnishings were sparse and prisoners exercised in aviary-like yards. In 1983 four prisoners escaped from ‘escape proof’ Jika Jika (in the 1970's Russell Cox had also escaped from so called 'escape proof’ Katingal, in Sydney's Long Bay Jail). When two prison officers were disciplined in relation to the Jika Jika escape there was a weeklong strike at Pentridge.

Jika Jika Exercise yard. Note the closed in roof to avoid helicopter escape attempts!

The Death of five Men...

In a protest initiated by Robert Wright over his continued detention in Jika, fellow inmates Jimmy Loughnan, Arthur Gallagher, David McGauley, Ricky Morris and Craig 'Slim' Minogue sealed of their section doors with a tennis net. Mattresses and other bedding were then stacked against the doors. The windows in the Dayroom were then covered with paper so the Prison Officers couldn't identify which Prisoners caused the ensuing damage. The Dayroom was then completely wrecked, lights, fixtures etc.
Plumbing was then torn from the walls in the cells to enable the Prisoners to breathe for when the fire was started.
(Jika Jika was completely free of any fresh air whatsoever, It was a climate controlled Division)
In spite of the Men's attempts to avoid the toxic black smoke by breathing through the plumbing, convicted Russell Street bomber Craig Minogue was the sole survivor of the fire.
The resulting inquiry into the circumstances of the Men's protest brought to light some very damaging allegations from Prisoners, attending Fire Brigade members and Prison officers against their own colleagues.
The most serious of the allegations was that Arthur Gallagher was infact still alive after being pulled out of Unit 4!

He allegedly died from being rammed head-first into the concrete walls on the way to Unit 7 by Prison Officers...
Not good enough to treat em like shit eh fella's?
fuck prison screws... what kind of loser would take a job like that in the first place?

Wouldn't this constitute for murder?

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THE PENTRIDGE ALPHABET
A - short and long-term prisoners of good behavior
B - long-term prisoners with behavior 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

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I remember when Brisbane's Expo 88 was on...

Prisons...
I remember when Brisbane's Expo 88 was on...
My family and I parked the Falcon in Dutton Park, across the road from bloody Boggo Road.
We were coming home about 10pm that night to the Gold Coast.
I was about 21.

Many of the prisoners were flicking lighters through there cell 'windows' at us...
I can imagine how harsh their time was in that hellhole.
(remember, Boggo Road was just being exposed as one of the most backward
punishing Prisons of the previous Bjelke-Peterson era, and subsequently closed as being an INHUMANE zoo)

All I could think of to yell out to them was 'hang in there fella's'
Not one of them could call back to me, I can imagine their consequences...
A bashing or couple a nights in the hole
( I sure as hell saw a lot of lighter flicking though!!!)
Look for the light, no matter how small the tunnel is guys.

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The above information on Pentridge's Jika Jika was taken from Edwin Eastwood's book 'Focus on Faraday and Beyond'
Published in 1992 and removed from the bookstore shelves because it contained material that could damage a current court case at the time, so quickly taken of the bookstore shelves! Get it on Ebay, It's the BEST and most honest description of what Ted and many others suffered in Pentridge's H Division and Jika Jika.
It's a must read!

The book is well written and Gives an alarming insight into the suffering of both men and women in Pentridge's notorious
Jika Jika and H Division.

Excerpt from “Human Rights and Life As an Attraction in a Correctional Theme Park,”
Journal of Prisoners on Prisons Volume 12, 2002
By Craig W. J. Minogue, Australia

I have been in prison since May 1986, and since then it has been the routine practice of prison
authorities in the Australian state of Victoria to display prisoners as one would display animals in a
zoo. In fairness to zoos, at least they try to place their captives in an environment that mimics normality
in order to reduce the humiliation and stress felt by those on display. Prisoners are on display
to groups of people who are referred to by prisoners as “tourists.” The tour groups include colleges
of technical and further education, universities, social workers, community groups like Lyons, Apex
and Rotary Clubs. Other tour groups are comprised of police and prison officers visiting from interstate
or overseas (tax write-offs), television producers and crews (making the crime shows more
realistic), and the friends and family of prison staff and sundry others.

Victoria’s main prison, Pentridge, which is now closed, was on the outskirts of the city of
Melbourne. It had a high security unit called Jika Jika and I was held there between May 1986 and
October 1987. During that time, groups of people – sometimes twenty or thirty at a time – would
come into the Accommodation Units and look at the prisoners from a Control Spine area which
separated the tour groups from the prisoners in the Day Room by two sets of barred windows.
Prison staff would point out specific prisoners to the visitors, and due to the notoriety of my case I
was subjected to this further humiliation on every occasion. The reaction of the men to these visits
was never anything other than violent indignation, and they would often behave like the inhabitants
of the primate cage at the zoo and call out for peanuts. I do not know if the irony of this behaviour
penetrated the bullet-proof glass and impacted on those who were humiliating us.

The conditions in which we were held in Jika were so bad that the other men and I barricaded
ourselves in a Unit on October 29, 1987 in a desperate protest against the psychological torture we
endured there. Shortly after the barricades were erected, one of the men on the other side of the Unit
from mine set fire to a barricade. At that time the Accommodation Units in Jika could best be
described as concrete boxes with no ventilation. Jika was a sterile, ultra-modern prison made from
preformed concrete slabs and operated by electronic devices. The prisoners referred to it as a “moon
station.” Five men died in our protest, resulting in the closure of Jika as a security unit. The then-
Minister of Corrections said: “the level of deaths in this one unit has become unacceptable.” So there
was a level of deaths that was acceptable?

“H” Division was the punishment unit in Pentridge. It was a bluestone construction built in the
1850s. I was held there from 1987 to 1990 and from 1991 to 1992, and during those periods I was
again subjected to the tour groups. But in the “H” Division environment the humiliating practice was
at its height. Prisoners in “H” Division were kept in three-by-five-metre, high-walled yards that had
buckets and open drain holes for toilets. The open drains that ran along the length of the yards were
always awash with urine.
Between the two sets of yards in “H” Division ran a covered walkway by which the prisoners entered
the yards, and above that ran a catwalk from which the staff watched the prisoners while they were in
the yards. For most of the years that I was held in “H” Division, the few proper toilets and showers
were open to the yards and could be clearly seen from the tower. The catwalk or tower, as prisoners
would call it, was also used as the viewing platform for visiting tourists. On many occasions I
observed large groups of men and women walking the length of the tower and looking at prisoners in
the yards.

The few personal possessions we were allowed in the punishment division were carried in a square
plastic bucket. We would use these buckets to have “bucket baths” in the yards when we were
refused access to the shower yards. On one occasion, another man and I were soaped up and about to
tip buckets over us when I noticed a large group of men and women watching us from the tower. I
turned to them and said: “It’s like a scene from Midnight Express isn’t it?” I said this in an attempt to
convey my thoughts that the conditions were appalling, but the group said nothing in response and
just moved off. No doubt we were seen as nothing more than some strange type of dehumanized
creatures in urine-stinking pits in the ground, undeserving of any compassion or dignity. In addition
to large groups of unidentified people visiting “H” Division, the media also visited and took
photographs and video footage of us in the yards. On one occasion I looked up to see a television
camera-person filming me and another man who were showering in open cubicles.

While I was held in Pentridge Prison’s “J” Division in 1990, 1991 and 1993, the numbers of people
who visited were in the many hundreds. “J” Division had the best living conditions in the prison
system at that time. The tenor of the visits was the same, although the visitors to “J” Division would
also go into prisoners’ cells. On one occasion I found eight people in my cell; one fellow was
running his index finger along the spines of my books and another was reading the Cell Card which
details my private property and carries my name. On this same visit I saw the Chief Prison Officer of
the Division open a cell door to show the visitors that it had a computer in it. The door was opened
from the side where it swings out and back against the wall, so the officer was the last of the group to
see a man sitting on the toilet in the cell. The toilet scene was no doubt a bonus presented by the
officer as a tour feature: ‘And this is a prisoner using the toilet.’ I read the sub-text as, ‘Look, we’ve
toilet-trained them.’ There were also media intrusions into “J” Division, with camera-people
surreptitiously filming. Prisoners in Victoria are not allowed to talk with media personnel without
permission from the prison authorities, which is never given. In some Australian States, Queensland
for instance, journalists are jailed if they interview prisoners without permission.