Jingle all the way … to jail

You know how jail is like a holiday in Surfer’s Paradise, with luxury balconies and palm trees and summer breezes and cordial with ice in it? Well, get ready to be outraged, because it’s even more five-star at Christmas.

I’m surprised anyone ever wants to leave.

I mean, you wake on Christmas Day on your plastic-covered mattress in your “palatial” shared cell. You’re let out just before 9am. You fight your way to the phone to call your loved ones before the line is closed at 11.30am. You’re locked into your cell again at 1pm. No visitors, no Christmas lunch, no freedom.

It’s a blast.

You don’t even receive a Christmas gift from me because the jail has changed the rules about acceptable sleep attire. Instead of being “cotton with 3/4 length pants and a patterned t-shirt top. No lace, no shorts, no singlet tops” like I was told last visit, buttons are now required. So there goes the $45 buttonless pair I bought, into a prisoner’s personal possessions box for the next 16 years (worst case scenario). They’ll be even more delightfully retro then, with their Tweety Bird design.

I wasn’t feeling very festive about visiting Kathleen Folbigg in prison yesterday. It made me even cheerier when the officer processing my form said “you sure you want to go and visit her?” I stared at him for a long 30 seconds before realising he was trying to make light of me visiting a prison on such a nice day. He trotted out the same joke on a bloke in the queue – which reassured me it wasn’t something against Kathy – and got the same long, blank stare.

Some people have no sense of humour.

I sat nervously in the waiting room, knowing that once inside I’d have to relive the horror of the past few weeks – which have been hideous for Kathy and a little yuck for me. Fortunately Kathy has come out the other side of her depression and chosen to battle on with life behind bars, albeit more cautiously.

And, yes, much of the visit was spent discussing why her fellow prisoners had betrayed her. What sort of women they were. Their motivations. How much money they’re rumoured to have pocketed. What they would have spent it on. What they did to land themselves behind bars. What their lives might be like if they return to jail. None of it was very pretty.

As I was leaving, I hugged her and said: “Merry Christmas doesn’t feel like a very appropriate thing to say”.

So I just told her to be strong and that I would be back soon.

Walking back to my car, I looked at the palm trees her betrayer had accused her of enjoying, lined up beside the razor wire. They didn’t remind me of Surfer’s Paradise very much. Kathy told me she’s never even seen one during her time at the jail, she didn’t realise there were any. I think she’s better off without them – they’re full of those nasty ibis birds, squawking away (see Jail Birds for more bile).

God I hate visiting that place. I’m with the ex-prison officer who wrote to me and said: “I worked at MRRC for 3 years and was constantly having to tell people that it was no resort and that being deprived of your liberty even for only the day as I was was a huge punishment.”

I was only there for a few hours and it felt like the misery might suffocate me as I drove home.