Visited Mount Eden Men’s Prison on Wednesday 23rd August 2000. My contact was █████ ██████ who put me in the capable hands of ████ ████(?) a screw.
SIDE A.
-What do you want Boss?
-Now there may be a point during the day where we’ll have to stop for half an hour while they feed inmates and business.
- Came from an east block cleaners cell, he was a cleaner this morning, but he ain’t a cleaner anymore. (Tap head in sock).
- We are a quality institution here (followed by laughs).
North extension to remand.
- Better than the usual sight, blind wall, what we call association cells, when people first come in they’ll be processed by the duty officers, held in here for rmand, before being placed in cells.
- Only in the last few days that they’ve been redone, plaster was going all soft.
-This guys been on remand for a few, so he’s built up a few personal things (inside cell).
-I’ve been working here about eighteen and a half years.
-The North block, again, mainstream remand (through the bars?).
-They have double doors, so if both in observation and the door opens…….?
-That’s a clean cell.
-Ay, they’ve just been in association.
-See this used to be- stand here open the grill- central guard office.
-This level first, this area is south wing, combination mainstream, remand and sentenced- a mixture.
-I’ve got a copy of that, that’s that fella Lindauer.
-Chapel. These are all done by on inmate.
-Empty cell, pretty bare.
-Segregation wing- protection.
-You know we’re camera shy in here (screw).
-Segregation (all white w/covered table).
-Exercise yard- segregation EY- west.
-Hey Mista? Da photographas getting paid?
-This is just an old part of segrgation.
-Those windows are the chapel.
-Houses 421, used to have over 500.
-Round room.
-Normally all they have is a sort of mattress, double stitched gown and double stitched blanket, that’s all they have.
-Then we got two in the special unit, they’re all heat conditioned, armour controlled.
-Hold jacket up.
-Medical area, used to be TB ward.
-Yeah, gets a bit of sun.
-Go back over there, I thought you’d gone down the line, go back, go back.
-Yeeha yeeeha, can I get a copy? Choice wooohoo, yeah, in the paper?
-Waste isn’t it? They think they’re so……
-Whole yard (slow jive accapella playing).
-Whats he doing Mista?
-Take a photo of us, I got a tag on my arm.
-Aygo away.
-Are you a tagger? Take a photo of the one on the backboard.
-They’re the cheekiest. They’re still evil little bastards, real evil and they’ve got no comprehension. For them, watching violent videos, there’s no pain in it, they see people getting wasted, blasted but there’s no pain involved and they seem to think it’s the same. And they want to kill somebody and they can’t comprehend they’re gonna spend the next twelve years, fifteen years in jail- they can’t see that far, they just can’t see it.
-And we’ve just got one, the last boy that just came through. He was a big boy over here….. put in his place.
-Shoes.
-This was the pound, the original place where they waited.
-Death watch. There was two officers, twelve hour shifts, seven days they kept watch cos he wasn’t allowed to cheat the old hangman.
-Once you come through here, now that used to be the hanging yard. And then through here the -body’s were washed.
-Light work aye.
-My things on the wall. Heh heh .
-Show off y’tats there.
-Hey when will youse develop the photos? When you run out of film aye? I’ll be waiting for my photos for -a long time, I’ll probably be even gone home.
-Swap me some photos, I’ll give you some paragraphs for your book.
-It’ll be nine and a half years since I finished my lag.
-My Whare Nui.
-That way through the kitchen, get all the boots.
-Hey mate, take my picture with that there officer.
-Do you guys wanna be photo’ed?
-Take a photo of me boss. My girlfriend wants photos of me.
-He’s gonna come and charge us for it.
-That’s why a lot of them get caught, they can’t help themselves…. All for the cameras.
-This is where everyone comes through.
-Tim rubert ? Irene gardiner?
-Are they cleared down in receiving for a…..?
-One way in One way out.
-Full non-contact. You speak through, speak through telephones.
-Hive of industry.
-They all locked down Ronnie?
-We just gonna go in the yards and take some photos.
SIDE B.
-█████ ████ has got out of here. One concrete had a join, he cut through that with diamond wire and pushed the concrete up.
-Fancies himself as a bit of a fucken Maori man.
-Take a picture of here bro, hes been in the longest time.
-Big rats mate, big ones the size of cats.
-That’s where we spend most of the day, when you’re not here.
-Are you with the herald mate? Bit of propaganda.
-These guys have a pisspot down here.
-Give us an empty one ██████, number eight.
-Get your face out of those chips.
-Take him through the bars there, that’d be a good shot. Star of the small screen- the only star of the small screen you’d be in ██████ would be the security video in a parlour.
-Ablution Heh heh heh.
-This is it here, Maximum Security area, guys get sent down for punishment. We had a guy down here once for four months, in a cell through there, and he didn’t know there was anyone there. What we do is keep them all shut off.
-Big part ofit. The murder that happened here, the police gave him a new identity, went to australia, new identity, everything else and he commited a very serious rape over there and he’s inside under his new identity.
-We’ll go out into remand yards.
-I’ve seen a lot, a lot of changes. Seen some of the country’s most famous people come through here
-Just along here is where the so-called headstones were of maori bodies. They lifted some maori chief who was supposed to be wrongly hung for murdering the governor, some missionary bloke. They had these square things with a letter on them… next to a bowling green along here and they changed all this about fifteen years ago. They had a big ceremony in the middle of the night and took all the, what was remains. Cos what they did was, when people were hung they were buried standing up, like the bodies were never laid to rest. Thrown in, in body bags and quick lime was thrown over them to help them to rot. So, no white person ever got to see what happened, I was on the night shift when they supposedly did all this and I remember at six o’clock in the morning they had nothing, they thought they’d found something- they didn’t come in till after midnight. Sothey had this big bloody ceremony, went on for hours and hours and hours, then they started digging, and at six o’clock they thought they might have found something. I hopped in my car at eight o’clock, to go home, and it was on the news, they had it itemised, on the news, on the eight o’clock news in the morning. Everything they’d found, all the bodies and everything else.
-I said to the General manager I told him, someones going to get over that wall, theres no barbed wire on it then. Someones going to get up there and sure enough in a couple of weeks he was over. Run along the roof jumped off.
-Soap.
-Prodigy playing in yard.
-Theres no lock on the inside.
-Look at this! (moon)
-Gonna get one for mum?
-We got room here aye?
-What you want for your camera Bud? The camera, what you want? Hey, how bout a coupla smokes?
-Look mean.
-Just another face in the crowd (moon).