He said that they're hiring if you're interested in doing it, and I kind of laughed straight away.
I thought, there's no way I could work in a prison. It's one of those things.
Once you put on that uniform, your whole persona and your attitude changes, right, and it becomes Yeah. My wife would often say, and I do talk about this and reference it in the book as well. Once I put that uniform on, it was very much a case of don't fuck with me.
I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and Crimes. Last week we spoke to serving prison officer, a man who calls himself Bruce McLeod, not his real name. He uses that name to write a book about his experiences. He told us about the death of a friend of his who's also a prison officer, a death that arose indirectly because of his work in prisons. And this week we're going to hear the second half of the long and grueling story that he told us. Hello to you again, Bruce,
Thank you, Andrew. Now you're a man in your you know you're in middle age.
I turned sixty next year, right.
You took this on more than twenty years ago, so you'd been around for a farewell. Before you took up being a prison officer, what trajectory took you to working in prisons rather than, you know, some other public service job or whatever.
I basically spent ten years in the computers industry, sales and purchasing and that for a computer company down in Geelong, did you I was also doing martial arts at the time, and I actually.
Had which one which martial arts?
So Mackay, which was a freestyle martial arts incorporated lots in different styles. So at the time, my instructor basically came and spoke to me one day and he worked at the prison, and he said, they're hiring if you're interested in doing it. And I kind of laughed straight away, thought there's no way I could work.
In a prison.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he's not someone to say something like that.
If he thought to him, what made you take it on? I mean, they're often going to need officers because it's a tough job and there's a nutrition rate, you know. I have to say, in you know, many decades of doing what I do, I've met a lot of prison officers and I very rarely met happy ones. Or ones who don't find it a stress or austrain at some level. Often they're not happy about their employers. I have to say, there's been a lot of a lot of unhappiness, not not in your case, but in others.
Yeah, yeah, that can happen, but it's it's one of those things. Once you put on that uniform, your whole persona and your attitude changes and it becomes Yeah. My wife would often say, and I do talk about this and reference it in the book as well. Once I put that uniform on, it was very much a case of don't.
With me right okay, and.
Coming home it was always that's the first thing that's got to come off that uniform and yeah basically yeah, and then sort of coming back to that home life. And it's very difficult and sometimes to be able to separate those two things because of the weight.
That you carry.
I remember prison offices years ago that were the Penridge. They telling me that they did long shifts, twelve hour shifts and seven day shifts and sundays all this stuff because the sisters are available and they needed the money to pay their mortgage. You know, they did it because it was there and they realized that it trapped them, they said, because they realized that, you know, you knock off, you go home, you eat something, you go to bed, you get up, you go back to jail. They said,
they end up serving life sentences. It's basically every every almost every waking hour. Yeah, where they've traded their freedom for money. Yeah, and not a lot of money, but money. Yeah, and they realized they were doing the life sentences some of them.
Yeah, it's it's funny.
I've been Melbourne Assessment Prison where it's an assessment location. Anyone that's held in remand or sentence, that's the first place that they will go to. So I've seen them from there. I've seen them from from bar and prison when they're actually being released. Yes, So I've seen the whole system, through the courts and everything. You've done a lot, yeah, yeah, and I've worked all different types of units, Mainstream Protection Management, AARU,
the qute assessment a MAP as well. Yeah, where you're dealing with prisoners, you know, schizophrenic around and a lot of mental health issues.
Do you feel that you're good at it because you have a mixture of humane attitude and sort of a gentle approach, but also you've done martial arts, so you're confident that you could handle situations or.
Yeah, probably seventy percent of or probably even maybe a little bit higher, but seventy percent of what we really do is about communication, being able to talk to people and that. And you again, you're talking to people from all different backgrounds, all different socioeconomic you know, lifestyles and that.
But it's also important to understand and I guess you don't want to read everything that they've done in the past, because you know, starting to read every single crime and that will play with you your own head, no idea, but understanding that they're there for a reason. They're there because they've committed crimes. The court system, the justice system is basically holding them for an account and we're just sant to be there to provide some sort of duty
of care. And that's not the same as caring for them, but basically managing them and just simply trying to provide a system where you know they're going to be comfortable inside. From that point of view, they've got access to a number of different programs and things and all that. As far as the rehabilitation side of.
It, have you seen that work on.
A few occasions. On a few occasions, I've told prisoners in the past, I'll see you again real soon. We'll keep a bed warm for you.
Okay, so you can pick you can pick the sheep from pretty quickly.
I had one who lasted fifteen minutes.
No tell me about that.
He got released from Melbourne Assessment Prison. So he was basically released onto a drug program, drug rehabilitation sort of a drug house and that.
For afterwards, and he read this paper.
He basically got picked up by Corrections Community Service officers. Basically left Melbourne Assessment Prison, drove down the road, said that he wanted to stop and get some money out of an ATM, so they pulled over. He jumped out, got the money out of the ATM and bolted ran into the Melbourne CBD, ran around the corner and ran straight into the police. He then held him. So I think, yeah, it was about fifteen minutes that he lasted.
That was very funny.
Yeah, it was on a believe it was on a Friday. By Monday he was back at.
He must have had that look when the police arrest me, I'm a crook or something.
Pretty much.
Yeah, he was obviously massive history as far as drugs. So he was very much a drug seeker as far as the in the system, and that was obviously his downfall as far as when he got out.
And do you feel that if you had to make a generalization about prisoners, that drugs are a common denominator with most or many of them. Yeah.
Yeah, drug and alcohol programs so generally the probably the most access programs within a prison system.
And you think both those you know, those were drugs, as alcohol is a drug, that they're the most they're the biggest drivers of criminal behavior and offense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Again, I talk about it in the book that the only time that you ever see them them upset and and you know, coming across prisoners that are basically sitting in the cell crying, and that is because they don't feel sorry for their victims. They're sorry because they got caught. They're sorry because they're actually locked up and missing their own.
Families, sorry for themselves.
Yeah yeah, And at that stage it's.
It doesn't run into a lot of remorse inside.
No, No, well, they they'll all tell you the same story that they're innocent.
Someone else set them.
Up, someone else set them up. You mentioned a word which I often think of when I deal with crooks or write about crooks, and that is narcissism. That if there's a word that unifies most crooks, not everyone, it's narcissism, but the center of their own universe and they don't care about anybody else, like a spoilt kid. Spoil kid.
Yeah, there's one particular one that I did reference in the book that he saw drug trafficing as a profession, like you and I going out to work or something like that. He saw the actual drug trafficking as a profession as a way of providing for his family. He didn't see it as anything other than that. So it was very much a case of talking to him about
some of this. He would then describe things like, you know, stealing money from from his own kids birthday cards or Christmas card as a way of funding habits and things like that. So I deliberately, throughout the book changed a lot of references and that to prisoners or places or dates or anything like that to avoid that because prisoners have the perception that once you start talking about something,
they believe everything's about them. You're talking or making references about them, So it's trying to basically avoid that.
It's interesting.
But there's a lot.
In the in the book as far as the prison life and separating home life, how I met Brian and the way I described it, you know, the screw dog maggot, It's exactly how it happened, and that's in the book. To the point where I was assaulted at MAP, that's in the book. There's a lot of things like that that I experienced that's in there as well.
If you'd been unlucky, because we're going all have good luck, bad luck, or something in between, you could have been assaulted in a way that when did you unfit to work, you could have got a payout that you had to invest some with. But this is this is the sort of thing that can happen. Absolutely when you you get paid out, you can't really function the way you used to.
You need to use the money you've got, even though it seems like a lot, you actually need to invest it in some way that it keeps bringing in an income for decades possibly, you know, if you're going to stay alive. It puts a big pressure on people and a big strain they're going to some of them are going to, you know, throw the bullet the stumps and go for something that pays in geelong terms. They're going
to invest it with Pyramid, not the Conrolt Bank. They're going to go for something that pays better and that's risky and that can go wrong. Is that right?
Absolutely?
For twenty plus years, I've known a lot of officers that have been injured and never worked again. Yes, and it's absolutely devastating. Culturally, it's not that common that there's
officers that get assaulted. That part, I guess around the state can be can be quite common, and there's certainly head office with corrections are trying to look at strategies in the ways of being able to reduce those assaults as far as staff being permanently injured, whether they're not working again, or they may have to look at, you know, other types of employment away from corrections that can happen.
It's not that common, but it is something that does happen and does occur, and some of those people that have been affected by their assaults, it's absolutely horrific. They've got lifelong injuries and mental health to deal with.
Mental health. Now that's the other thing about your job and police and soldiers, we notice this the mental scars run deep with many people and hugely common. I mean there's so many defense personnel suicide and police forces maybe not as deep affected as a defence forces, but it's certainly it's certainly affected. And you're your business is the same. Yeah, because you and why is that? Tell me what you think you're dealing with? You're always got to be on guards. So vigilance, Yeah, that gets.
To you, it does.
I've been diagnosed with PTSD myself, right, and that's through a couple of assaults that I've experienced. But working in the in the job as well, we we do become very hyper vigilant. We see threats everywhere, and that's not just inside the prison. You could be walking down the street. You're constantly looking around for threats from anywhere. And if you're with your family and then suddenly the way you react and grab someone or you know, and they look
at you kind of strange. But once you're a prison officer, that feels almost reactionary to you as a way of safeguarding the ones that you care about. You don't care care about your own safety, it's others that you're basically looking to protect. And I think also yeah, I think. Also, yeah, I think also coming back to something I mentioned earlier, the fact that because you can't talk to family or other people around the job and what it is that
you do see experience, you tend to feel isolated. Unless you were actually talking to other officers that understand the role that you do, you tend to feel isolated. You tend to feel how can I tell someone you know what I did today, you know about this incident, and that you try and avoid those things. You walk through the door, How is your day to day?
You're good?
What can you really say?
Yeah, it's difficult.
And then from that point of view, I think a lot of officers really feel that the strain you tend to hang around with.
Obviously other to understand who understand? I presume there's really any good news you know that they can't occasionally, but not much.
No.
No.
I have delivered good news in the past to prisoners working in the in the control room, prisoner's partner, wife, girlfriend, whoever, has a baby, and once we inform the security supervisor on shift at night, they might say, yeah, look, give them the message, give them the good news, and you tell them down no, no, no, just through an intercomps calling him up in the cell.
And the reaction to that. Can you remember doing that with.
Yeah, yeah, a few times. They're absolutely thrilled. They can't believe it, and you try and give them a few details about the baby being born, wait, sex, that sort of thing, and they're so thankful, thank you boss. So you're thank you. That's that's great news. Thank you very much, and really appreciate it.
And do they remember that, you know, a week later.
No, no, and they probably don't remember. Yeah, probably don't remember who actually told them that. But yeah, look, there are a few occasions where you do have some some moments, those small moments where it is just nice to work there.
Have you ever met a prisoner that you genuinely liked as a person.
Yeah, I've met a few.
One.
He was actually and this has gone back, that's twenty twenty three years ago. He actually helped out the maintenance workers quite a bit, as like a plumber's mate. He would actually help them and that yeah, yeah, very good with the tools. Obviously you had to watch him like a hawk around those tools. But he was someone that you could generally say, he'll make a go of it when he's released.
What sort of thing was he in for.
I couldn't tell you. I really just didn't want to know.
Okay, yeah, there were a few. Have you been a trade do you think?
Yeah, he sort of had that background and I think he wanted to sort of do a bit more with it. But there's other prisoners that I did need to know what their background was, because you know, I've dealt with murderers and killers and serial killers and gangland and you know, convicted terrorist suspects and that as well, So a whole range, a whole gambit of I'm going to persons.
A rude question that you shouldn't be asked, but I'll do it because of the listeners will want to know. Yeah, you know, we last twenty five years, we've heard a lot of Ganglan wars and GANGLN figures have become well known and so on, and many of them did end up in Barwin Port. Philip, did you have you had much to do with some of those characters that were.
A little bit along the way.
Yeah, yeah, we all knew and yeah loved all love.
Yeah, there was one who was released not that long ago.
Oh right, yeah, the s CSG.
And it was funny I told this is a bit of a fun fact to family that I was the last one to see Lee Barwin and wave goodbye to him. There was news choppers flying above the prison and they basically took him out on the way to court where he was then released. But I was, yeah, I was in the sally Port at the time.
And strikes me we're talking about him, about Tony Mockbell. Strikes me as a fellow that most people who know him find him to be. You know, he's a businessman. He's a crooked businessman. He's a guy that likes to sell drugs to make money rather than you know, like what's the running around murdering people for kicks. His idea was to be as you said, you run into them. They think it's just a way to make business, make money to their families. And that was him him, and he's.
Look, there's been quite a few over the years, some certainly some well known characters and that, and yeah.
It's hard some of them.
And you know, having dealt with some of them, you've got to be very very careful on your toes all the time and that so you get to know them, they get to know you. People would often say, well you know. How much do you actually tell them about yourself? I would often say, you know, look I live in Geelong and that's it. I don't have to specify exactly where, you know, but if they knew that I barracked for football club, who cares?
What are they going to do with that information?
But I would often come in and say to them after a weekend if Essendon lost, I said, anyone mentioned it, I'm going.
To lock you up early.
As a way of just having a joke with them. These days, twenty years ago you could do that. These days probably not so much. You generally find now with new staff it's a lot harder for them to build up the rapport that you have with prisoners.
Do you find that the different ethnic groups, different language groups, et cetera, et cetera. We now have a country, at least in the big cities where half the people walking around their parents were born elsewhere, and that they are for a lot of people, English is a second language.
Is that fact reflected in the jail population now? That the Essendon joke that was a good joke twenty years ago is not quite as good these days when you're dealing with Peo blues, idea of sports might be soccer or kickboxing.
Yeah, well again that probably also depends on which unit you actually walk into. Of course, there are some units where you do actually have a lot of the older heads, the older prisoners, so that joke would probably work with.
Them, not so much with another unit.
The young Middle East and not on.
Yeah, you've got a lot of young offenders coming through the system these days, and that's very hard then making any type of connection with them.
You know, the the middle aged Anglo like you and me hasn't got a lot in common with a twenty three year old Middle Eastern kid or island killer or whatever.
It's all different background background.
Yeah, you haven't really got a common experience.
But no, I always liked if I was running the unit, always liked having some of the Asian prisoners as billets and they would like trusted workers within the actual unit to do cleaning and other jobs, and that staying because they would cook the most amazing meals and the whole unit would smell absolutely amazing.
Really, Yeah, they were great.
Other units you had older prisoners that may have that sort of gang laan background, right, They used to cook all of pasta and pizza, knights and it would smell absolutely amazing.
Yeah.
But I again, I've worked with officers from all different backgrounds, from a lot of those different countries as well, and I always found the one the one rule that I would always use as far as initiating a conversation and getting to know people, and that was food.
Food.
We always jail, we all basically eat.
We all then would start conversations off about food and things like that. And it was also a way of you know, getting prisoners to open up really in regards to they would have to order meals and that through the kitchen, so you'd be talking to them about what meals you like and what are you ordering this week and things like that as well.
Common ground.
Yeah, it was just something that just finding that regardless of the background, regardless of where you came from, all your crime, it was something because we could all relate to.
In jail where you haven't got a lot else to occupy yourself, food becomes quite an important item. Yeah, your next meal matters. It's quite a lot.
I've seen fights break out over desserts in regards to what were they. I think it was a little bit of cake, custard and jelly hit of cream on top, but the kitchen the prisoners at the time basically put that aside. Someone went to a fridge to get theirs out and accused another prisoner of taking all that And it was just that that little spark that's that created an absolute assault and that's where you then have three or four prisoners jump jump in and yeah, history.
Itself becomes massive. The famous prison wars at Pintridge in the bad old days in the drop of Red Hera was what they called the Great Sausage War, where, yeah, it was alleged that certain people had stolen the Christmas sausages and the other prisons weren't happy and they had a war inside that went on for months and a lot of people were badly injured.
Yeah, you still have to this day. You still have kitchen workers that will try and smuggle meat, cheese, anything they can out of the kitchen down there, down down pants or anywhere that they can hide it and try and sneak it back to units. Really, and it's not always for them, it's for others that they will basically try and do things like that as far as food and things like that, something that they might not have readily accessible to. They will try and smuggle things around
like that. Yeah, it happens quite often, and there'll be a little email that will come out the next day that so and so got caught and obviously they've been sacked from that position.
And just to let the rest of the prison know.
To be a cook or to work in the kitchen is quite a good privilege, is it not.
Yeah, yeah, it is a good position because obviously you've got a lot then to occupy yourself. The worst thing inside is that you've got time and times against you in the in that you're doing your sentence. But every day you need something to occupy.
Yourself interesting inside into the human condition. Isn't it that you need that in jail? The best thing is to do something because it makes the time past. Yeah, that's a lesson for all of us.
Yeah, so it is.
And again referencing back to the book as well, the grief that I had afterwards, Grief is not something that you feel. Grief is is a place and that's where once you deal with it. Once you approach that, you deal with it, they often will say you can move on, and that's moving on from that place of grief.
That's really the motivation for you to write it was what books Brian's story. Brian's Story written by Bruce McLeod. You're correct.
It's available on Amazon. I am working with a company in Melbourne called Melbourne Audiobook Productions in trying to do the audiobook. The whole process of doing this was simple getting Brian's story out there. And I think we spoke earlier in regards to the fact that we all have stories, we all experience life, and for some of us we do experience crime. And I think it's important that it was for me telling the story because to me, Brian madded.
This episode of Life and Crimes is dedicated to the memory of your friend Brian. Just Brian, Yeah, Brian, no surname, no, just Brian. Brian.
He was my mate and I just you know, talking about him is a way of honoring him, is a way of honoring his memory and who he was. That was the first thing that he would basically say to people, just call me Brian, just.
Call me Brian. Yeah, but don't call me a screw maggot.
No, no, don't call me that.
Thank you, Bruce McLeod, real name something else. Your book justifying the means is out there in the world. Thanks for coming to talk to us at Life and Crimes.
Thank you, Andrew, I really appreciate it.
Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description. M