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Katiana Shaw knows what some people think about the Sydney jail she has worked in for nearly a decade. “There can be a view within the system that this is the Club Med of prisons,” she reluctantly concedes.
But Shaw, a senior psychologist who has seen some of the best and worst of humanity at the little-known Compulsory Drug Treatment Correctional Centre, says those who end up behind bars here soon discover the truth. “Within about two weeks, many are saying ‘please let me go, this is the hardest jail I have ever been in’.”
The 70-bed Parklea facility – the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere – prides itself on doing things differently. Operational for 20 years this September, the male-only prison is designed to smash the cycle of recidivism by pushing offenders – whether they like it or not – to confront and conquer the crippling drug addictions that drove their criminal behaviour.
Called “participants” and not inmates, the men have their own rooms and are only locked in to red-brick accommodation wings during the night. Many walk out of the gates each day for hours on end, despite technically not being eligible for parole (more on that later). They have access to shared laundries and kitchens. The set-up is basic, but much more palatable than Silverwater and Long Bay – hence the ‘Club Med’ derision.
Eligibility requires an 18-month to six-year sentence, although participants can’t be convicted of a serious charge like murder, sexual assault or use of a firearm. The Drug Court must also verify a direct link between long-term substance abuse and offending, alongside their treatment history, violence record and willingness to participate.
The minimum 18-month program is split into three six-month stages. The further they progress, the further they reintegrate into society. Each stage offers serious opportunities to resume a normal life – and throws up massive hurdles to clear. Every stage requires mandatory urine testing three times a week to keep them honest and detect any regression early.
In stage one, participants are in full-time custody for six months and spend much of their time in mandatory treatment programs. Some arrive in the middle of full-blown addictions, so the withdrawal and recovery process can be agonising for everyone involved.
“It’s hard for them, it’s hard for the people who care about them to watch that, and it’s also hard for us from a professional’s point of view,” Shaw says. “For a lot of them, drugs are the only way they’ve ever learnt to cope. It’s their maladaptive coping mechanism.”
Nearly two-thirds of prison entrants across Australia used serious drugs in the prior year. Despite attempts to block contraband, the truth is an inmate’s addiction can often be partly sustained at many standard prisons, particularly lower security ones. But at the Parklea specialist unit, the first six months are designed to eliminate any potential contact with drugs. Visits in stage one are strictly no contact, meaning they can see their family and friends, but only behind glass walls. The facility once went a full year without any drugs being detected, although at other times drug paraphernalia like an ice pipe and syringes have been discovered.
When drugs are found, everyone pays a price. For example, a weekly barbecue is cancelled for all participants, not just the person responsible. “If you break into someone’s house, the elderly lady down the road buys an alarm system because she’s so scared,” Shaw says she tells the men. “That’s not in your court papers, no one has told you about it, but that was the ripple effect of what you did. So cancelling something like the barbecue is them seeing the ripple effects of their behaviour in real time.”
Therapy is held in groups of up to eight and one-on-one with experts, in which a participant’s criminal offending and drug addictions are discussed in excruciating detail.
When the Herald visited ahead of National Corrections Day on Friday, a group session heard the stories of how and why some men offended, and what they are doing to kick drugs and violence. Handwritten wall posters list the agreed therapy rules: the importance of confidentiality (there is a reference to the ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ maxim), honesty, respect and never using “the C-word”.
In the second stage, participants sleep at the prison but are allowed out during the day for approved work and training. Ankle bracelets track whether they have gone where they said they would, or strayed into exclusion zones. The section of the facility dedicated to stage-two inmates is deliberately less homely than stage one so that participants don’t get too used to the environment and want to keep striving for something much better on the outside. They also get copies of nearly all reports written about them, as a gesture of trust and transparency.
“You get a lot of job satisfaction out of knowing that you’re trying to help somebody that actually wants the help and who doesn’t want to try to kill you every second,” says Joshua Watson, a first-class correctional officer who before joining Corrective Services NSW was a member of the Army Reserves.
The third stage sees the participants living in the community full-time, but still under the ultimate control and supervision of the prison and the Drug Court.
The compulsory element of the program is twofold: while a prisoner may have no choice but to be part of the program, the Crown also gets no say on whether the Drug Court approves the offender for admission. That means some participants are out and about in the community on stages two and three during what would otherwise be their non-parole period.
There have been stunning success stories. Some have gone on to rekindle broken relationships, start successful new ones, find employment and even open their own businesses.
“I was heavily on drugs since a very young age, in and out of jail and always committing crime,” says Luke, a former inmate who asked for his real name not to be published. “Sometimes I’d get out and it was only eight weeks before I was back [in prison], and this went on for 10 to 15 years.”
Luke admits he went to the Parklea centre thinking it would be easy and not make any difference, but something clicked in therapy sessions when he realised “Oh, shit. I’m actually learning stuff about myself.”
Stages two and three – where the participants spend time outside the prison – arguably present the greatest risk of setbacks. Drug use, gambling, contraband and criminal reoffending must be resisted, or the participant may go back into earlier stages of the program.
Luke slipped up in stage two, went back to stage one, and finished all three stages in late 2024. “I haven’t used, and haven’t thought about using,” he tells the Herald. He is now preparing to open his own food business.
The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research will release data on the centre’s impact on recidivism next month, but its executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said early results indicate a “significant reduction in post-release drug offending”.
Shaw says the Club Med jibe doesn’t capture the very human challenges of this sort of program compared to a full-time custodial sentence. Of those who think Parklea is too cruisy, too touchy-feely, she has a message: “I say to those people, what kind of individual would you like rejoining your community? Would you like one who’s been in custody and using drugs the whole way through?
“Or would you like someone rejoining your community who has a job, who has reestablished relationships with their family, who has entered the private rental market, who can look after themselves and has remorse for what they’ve done? Because generally, very few inmates in Australia are held without parole.
“Nearly all of them get out and eventually will rejoin your community.”
More than 10,000 Corrective Services staff oversee some 14,000 inmates within the state’s 36 prisons and supervise about 35,000 people serving community-based orders. The sprawling prison near the drug facility, the Parklea Correctional Centre, will come back under public ownership by October.
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