Rewards of a serial killer

I was recently asked about Australia’s attitude to the death penalty - Beheadings and other curiosities. We no longer practice that barbaric penalty, preferring to simply lock serious offenders away in a quiet corner.

Now that approach can be relatively satisfying, considering the constraints of maximum security prisons and the potential for the prisoner to be reminded every minute of their being that society does not want them.

It is even possible to hope that after a time they really start to suffer the mind twisting and emotional lurches which visit upon the caged. It should be a fairly barbaric punishment in itself.

Unless, like the NSW prison system, which decided it would reward these long termers when it was “judged he were no longer likely to attempt to kill himself, or to escape.”

Take our notorious serial killer Ivan Milat. He’s serving a life sentence in Goulburn's Supermax high-security prison for the murder of seven backpackers between 1989 and 1992.

Ivan was also a notorious razor blade swallower and general self mutilator as well. He’s a reformed character now, a model prisoner, so they give him a sandwich toaster and a television as part of Corrective Services' privilege and punishment system.

Funnily enough the families of his victims thought that was a bit crook; the bastard is there to be punished, not to live the life of riley!

So the good law ‘n order government of NSW says, “Right you are then, this just isn’t good enough. Take those things away from him immediately,” always ready to take action after the fact.

But I will bet you London to a brick that, if they fancy goods are removed from his cell, if I stress, they will soon be put back and no more said.

The prison system just wants peace, and will play it there own way. And who is going to find out anyway, it is after all a ‘Supermax high-security prison’.