In 2013 Corrective Services, along with the New South Wales government, announced that a nine-month trial of this jamming technology, which has been successfully introduced overseas, would go ahead at Lithgow Jail, where 239 mobile phones had been seized from inmates that year.
There were a few obstacles: the trial had to be approved by the Australian Communications and Media Authority since it is an offence to operate, possess or supply jamming equipment. And it would cost an estimated $1.06 million.
Minister for Justice Greg Smith endorsed the Australian-first trial that would run in Lithgow Jail beginning September 2013, saying, ‘Mobile phones pose a threat to the security of correctional centres and community safety, as they are often used to facilitate crime outside prison walls.’
The trial was extended by an extra three months, and the year-long Lithgow experiment finished in late 2014. Corrective Services have prepared a report to be examined by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The use of this technology to stop this serious problem seems to be a no-brainer, but there are concerns to quell and hurdles to jump.
A full rollout of the technology across Australian prisons will need approval from the major telecommunications companies like Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. There are concerns that the antennas may block mobile phone signals not only in the jail but in areas close by.
Officers are crossing their fingers.
‘The only solution to this problem is phone blocking,’ said one Goulburn warder. ‘They have to do it, and I am sure they will do it. But it could be a while. They don’t quite have the technology right at the moment to narrow the area it will affect. There are houses right near Goulburn Jail, and there are genuine concerns that their phone reception will be affected. There were a few issues with the Lithgow trial, but hopefully those issues will be resolved because this will fix a very serious problem.’
The Department of Corrective Services was reluctant to speak about the trial when approached for this book.
And maybe this is why …
‘The technology does not work,’ said another officer. ‘We seized over 30 phones from Lithgow during the jamming period. They are still smuggling them in and they are still using them because they can still make calls. They have walked around the jail with their phones and worked out where they can get a signal and where they can’t get a signal. Some of them get signals right at the back of their cells, and they all get a signal out in the yard at the back of the basketball court. It has all been kept hush-hush because the department has spent a lot of money on it and it doesn’t work. The problem can’t be solved with the technology they have trialled. It’s like most things … The inmates eventually find a way around it because they have nothing but time on their hands to find a way to beat whatever is put in place.’
The Stone Age
Before mobiles, the Jurassic landline was the major problem in prisons. An escape at Goulburn Jail in 1996 was believed to have been organised, in part, by the use of a landline available to prisoners. Others had ordered hits and intimidated witnesses on the phone. In the wake of the escape by notorious drug dealer George Savvas, the New South Wales government introduced a new telephone system to prevent ‘call crime’.
Called the ‘Controlled Telephone System’, inmates were only allowed to phone six preselected numbers. Calls were monitored by security staff and limited to six minutes; a pre-recorded message alerted the receiving party where the call was originating from, along with the caller’s identity.
‘This is a big improvement on the old system,’ said former Corrective Services minister Bob Debus. ‘Before, inmates could make calls to unlimited numbers from normal public pay phones, with the only control the random possibility of their calls being monitored. The inmates were given a pin number and charged 40 cents for the call: the amount withdrawn from a phone card. But all that is useless when you have the internet …’
Status Busted
The inmate checked his hair. Sweet. And then the light. Sweet.
He turned to face the camera and framed his shot.
Prison greens? Check. Cell bars? Check. Handsome inmate? Check.
He pressed his thumb against the screen.
Click.
Jesse Sbrugnera, a small-time crook, smiled at his selfie – the first to ever be taken in prison.
Yeah, sweet, he thought.
But Sbrugnera wasn’t finished. He wanted to create more history by becoming the first inmate to ever update his social media status from inside prison walls.
Knock. Knock.
‘Cell search,’ the guard yelled. ‘We’re coming in.’
Sbrugnera was no longer smiling. Maybe posting that picture wasn’t such a good idea after all?
‘We have reason to believe you are hiding contraband,’ the guard said. ‘We believe you have a smart phone somewhere in this cell.’
Yep. Not a good idea at all.
Sbrugnera is not what you would call a criminal mastermind. He was first sentenced to four years in jail for robbery. On 25 February 2009, he’d stolen $300 from a girl opening the Subway fast food restaurant in Lee Wharf, Newcastle, before going to a nearby Aldi supermarket and taking $100 from a cashier, punching him in the face afterwards. He then went to a pub, where he was found shoving the cash into a poker machine.
‘We went in the day after the [selfie] post,’ recalled an officer. ‘We turned his cell upside down, and of course we found the phone. Intelligence officers picked up his photo almost as soon as it was uploaded. To think you could take a picture of yourself from within your cell and then post it from within your cell and not get busted is absolutely stupid.’
8
ESCAPE
Malibu and Pineapple
Is she looking at me? thought the off-duty guard, schooner in one hand, TAB ticket in the other. Nup. I couldn’t be that lucky.
He took a swig of his sixth beer, more half-empty than half-full, before clunking the glass down on the cardboard coaster.
It was Saturday night and the Goulburn Soldiers Club was unusually busy. A band had the auditorium bobbing, old rock-and-roll covers fuelling the dancing and drinking. A couple of ladies – late 40s, maybe early 50s – twisted and turned on the parquetry floor. They smiled at the drunk boy hoping to land himself a cougar. He swaggered and swayed on the edge of the dance floor, oblivious to the pack of cougar husbands that would soon offer to show him outside.
Six or seven men showboated at the bar while they waited to order drinks. The leggy blonde standing at the front of the line had them puffing out chests and sucking in guts. She ordered a Malibu and pineapple, grabbed a straw and left the beer line posse.
‘Whoa,’ one said. ‘You don’t get that in here every day.’
Back at the table, now on his seventh schooner, TAB ticket torn in half, the off-duty guard looked for the blonde he’d seen at the bar.
Then he saw her; she was walking his way.
Maybe this is my lucky night.
He performed a minor magic trick, making his wedding ring disappear from his finger.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is this seat taken?’
The guard acted surprised. ‘Oh, no. Take it. I’m on my own.’
The blonde smiled. ‘Sorry, I don’t want to take it.’ She grinned. ‘I was wondering if I could join you. I’m here from Sydney on my own, and I was hoping for some company.’
She extended her hand and gave him a name – a false one. No one would ever know her real name. She would simply be known as the mystery blonde who created the chaos that allowed a maximum-security prisoner to simply walk out of Goulburn Jail.
Toilets and Tantrums
6 July 1996
Andrew Georgious Savvas, serving 30 years for conspiring to import $200 million worth of heroin, walked into the ‘sterile area’, a foyer-like room on the edge of the industries building. Old metal detectors designed to discover chisels and hammers littered the area. Next door was the spray shop, which was now serving as
the visits centre because of upgrades to other parts of the prison.
George, as he was known, was particularly jovial on this day.
‘Afternoon, boys,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s a good sort that’s come to visit me. Can you cut a hole in the crotch so I can get the big fella out?’
The guards were not amused and ordered the inmate to strip. They took his prison greens and issued him with a white, pocketless jumpsuit with full-length sleeves and legs.
‘Put them on and turn around,’ the officer fired.
Now wearing only undies and socks, Savvas slipped on the jumpsuit after a body search.
‘How am I supposed to cop a blowjob in this?’ Savvas asked.
The guard took a cable tie from the table and threaded it through the first of two metal eyeholes located on the back of the jumpsuit. Tight at the wrists, ankles and neck, the suit was a security measure put in place to prevent inmates from slipping contraband into their suits then into a body cavity.
‘You’ll just have to wait until tonight,’ the guard said. ‘I’m sure your boyfriend will give you a reach-around.’
Savvas sauntered into the spray shop at about 12.30pm, all smile and swag. He went over to an empty table, pulled out a chair and sat down. He had his choice of tables, but chose to sit directly under the viewing room – a glass box containing a guard charged with monitoring the area. He looked up and couldn’t see the guard. Good. That meant the guard couldn’t see him either.
Savvas, a former sports entrepreneur, hotelier, developer and Marrickville alderman, among other things, sat back in his chair as the other 89 inmates continued to flood in and find tables. He looked around; there were six guards in the room. They were watching the inmates, who were all beaming as they waited to see loved ones.
At 1pm, two men walked into the room. They had shown ID and had been searched before signing in for an official visit. Savvas showed little emotion when they approached him, greeting them with only a limp handshake. Watched by a security camera directly above, Savvas conversed with the two men who were visiting him for the first time. The room was now buzzing with inmates finding out about tries scored by sons, daughters getting married, brothers fighting at the pub. They laughed, hugged and smiled in this rarest of moments that made them feel free.
‘Chief,’ Savvas yelled. ‘Chief, over here. I need to go to the toilet.’
The guard walked over. It was 1.40pm.
‘Righto, let’s go,’ the officer said, escorting Savvas to the toilet, as per procedure, and returning him to his two visitors when he was done.
And that’s when all hell broke loose …
A chair toppled over and slapped the concrete floor as the prisoner shot to his feet.
‘You’re nothing but a slut,’ he screamed at the visiting woman. ‘Guard. GUARD! Get me out of here now. I want to go back and watch the fucking football.’
A guard rushed in. ‘You two break it up,’ he demanded. ‘And you … come with me. You’re going back.’
Six guards became five.
Another chair upended.
‘It’s over!’ a woman yelled at an inmate. ‘I’m getting a divorce. And by the way, I’ve been rooting Joe.’
Five guards became four.
‘Officer,’ another woman approached the guard, ‘I need to go to the toilet. You need to escort me, don’t you?’
Four became three.
Starting to get the picture?
‘It was just chaos,’ former prison officer Ian Norris recalled. ‘There were domestics, people asking to be taken out, people getting up left, right and centre. Nothing like that had ever happened before. All these blues going off at the same time.’
But the fighting wasn’t over. The visitors pushed and shoved, desperate to get out.
‘It had $1500 in it,’ a woman screamed at the officer guarding the exit. ‘Someone stole my purse out of the locker. Was it you? Was it you, big man? Do you have a key?’
The visitors were whisked out and the prisoners returned to their cells. The visits room was now quiet, now empty – well, except for chairs, tables and a shredded white jumpsuit.
The alarm was raised. It was 2.37pm.
Ian Norris was working in 2 Tower when the siren started to wail.
‘It was pandemonium,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know who had escaped or how they’d escaped – we just knew someone had escaped. They’d found a pair of overalls stashed under a table.’
The jail was shut down and the inmates were all sent to muster. One by one, their names were marked off and their cell doors slammed shut. But one cell remained open. One name unchecked on the list: Andrew Georgious Savvas.
‘We couldn’t believe he was gone,’ said Norris. ‘How could a crim walk out with visitors? There was a guard sitting in the old office watching down. There were another six in the room. And then there were the cameras. The cameras were watching everything, and that’s how we found out what had happened.’
‘An escape!’ Governor Allan Chisholm screamed. ‘Through visits … You have to be fucking kidding me. You mean to tell me a maximum-security inmate just walked out onto the street?’
Chisholm, now retired and living on a property in rural Queensland, has broken his 18-year silence to set the record straight about the escape that would ruin his career, the finger unfairly pointed at him.
‘The first thing we did was look at the videos,’ Chisholm recalled. ‘That’s how we found out how he got out. You have to remember that this thing didn’t happen in the normal visiting section. It was being held down in the industrial complex because renovations were taking place. I don’t think it could have happened had it not been for the construction.
‘Anyway, we went through the video. It was all pretty normal until a domestic blue broke out. There was one at first, and then another, and soon all the officers were occupied. You had blues, people demanding to be let out. It was just a shit fight.
‘A lot of the cameras were blocked during the mayhem. People started standing in front of cameras. A woman was standing in line with the camera that was on Savvas. It was pretty clear she knew where it was and that she was attempting to obstruct the camera’s view.’
Despite the woman’s effort (hint, hint: she was a leggy blonde), the camera revealed part of the extraordinary escape.
‘If you look real close you can see movement,’ Chisholm continued. ‘Savvas is taking off his overalls. He gets them off and dumps them on the floor. Then he whacks on a T-shirt and shorts. The footage also shows him putting on some sort of disguise … a moustache or whatever.’
In fact, Savvas not only slapped on a moustache – some claim made from hair he had cut from his head and glued to GLAD Wrap – he also expertly fitted a wig.
Remember his toilet trip?
Savvas is alleged to have secreted a Stanley utility knife, a razor and a shard of mirror inside his suit. While the woman and the two men shielded him from the camera, the drug kingpin used the blade to slice the cable tie holding his jumpsuit together and the mirror shard to look at himself while he affixed the moustache and wig. He also slid on a pair of sunnies.
Savvas then calmly stood and followed his two visitors out the door. Easy.
‘He just cut himself out of his overalls and walked out of visits,’ said Norris. ‘I don’t think there were the security checks that there should have been; it was all makeshift because of the renovations. They would have had a guy on the door to the crims area and another on the door at visits. There is no way he could have walked out of there wearing overalls, and he shouldn’t have been able to walk through there at all.’
Chisholm said another woman staged a key distraction. ‘Some officers were tied up with the blues, and others had to let the visitors out. Those officers handed the visitors over to another officer, who took them and passed them through a gate to another officer. They were then taken through a secure tunnel to a final checkpoint before going out.
‘It was there that another stink kick
ed off. A woman claimed someone had stolen her purse from the locker they put valuables in before they are allowed into the jail. She was screaming about having $1500 stolen. She was going off her tree, which left the officer tied up while a whole lot of the other visitors were trying to push their way out.
‘So [the officers] did their best and put them all out. Unfortunately, they put Savvas out too.’
So with a blond wig, a sliver of mirror, a razor and a mass distraction involving no less than eight people, George Savvas strolled out on his 30-year sentence in a maximum-security jail, jumped in a waiting car and disappeared …
The Conspiracy
Four days earlier …
Savvas walked straight up to the boss, cocky and confident as always. Bank robber, former escapee and all-around tough man Russell Cox was by his side.
‘Good news, chief,’ he said to Allan Chisholm, the boss doing his daily walk through the jail.
‘Oh,’ said Chisholm, ‘and what would that be?’
Savvas smiled. ‘You know that Royal Commission? Well, I’ve been called up to give evidence against the police. And it looks like the two fellas that arrested me might be in some shit, so I reckon I’ll get a retrial. The worst they can do is find me guilty, but of a lesser degree. I might get 17 years, but with time served I’ll be eligible for more visits, work, you know … the lot. I could even be out right away.’
And he would be out soon – but he never made it to his appointment with the Wood Royal Commission, a two-year investigation into police corruption that began in 1995.
‘Savvas was some big player in the Labor Party,’ Chisholm recalled. ‘And he was involved in many things. He seemed to know all the big players in town, and if there was something dodgy going on, well, he knew about it. His sentence seemed a bit unusual and didn’t sit well with me. He got a maximum of 30 years for conspiracy to import drugs. Thirty years, and he never actually imported them. That seems a bit heavy to me. [At the time he and Russell Cox approached me], he had already done 14 years.
Australia's Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail Page 15
