Chapter 1

 

"You see, Minister, the idea is to shame the prisoners to the nth degree and at the same time to put the fear of God into them. If they survive the park's rigours, there is no way they will risk a return."

"You mean, Matthew, that they might die there?"

Phillip Corcoran, Queensland Minister of State for Correctional Services looked worried. I smiled back at him reassuringly. "It isn't likely, Minister. But we want them to feel we don't care if they live or die. They may well imagine they are facing death but in reality they will be safe enough."

The minister looked back down at the proposal before him. "So the park will comprise three basic areas: side shows, rides and the real shows themselves?"

"That is correct, Minister. The sideshows will each involve prisoners, of course. Look at the shooting gallery exhibit. In this show, naked prisoners with implants inserted into various parts of their bodies have to avoid the shooters. The implants will glow through their skin and the pellets, if they connect with one of them, will cause it to send a shock to that part of the prisoner's body, causing him or her to leap into the air and thus win the shooter a prize."

"Hmmm, I see. Obviously, these prisoners will need to be nude but I note that you intend to keep all of them totally naked. Why is that?"

I looked at the minister carefully. I had decided this aspect of the park was essential - for a number of reasons: the first and most important was that it would ensure we had a good patronage but it would also add immeasurably to the shame of the prisoners and while I intended to become rich on this idea, I also genuinely wanted to do something about the appalling crime rate now facing Australia as well as other nations in the world. If the park instilled a real sense of shame as well as terror in the prisoners that we selected for our shows, it would be very unlikely they would re-offend.

"Nakedness will ensure their shame, Minister, but it will also portray them as zoo animals, which, in one sense they are. The park's visitors will see them as something less than citizens and this message will come across to the prisoners in no uncertain terms. Shame is a potent weapon if used in the right way and I believe the park will ensure very, very few, if any of these prisoners ever offend again and as we grow and take in more and more of your prisoners, so the crime rate will drop. I project we may even halve the prison population in a year or so."

"Yes, I see your point. All right, Matthew, I will support your proposition..."

 

That was the beginning. From that moment on, while it took a great deal of work: planning, bank approvals, guarantees from the government for a continuous supply of criminals, the actual acquisition of the land and the building of the park - and many, many associated worries, finally we were ready to open.

Our advertising campaign had been carefully planned but still I was as nervous as all hell. Would the public accept the concept? If not, I was broke and my career in shatters.

I needn't have worried. We were going to open at ten. At six, the car park was full and there were thousands of people straining at the main entrance gates, made up to look like a mediaeval prison. It had taken an enormous amount of effort, not only on my part but by the various department heads who had to recruit and train their principal staff who then, in turn had to employ the rest of the staff.

Then there had been the selection of the prisoners. I had been given carte blanche here. That was part of the agreement with the department. There was no point in using old or ugly prisoners and so I was careful to choose shapely and attractive young women and handsome and athletic males for our first group. I needed hundreds, of course and, since they needed to be rested, I wanted nearly twice the number that would actually be on show on the various rides and shows.

Actually, though, they would all be on show in one way or another for those not actually performing on a given day would also be on display - of a sort. The prisoners were to be housed in rows of zoo-like cages. They were made of concrete formed to look like rock and painted as such to add to the illusion and had large barred apertures for the public to stroll up and down and look in on them. Inside, they looked like zoo cages, too.

There were no beds or latrines, or indeed any proper furniture at all. The floors were all plain earth. spread over the real concrete flooring, then strewn with hay; their watering was achieved from automatically filled concrete basins let into the bare concrete floor at the front of the cage and in the other front corner a similar basin, formed like a gully-trap, provided the only means for them to expel their wastes, all in full view of the watching public outside the cages. When they slept, it was in the straw but when they were awake, they were prodded into movement by guards wielding laser zappers which, when aimed at their bodies, gave them a nasty little shock.

The guards on duty in the pens wandered up and down constantly and made sure the resting prisoners didn't get too much rest on their free days.

 

Perhaps it might be appropriate to detail the typical induction of a new prisoner to our little world.

The prison system was retained of course - for the moment, anyway. Later, if I had my way, it would be replaced by a new, or rather very old system of punishment for those not considered suitable for my park-and later parks, for I fully intended to set up as many as I could, all over Australia - once this first experiment on the Gold Coast proved to be a winner.

Some of the old and the ugly could be utilised in some of the ideas I had for my park but I wanted the rest to be treated as real prisoners, working in chain gangs out in the public eye. For too long the do-gooders had watered down the penalty aspect of prisons until they were like motels. They were also breeding places for more crime. I wanted prisoners to feel as if they were being punished and working with pick and shovel while chained by the ankle and preferably naked or nearly so, would soon cut back the crime rate, I was sure.

But I wander off. It is a pet theory of mine and I hoped to demonstrate the efficacy of real punishment in my park.

As I said earlier, I had carte blanche to select my 'exhibits'. I went to each of the Brisbane Corrective Institutions in turn. I had already set up the appointments with the prison manager and in doing so, informed him of my basic criteria: Age was to be between eighteen and thirty and I didn't want any fats or really ugly prisoners. They didn't all have to be beauties; Heaven knows there are few good lookers in the prison system, but I still didn't want the real bad-looking guys in my park.

I also wanted them to have reasonable physiques - or at least bodies I could build into something worth looking at. For this reason I needed to see them naked. I was really looking forward to my visits to the female facilities later on but since I was already familiar with the male prisons I thought it appropriate to start there.

"All prisoners will strip naked!" boomed the guard in charge.

There was an instant murmuring of discontent but the guards moved up behind the line of some four hundred young men and when they didn't start to remove their prison uniforms in double time, slammed their nightsticks into their butts. I grinned. We wouldn't be using such primitive methods once we had them in the training ground in the park. I had provided each of my guards and trainers with an electronic prodder as well as a laser stun-gun.

The prodders were a development from the old cattle prodders used last century but had been modernised and developed for use on humans. They were much smaller than the old models - just like a large ball-point pen, actually, and all it took was for the guard to slip it out of his top pocket, thumb the convenient button that instantly charged the tines-and slid them out of the end of the instrument-and then drive them into some convenient part of the prisoner's anatomy. Once trained in their use, a guard could have them out and the ultra-sharp tines jabbed into the flesh of a recalcitrant prisoner in half a second.

The prisoners soon became scared stiff of them.

They were excellent weapons for close-hand use while the laser stun-guns were more effective from a distance. These operated much like the toy laser guns we all had in our boyhood but were now a reality. They could be set from a relatively mild warning shot to a blast that would knock out the biggest thug-and keep him unconscious for long enough to secure him. Both weapons were small and each one was programmed to its owner so that if a prisoner happened to get hold of one, it was dead in his or her hands.

Once all the prisoners were naked, I strolled up and down the line, looking over each of them in turn. I found this a most pleasant task... Here I should say that I am bisexual. I tend to favour the girls but I can swing both ways, especially with a handsome young buck with a pleasing physique. I should also say here that I have never married, preferring liaisons with either a girl or boy and then moving on. I doubt I will ever settle down to a life with a permanent partner. It just isn't my scene.

As I moved up the line I noted the shame in most of these young men's faces. Oh yes, they were prisoners and privacy was not much in evidence in our prisons, even in these so-called enlightened times, but my inspection of their naked bodies was very obviously sexual - and I made sure they knew it.

If a particular prisoner appealed to me, I reached out to finger his body, just as a slave-owner might have when purchasing a slave in centuries gone by. I made sure he knew I was interested in him sexually and the guards on hand, previously worded up by me, sniggered to each other as I appraised those who caught my attention. Those I selected were ordered to step forward while those I rejected were permitted to put their clothes back on and depart the room, leaving the selectees standing naked and a now rather forlorn crew of just under a hundred whom I would transport back to the park in the new truck I had had made for the purpose.

It was a singularly unique design. What I had in mind was to show off my stock (as I now thought of them) in as provocative and as outrageous a manner as possible. The truck was really just a large tray-top onto which had been built two racks - rather like the clothes racks which could hold dozens of garments and which can be wheeled around a factory or even out in the street.

They ran lengthwise from front to back of the tray-top and the two long horizontal RSJ's (H-shaped beams turned side on) were fitted with free-running hooks which ran along the bottom rail of the RSJ, some fifty on each of the two poles. They were suspended on two sturdy braced uprights and were of sufficient grade and size that they wouldn't sag in the middle. Each RSJ was suspended exactly eight feet above the tray-top.

The truck was also provided with a retractable set of steps at the rear that led up to the tray-top, splitting in two to end under the rear end of each beam so that when it was activated, it provided a step that was two feet higher than the floor of the tray-top.

This vehicle was parked in the loading bay of the prison and most of the guards had already come out to inspect it, remarking on its design and wondering how it was to be used to transport my new acquisitions. I didn't enlighten them but said they would soon find out. Most of these men I knew of course since I had worked in most of Brisbane's prisons at one time or another during my career with the service and they still treated me as one of their own.

I had also had dozens of a special design of handcuff made and these were snapped onto the wrists of each the ninety-eight prisoners I had selected for my first intake. I led the way from the inspection room out to the loading bay, accompanied by the manager and his senior staff, who were as intrigued as their guards at my strange truck.

Standing up under the rear of each of the horizontal beams were two of my men, while I stood below, assigning one prisoner to the left and the next to the right beam. As they mounted the steps and went over to their assigned RSJ, my man growled at each to raise his hands.

Now the purpose of the unique design of the handcuffs was revealed. They had a special hole with a catch in it that was designed to fit over the dangling hooks on the two beams. Bill had the first man raise his hands under the leading hook, snapped the hole in the cuff down into the hook and then gave his body, still stark naked, a push. The free-running rollers allowed him to move a long way up the beam and now that he had left the support of the little platform, his body dangled freely, his feet twelve inches or so above the floor of the tray-top.