FOR women on the inside, life is not like Orange Is the New Black.

In fact, nothing could be further from reality.

In a special two-part investigation, Insight has gone behind bars — and uncovered exactly what happens to women serving time in Australia’s highest security prisons.

SilverwaterCorrectional Centre, in Sydney’s west, is the state’s biggest processing yard for many women before they are sentenced or transferred to another prison.

Speaking to both inmates and correctional officers, journalist and host for the SBS program, Jenny Brockie, explores how women handle life in prison — and what they did to get themselves behind bars.

Inmate ‘Meagan’ is currently in Silverwater for assaulting another woman with a cricket bat, in a brutal attack that left the other person with a “golf ball-sized haematoma to the brain”.

“I seen a cricket bat on the ground so I picked it up and hit her three times in the head with it,” the 32-year-old said, who is currently serving two years behind bars for the assault.

“She’d come to my sister’s house. My sister questioned her over an incident that happened a few days prior. She pushed my sister, then my sister-in-law and her had a fight. I got up to actually stop them fighting.

When questioned by Brockie about what lead Meagan to hit another women with a bat, she was unable to give a clear answer.

“I ask myself that every day why I did it,” she admitted.

“I didn’t think, I seen it [the bat] picked it up and hit her.”

When recalling how she felt after hitting another woman, Meagan explained how she picked herself up and went inside, sat on the couch and watched television.

Meagan said that while she knows she could have killed the other woman with the bat, she feels nothing towards the situation — no anger, and no upset.

With a teenage son on the outside, Meagan believes his life is “horrible, lonely and depressing” while she waits for freedom.

“This has had a lot of effect on him,” she said.

“He’s started getting in to a lot of trouble, and I don’t want that.”

Another inmate described her experience in prison as “horrible” because of how she and other inmates had to go to the toilet in front of other people, as well as shower in front of strangers.

“When I first came to jail, I thought women get raped in jail,” inmate Zaynab said, who has served five-and-a-half years of her 12-and-a-half year sentence.

“I thought officers may hit you, because I had no idea about jail. I hadn’t visited jail in my life before. There are good people here … people that don’t deserve to be here.

“There are some girls in here who are a little bit naughty … I’m not talking about charges. I don’t care what they’ve done, it’s not my business to judge, only God can judge. I’m talking about personality and how you live.”

When questioned about what jail was like when the women first arrived, Zaynab described the experience as “terrible”, while Meagan called it “a very scary place”.

“You don’t know what jail is. You see jail on the TV and you think that’s what jail is, and it’s until you get into the system it’s a very scary place,” she said.

Before inmates are processed, they are taken to the induction unit, which is where new-timers would go before entering the correctional centre.

Nicole, who is a senior correctional officer at Silverwater, described the process as “hell” for new women.

“They are scared. They are scared of their new reception, it’s very daunting if they’ve never been in jail before,” Nicole said.

“They might come into custody for a shoplifting charge, and be [put in a cell] with someone who is in here on a more serious offence. And there’s no choice about that.

“It’s daunting for them. It’s not as clean as they want it to be, inmates are screaming out. If they are mental health inmates they start screaming, banging on the doors.

“Inmates may not get sleep in the first 24 hours that they are in here.”

While Nicole wasn’t able to give a precise number on how many times an inmate is hurt within prison walls by another inmate, she said the injuries can be quite serious no matter what centre is under the spotlight.

“I have seen in a men’s jail where they have been stabbed several times, but in a women’s jail we don’t get that ... it’s more bitchiness. Imagine being in a dorm full of women, it’s hard for us to get on at the best of times.”

With 19.8 per cent of women in NSW prisons having been sentenced for drug offences, it has become the most common conviction for females behind bars, with conviction from causing injury coming in second place at 17.9 per cent of inmates.

Meagan admits that despite being told by other people what to expect from jail, she still felt it was a “shattering” experience when she arrived.

“When you go down to induction, and you’re placed in a cell, it’s horrible,” she said.

“You’ve got a big steel toilet, with no seat and no lid, which is horrible because that’s where you’ve got to eat.”

With most of her family having gone to jail at one time or another, Meagan first started getting into trouble with the law when she was just 11 years old.

“I was charged for a stolen car and a high-speed chase,” she said.

“My mum had just got sent to jail, and I went to Newcastle to my uncle’s ex-girlfriends, and my dad had lived there as well. Me and my brother wanted to go back to Dubbo, and he refused to take us so we took his car.”

With 42.9 per cent of women released from NSW prisons returning back to the system, and Assistant Superintendent Angela said working with men and women behind bars are completely different beasts.

“A woman can go from zero to 10 quicker than I could click my finger,” Angela said,

who has been in corrective services for 21 years.

For the first 20, Angela worked in men’s facilities, but changed to a women’s facility in the past 12 months.

“A male inmate will take longer. He’ll ask you the same question over and over, and when you answer the question for the tenth time ... he’ll say alright fair enough, and leave it at that.

“But a lot of the female inmates can’t take no for an answer, so it is constant ‘but why, but why’. They don’t have a stop button.”

Part one of Insight’s special investigation that takes Jenny Brockie behind bars of the Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre will air on Tuesday night at 8.30pm AEDT on SBS. Part two will air on Tuesday 15th November at the same time.