Uncle Jack Charles goes back to prison to mentor Indigenous inmates

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Uncle Jack Charles goes back to prison

For over a decade, actor and Indigenous leader Jack Charles has been banned from going to prison to mentor inmates. Until now.

Eyes sunken, face cracked with a lifetime of lived experience, Jack Charles rocks on his heels outside Middleton prison.

He might be the voice of the current AFL final series ad campaign, but the ears Charles wants to reach most are on the other side of the concrete wall towering above his diminutive frame.

For 10 years, Charles has wanted to return to prison to mentor Indigenous inmates, only for his criminal past and a rigid justice system to block his every attempt.



Yet today, the venerated actor — known to all as "Uncle Jack" — is about to step through security as a welcomed guest of the central Victorian prison.

He starts telling me of his long-held passion to return to prison to share his journey with those inside, only for a rasping cough to consume his speech.

"I haven't had the flu in 30 years. I'm just getting over it," he says, wheezing.

"That's what happens when you stop using heroin; you're likely to get the common cold."

I suggest it's a better illness than being hooked on junk.

"I would say so too," he replies.

Charles only found out he'd be allowed into the prison a couple of days earlier, on his 73rd birthday. ("It's the best birthday present imaginable!")

It's been over 10 years since he was last locked up for cat-burgling Melbourne mansions, and in that time he's become celebrated for his contribution to film, culture and Australian life.

He's now one of the most prominent popular culture voices on Indigenous issues. His description of Australia as "uniquely racist" on Q&A last year prompted national debate, while he continues to work on overhauling a culture of racism toward Aboriginal people in the taxi industry.

"I've taken my Aboriginality seriously enough that I should be a key player in trying to save or redirect other lives," he says.

If the decade-long wait to get back into prison feels overdue in the context of his own life, it's nonetheless extremely timely for a criminal justice system that continues to falter in its efforts to rehabilitate Indigenous offenders.

Recent research by the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration found the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in incarceration could be greatly reduced by more targeted, culturally appropriate rehabilitation programs.

A separate research project found the use of reformed offenders to mentor inmates was highly effective in reducing rates of recidivism.

It makes Charles the perfectly imperfect role model.

"Sometimes you need a bloke like me with lived experience to stand next to those prison wellbeing officers. I'm a poster boy of somebody who took themselves more seriously, to the point that here I am, invited back to speak," he says.

"I had that inherent obligation as a self-proclaimed elder of the Boonwurrung people, to share the journey and showcase that there is a life beyond drugs, jail time and mental disability."

His is a life marked by the wildest achievements and most desperate of lows.

Forcibly removed from his mother as a member of the Stolen Generation, abused by the system and those within it, Charles' life has been dogged by drug use and the criminal activity he took up to support it.

Now long clean, he puts the challenge to other Indigenous drug users to do the same.

"Real blackfellas ought not to be shooting white powder into their veins, because we start to abuse our Aboriginality, ourselves, our communities, our friends, our mothers and our fathers," he says.

"The white powder or ice or alcohol are the biggest distractions toward taking yourself and your Indigenousness more seriously."

It's come time for Uncle Jack to enter the prison. I tried for two days to get security clearance to come in with him, but was unsuccessful.

Instead, I watch on as he shuffles toward a metal detector.

From behind, his small stature and billowing white hair makes me think of Bilbo Baggins setting off on a long journey, if he wore a bright red cardigan and leather vest.

In the distance, two inmates wearing green tracksuit pants and jumpers walk backwards and forwards in a section of the prison grounds protected from the afternoon rain. Others watch on glumly from the balcony.

While I wait, a couple of prison officers enter the reception area.

One is holding a small piece of painted wood, covered by a plastic bag.

"What do you call this?" he asks.

"Art," suggests his colleague.

"It's a f---king weapon," he snarls back, putting it in a locker marked OUTWARD PRISONER PROPERTY.

An hour later, Jack Charles walks back through security, beaming but visibly worn.

His manager says the session with inmates was "incredible" and that Charles was moved to tears.

I pull him away for a quick moment before he heads across to conduct a similar talk with inmates at the adjacent Loddon prison.

"I believe both of us impressed each other. Many of them were Aboriginal. It's significant. It's never happened before," he says.

He tells of his "great dreaming" to recreate the Nindebiya workshop, an Indigenous hub in Fitzroy where those leaving prison could continue to hone skills and crafts learnt during their time inside.

"I've always had it in mind that if I came out of prison and I was taken seriously by our own organisations in Aboriginal Melbourne, I could develop the workshop," he says.

"If you were coming out of prison to Melbourne, this would be the place you would gravitate toward. Community based orders could be done in there, parole officers could be assured that this was the place to send people if they were coming to Melbourne with nothing to do in their lives.

"It's a dream, unfulfilled as yet. But if you put it out long enough, it might happen."

Topics: law-crime-and-justice, prisons-and-punishment, drugs-and-substance-abuse, rehabilitation, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, indigenous-policy, government-and-politics, indigenous-culture, castlemaine-3450