Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW) has released the fifth podcast in its Behind the Walls series, revealing what really goes on in the State’s prison and parole offices.
In the fifth episode, The Blue and the Green, Manager of Security at Metropolitan Special Programs Centre with CSNSW, Paul Coyne (pictured) talks about the time an inmate rescued him from a criminal gang and saved his life.
Mr Coyne said the incident occurred when he worked at the Long Bay Complex in 2003.
“Mutual respect between inmates and officers is really important and I honestly believe that it pretty much saved my life,” Mr Coyne said.
“I was being assaulted at Long Bay when an inmate heard it happening, so he stuck his head out and called for help to my colleagues,” he said.
“Then he came flying up and belted one of the inmates so hard I thought he had killed him – he went down like a sack of potatoes – and then he turned to the other two and said, ‘Don’t you ever lay a hand on Mr Coyne again’.”
Mr Coyne said a lot of people didn’t understand how relationships between correctional officers and inmates differed from relationships outside the prison system.
“We build a rapport and we work on respect,” he said.
CSNSW said Mr Coyne was one of 30 correctional staff from across NSW interviewed for the ground-breaking podcast series.
CSNSW’s latest Behind the Walls podcast can be accessed, with sound, at this PS News link.
