WE would be interested to know exactly how many remanded suspects and convicted prisoners escaped from lawful custody in 2007. Wouldn’t you?
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GOOD morning. Many of our penitentiaries are now the stuff of a classic Laurel and Hardy short, a short story in the Women’s Weekly, or a welcome spot of cheer in Les Miserables. Take your pick – the fact is that figures indicating ingress and egress at HM’s haus kalabus must just about equate with each other. That’s if anyone’s keeping score.
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MEMBERS of the Corrective Service and the RPNG Constabulary blame each other, then they target their annual budgets – supposedly never enough, despite regularly increasing amounts – and finally they attack the allegedly “small minority” that gives their organisations a bad name.
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WE no longer believe in the “small minority of bad apples”, we’re convinced that the only “small minority” in the two “disciplined forces” is made up of those who slave away trying to give the services they’re employed to provide. And not only are they in the minority, their numbers are shrinking, as these committed men and women leave the two services in abject despair.
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ONE of PNG’s more notorious prisoners allegedly staked a further claim to immortality recently. A participant of a grass-cutting gang, the gentleman in question reportedly downed bush knife at a convenient moment and toddled off to get to the bottom of a rumour that his wife had allegedly fallen pregnant to one of the prison guards.
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WE’VE since heard that he’s now back where the court placed him; no confirmed reports are to hand regarding the state of either his wife or the prison guard. We hope he remembered to pick up that bush knife; that’s State property and should be properly accounted for, even if the prisoner apparently doesn’t.
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SAD postscript to our item about an overseas student struggling to get a visa to study at a PNG university. With the academic year already begun and despite acceptance from the university concerned, plus tuition fees and accommodation fully guaranteed, he’s now withdrawn his visa application. No wonder PNG gets negative overseas press. Cheers!
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- Dee Nesenolis