What a bunch of wankers! If any of yas actually spent a day, let alone a night in "coburg college" youse woulda ended up hanging ya selves as yas don have the testicular fortitude to last a full night with a REAL crim!

aboctok, I am sorry this blog has offended you in some way, but I have little if any time for those who continually try to belittle me or anyone else. Had the Hon. Clarkson not been so ready to be arrogant, ignorant or belligerent many of the comments here would not have been necessary. I do hope you have no objection but I consider I can now leave this blog in your safe hands. I have had enough of it.

(From a first-time visitor...) What a lovely little corner of the web this is. Actually, I'd like to start a special new blog, and call it the Clarkson-Fletch Channel, or ideally, something better but without loss of crucial specificity (as K-Rudd might say; how we miss him). Of course, some may prefer "Fletch-Clarkson," but I'm confident the majority will concede that the first form is better, on phonetic grounds. It could be just me; I find "Fletch-Clarkson" more difficult to say, and indeed, I sometimes stumble at the critical transition. Having had only incidental, indirect contact with the Victorian's dual-use adjective-justice" system, I was appalled at the idea of building cheery little units at Pentridge. But then, our governments tend to inflict appalling things on us from time to time, so the property development is, in a peculiar way, somewhat consistent with the history of the site.

It is the young boys who were held in the Reformatory Schoool at Pentridge that have my sympathy. They had little or less (if that is possible) to live for. Reading the 1878 Report on the Reformatory School is really something and tells you a lot about how much respect the Reformatory staff and guards had for those children. Prisoners today have it real cosy compared to the young boys whose 'crime' was being orphan's, stealing food because they were hungry or any simple little thing that upset a member of the police force or judicary. These boys were treated not much different to many of the wee babies buried at Will Will Rook Pioneer Cemetery in Broadmeadows who were used as experiments for vaccines.

Pentridge was a bad place, it did not rehabilitate but perpetuated cruelty. Mac as a long term inmate must be congratulated in surviving the system.