Roo's Up In Arms: "That Just Really Pisses Me Off"

Ben Cousins. Everyone’s got a view on his situation.

There are so many that say, “teach him a lesson” and “lock him up” but then there are people who sympathise saying, “he’s an addict, he needs help” and things like that.

A lot of people saying here at work have been saying, “when he goes to jail, he’ll be exposed to so many drugs, it’s the wrong culture for Ben Cousins to be in.”

A friend of Ditts’ is very high up in the prison system in Australia. Not specifically in SA, interstate in fact, but he’s been a prison warden and has worked his way high up to work on policies.

So, Ditts asked him, how or why are these prisons just full of drugs?

“There are criminals (sex-offenders, murderers, pedophiles, armed robbers), if Ben Cousins, if the crimes he’s committed are as a result of being a drug addict, they don’t look at him in the same light. They don’t think of him as a criminal like the others.”

“He said, imagine if we could take all those people like Ben Cousins out of the prisons and take them to a facility where they actually rehabilitate them, and then they rejoin society. Then they wouldn’t commit the crimes because it was because of their drug use. And it was their desperation to get the drugs.

When you look at the burden on society, for the drug use, it’s large isn’t it? It’s huge! He was saying we could perhaps eradicate them. There will still be people listening saying just lock them up, just get them off the streets…”

Roo: “But it’s not working. The system isn’t working. And it is clogging the jails. And if they’ve got access to drugs in there and they’re not getting rehabilitated. The whole reason people from the outside think it’s a good reason to go to jail, is not actually happening!

Getting more access to drugs! That just pisses me off! That’s just unbelievable. It’s just so interesting to know."