Air of Authority

‘… there was no air – can you imagine five people locked in a cell with no air?…’ – former prisoner Allan James remembered his experience at Maitland Gaol in 1961. Established in 1848, Maitland was the oldest intact gaol in NSW and had become notorious as one of Australia’s toughest prisons. Ventilation grills like […]

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Deadly Force

How do you face bank robbers, sex-offenders, drug traffickers, and murderers every day at work? Tasked with confining and rehabilitating some of the toughest criminals Australia has ever seen, the guards of Maitland Gaol needed to maintain their self-defence skills throughout the prison’s 150 years of operation (1848-1998). In a shooting range along the perimeter […]

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