Killing Time by Andrew Fraser

investigate Dupas for some of the other unsolved murders that I have mentioned.
    As you read this extraordinary criminal history one thing jumps out at you time and again, and that is the complete failure of the court system to protect precisely those they are there to protect – you, me, the general public. Dupas was released early time and again after having breached his parole. The normal position is that if you are released on parole and you breach that parole, it is cancelled and you go straight back into custody and start serving the unexpired portion of your parole. When you then go to court over the charges that you breached your parole, you can be sentenced to an additional term of imprisonment for the breach, on top of the remaining original term.
    In the case of Dupas, it is apparent that no treatment was given to this man while he was in jail – and I have witnessed that with my own eyes. Occasionally a pastoral worker came in and talked to him, and apart from that he took medication that would stop a herd of stampeding elephants in its tracks. That was while he was serving three life sentences. He clearly wasn’t that restrained when he wasn’t on medication and he was released into the community. What treatment was afforded Dupas at that time, and how effective it was, no one is saying. Nobody has revealed what medication he was on, if any; what supervision he was subjected to, if any. When these questions are asked of the Parole Board, the Corrections Commissioner, the politicians involved, everybody ducks for cover and does the usual trick of keeping their head down and hoping like hell it will all go away. Sooner or later somebody is actually going to ask them to account for their lack of action and to respond to the allegation that, by their omissions, they knowingly exposed the community to increased danger. I will be among the first to level this allegation because if you think for one moment that Dupas is the only person who is capable of committing these sorts of offences, then you are sadly mistaken. I lived with thirty-seven of these blokes for fifteen months and it is not pleasant. Many, but not all, are never to be released and can never be rehabilitated. They lack any remorse, are even proud of what they have done and often sit around skiting about their crimes.

Chapter 5
    Living Next Door to Peter
    The evil men do lives after them: the good is oft interred with their bones.
    â€“ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR
    Standing there on muster on my first night in Sirius East, it strikes me that nothing could be blacker. Somehow I have ended up in a unit of thirty-eight blokes: thirty-seven psychopaths and me. It soon becomes apparent to me that Andrew Davies, my new cell mate, is despised by all the members of the unit with the exception of the other paedophiles. Rock spiders carry no weight in jail; they are despised. Most of the rock spiders spend their time as cave dwellers – that is, blokes who sit in their cells all day with the curtains drawn and the door closed. There they sit chain smoking and watching television for the entirety of their sentence. If that’s what they want to do that’s what the screws let them do – it keeps them quiet.
    The person facing me, however, was different. Peter Dupas had killed and killed often. But standing there was an insignificant, pudgy-looking man, motionless, as still as a sphinx except for his eyes which darted everywhere. He had a brooding, calculating malevolence about him. He oozed passive aggression. He was clearly somebody to keep a very close eye on, as time would soon tell.
    Even on that cursory first glance, it was apparent that Dupas stood apart from the others in the unit, notwithstanding their collectively horrific crimes. There was something about him that made him different and in my first couple of months in the unit I was to find out what.
    Jail is really pretty simple. There are three rules: see no evil,