Indonasia, October 27: Hanging murders, corruption, paid sex and widespread drug abuse are part of everyday life in the Indonesian jail housing Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine.
A new book by Corby biographer Kathryn Bonella gives a rare insight into the lives of prisoners inside Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Jail, dubbed “Hotel K”.
Bonella, who spent 18 months interviewing prisoners and guards in Kerobokan, said she encountered a world where “the unbelievable fast became ordinary”.
“I was fascinated with this crazy world of drugs, sex and gambling – where pedophiles, serial killers and rapists sleep alongside card sharks, petty thieves and unlucky tourists caught at a club with one or two ecstasy pills in their pocket,” she writes in the book, Hotel Kerobokan.
Among that mix is Corby, who has spent five years in the jail for marijuana possession and who, Bonella says, has become immune to the daily horrors.
“Finding a dead prisoner hanging by a noose one morning barely caused her to react,” she writes.
“I saw her shortly afterwards, and she was totally calm.
“Her detachment was chilling. And the inmates all knew this was murder.”
Bonella also details how guards routinely accept hundreds of dollars in bribes for cell upgrades and allowing sexual partners into the prison.
One prisoner estimates “80 per cent” of the guards are corrupt, with many running drugs in and out of the lock-up.
Renae Lawrence, the only female member of the Bali Nine heroin-smuggling syndicate, is depicted in the book as “the playboy of the women’s block”.
“She was big, muscular and masculine, had money and was Western. Women threw themselves at her.”
The three Bali Nine members awaiting execution for attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia in 2005 – Myuran Sukamaran, Andrew Chan and Scott Rush – live in the so-called “death tower”.
The six other members of the group are serving sentences ranging from 20 years to life.
—Agencies