Oxygen Behind Glass
A newsletter from inside custody
OXYGEN BEHIND GLASS A newsletter from inside Brisbane Immigration Detention Centre
On Tuesday morning, I presented at the IMPACT Network, Queensland’s cross-sector lived experience workforce network, from inside Brisbane Immigration Detention Centre. On a hotspot. Off camera. Twenty-three months into a detention that was never supposed to last this long.
And it was one of the best mornings I can remember. Seriously.
The facilitator Michael Houston got there and held the room with warmth, professionalism, and humanity that I won’t forget. Under circumstances I won’t go into, he pulled off something remarkable just to be there. That kind of commitment to the work doesn’t go unnoticed. Thank you Michael.
But it was what happened in the room that made it so incredibly special.
The room was alive. Lived experience workers. Practitioners. People who have never been inside a system and people who have never left one. All of them present. All of them feeling it.
My girlfriend brought a tear to my eye with her support, the kind that doesn’t waver, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t ask you to be anything other than exactly what you are. And Marcus, one of my programme graduates, currently detained alongside me, sat in that room and felt something rekindle. Invigorated by the possibility that something being built around him might actually change the world he’s living in.
Emily Cooper smashed her part of the session. The energy she brought, the truth she told, the space she held, the room felt it.
And by the end of it we were all aligned on something that felt bigger than a meeting.
This cannot be a place where hope goes to die.
Below is a brief summary of what I discussed. That is the mission. And on Tuesday morning… it felt possible.
THE GAP
I have been inside four areas of the system.
Bail — August 2015 to October 2020. Five years of reporting, conditions, and a court date that kept moving. A friend looked around at one of my going-away parties and said, well, that felt like one very long f***ing funeral. We were trying to find humour in tragedy.
Prison — October 2020 to April 2023. Two and a half years. The day before I was sentenced I watched my daughter drive away. She was twelve. As the car reversed I saw her crying in the front seat. That moment is tattooed in my mind. It serves as a reminder of the impact of my wrongdoing and the strongest motivation possible to create positive change for the future.
Parole — April 2023 to June 2024. Won my visa back from inside prison. Two weeks later I ran into my daughter’s arms. She was fourteen. Best day since the day she was born. Then the leash. Check-ins. Conditions. The system watching to make sure you didn’t breach while you tried to rebuild a life.
Detention — June 13 2024 to now. An unrelated event. The Department of Home Affairs reversed my visa. Back inside. Twenty-three months and counting.
Four types of systems. Psychological support existed in all of them. Good people doing their best inside structures not designed for care.
But at every single touchpoint, not one person whose role was to offer support from lived experience. Not one person who had been where I was.
The support existed. I could see it. I just couldn’t reach it in the moment I needed it.
That is what oxygen behind glass feels like.
You are not suffocating because nobody cares. You are suffocating because the thing that could save you is right there, visible, present, real, and structurally out of reach. Not because of a lack of funding or a lack of goodwill. Because the person who could actually reach you, someone who had been there, was never in the room.
That is not a gap in the system.
That is a design failure.
THE EVIDENCE
I didn’t just feel this. I researched it.
I grabbed a pen and paper and walked around this detention centre and asked fifty men, if you could choose between a lived experience support person or a typical counsellor, which would you choose?
All fifty said lived experience. Every single one. No hesitation.
And during one of my psychology sessions, which I have taken to using as brainstorming sessions, I asked my psychologist: how many counsellors or psychologists do you know who went to prison?
His answer was: One. You.
Ironically, I became a counsellor inside custody.
That is not a survey from a university. That is fifty men, right now, inside a detention centre, telling you exactly what they need and exactly what they are not getting.
The research backs it up. Over 40% of people in Australian custody have a diagnosed mental illness. 65% have substance dependence. 87% have a history of complex trauma. And the evidence on lived experience peer support is unambiguous. It reduces recidivism, psychiatric readmission, suicidal ideation, and time to treatment. It improves self-efficacy, hope, and recovery outcomes.
It works. Consistently. Across multiple independent bodies of research.
The reason it doesn’t exist at scale is not a lack of evidence. It is a structural contradiction built into the design of the system itself. Vetting processes bar people with criminal records from working in the very institutions where they are most needed.
The workforce we need is sitting inside the rooms we will not let them work in.
THE LAWYER LINK
This is the light bulb moment of the whole project.
A lawyer is almost always the first person someone tells the full truth to. Not their family. Not their doctor. Not their employer. Their lawyer. That single moment of disclosure is a stabilisation opportunity the system currently walks straight past.
And unlike the closed systems, prison and detention, where the oxygen is behind glass and we have limited control over the support people receive for now, and I say for now deliberately, the open system is different. We can build strong relationships with law firms right now. We can educate lawyers on the best places to send distressed and volatile clients. A regulated client is in their interests too. A calmer, more stable client makes better decisions, communicates more clearly, and is easier to represent. The lawyer wins. The client wins. The system gets a better outcome. Everyone benefits.
So I built something practical to sit inside that moment.
While I have been incarcerated I developed a free regulation pack that any lawyer can hand directly to a client, written by a former prisoner, while he was incarcerated, for exactly the people sitting across that desk. There is no cost. There is no catch. I am looking for no compensation. I will supply this to any legal professional who asks, whether they ever formally align with me or not. I genuinely don’t care about that. I care about the people they represent. This invitation goes out to any country. The materials are just as effective in the US as they are in Australia, in the UK as they are in Nigeria.
The pack includes:
A six step handbook for navigating the system, practical, jargon-free, designed for the moment of crisis not the weeks after it.
The 4A Course, a free structured course built around the 4A Method. Less than an hour. Available now.
The Crisis Response Course, for the families, the partners, the parents trying to hold everything together while their loved one is falling apart. Available now.
The Unshackled Journal App, free on the Apple App Store. Daily structure, morning intentions, evening reflection. Built from inside detention to give someone in crisis a framework for the day.
The Unshackled Journal, over a hundred weekly articles written every single Sunday for more than a year. On bail, prison, parole, detention, family, accountability, rebuilding. Free. No paywall.
Five tools. Written and built from inside. Free to anyone who needs them.
If you work alongside lawyers or are a lawyer yourself, reach out. I’ll get the pack to you directly. You can give your clients real tools for stabilisation and show them that you care about them as much as the revenue they provide.
Everything is also available in one place at unshackledproject.com/kit
THE POSITION PAPER
While I have been in here I also wrote a draft referenced position paper, The Missing Infrastructure: Why Lived Experience Mental Health Support Is Absent From Criminal Justice and Why That Must Change.
Twelve sources. Fully referenced. Free to read and share.
If you want a copy, reach out directly at stephen@unshackledproject.com
THE CO-AUTHOR CALL
The position paper is the beginning. But I want to be honest about something.
I am one voice. And one voice, particularly one from incarceration, has limits.
I am looking for three people to build the next version of this work with me.
A senior counsel, someone who knows the legal architecture of these systems from the inside.
A senior psychiatrist, someone who can put clinical weight behind the evidence.
A senior Corrective Services leader (past or present), someone with the sector relationships and credibility to open doors I cannot open from here.
I am not looking for co-authors in the traditional sense. I am looking for authentication. People with the standing in their field to write a foreword, provide a professional sign-off, or be cited in the role they hold. That kind of endorsement is what takes this from a strong piece of lived experience writing to a document the sector cannot ignore.
If that is you, or if you know who that is, I want to talk.
THE PARTNERSHIPS AND RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE FORMING
None of this is theoretical. Here is what is already moving.
Beck Law have formally aligned with The Unshackled Project. While I am still incarcerated, a law firm chose to put their name next to mine. That takes a particular kind of belief and integrity.
Fathers.org.au, a free non-profit community of dads supporting dads, are aligned with the project. Two organisations in two different sectors carrying the same mission.
Peer Qnect, a Queensland peer-led lived experience initiative, are aligned with The Unshackled Project. I am proud to stand alongside the work Emily Cooper and her colleagues do every single day.
QLEWN, the Queensland Lived Experience Workforce Network, hosted Tuesday’s presentation and brought the room that made this conversation possible. I am grateful for the platform and look forward to continuing that relationship.
The IMPACT Network, Queensland’s statewide home for the Lived–Living Experience workforce. I am proud to be aligned with Katie Shields and all of the crew whose work makes a difference every single day.
Dr Baz Dreisinger, founder of the Incarceration Nations Network, has referred to The Unshackled Project as an ally in her recent newsletter. INN are doing extraordinary work bringing higher education into prisons globally and I believe the 4A Method can sit alongside that as the mental health foundation their students need.
Global Freedom Scholars, the world’s first transnational network of justice-involved university students, are aligned with the project.
WHAT COMES NEXT
I have a tagline on my website. It’s a little bit corny.
Custody was the trailer. The movie starts now.
But I mean it more today than I ever have. Because on Tuesday morning, in a room full of people who gave their attention to work built inside the very system it is designed to fix, something shifted.
The infrastructure exists. The evidence exists. The partnerships are forming. The workforce model is designed. The licensing pathway is ready.
Marcus sat in that room, detained alongside me, and felt something rekindle. That is the proof of concept. Not a statistic. Not a case study. A human being in the same conditions I am in, feeling hope move through him because of something we built together in here.
This cannot be a place where hope goes to die.
The oxygen is no longer behind glass.
It is being piped in. One conversation, one partnership, one presentation at a time.
And the movie is just getting started.
To everyone who showed up at IMPACT on Tuesday, thank you. To Michael Houston for pulling off a miracle to facilitate. To his lovely wife Janelle, I appreciate your support this week. To Emily for bringing everything she brought and for the connection that followed. To Katie Shields for building a room that makes conversations like this one possible. To my girlfriend, whose support brought a tear to my eye mid-meeting on Tuesday. And to Marcus, keep going. This is being built for you. To the new friends I met on the webinar, Rose, Said, Skye, and many more, thank you for giving me your attention.
Attention is not a small thing. I do not take it for granted.
Custody was the trailer. The movie starts very soon.
Stay Unshackled, My Friends.
Stephen