I Was Jailed for Burning Down A Man's House. Now I Publish Prisoner’s Art.

In the mid-2010s, Damien Linnane set a man's house on fire. 

It wasn’t Linnane’s original plan. Instead, he’d prepared to arrive, locate the man and beat the living shit out of him. But he wasn’t there. So he settled for the slow, lulling-inferno and the house’s demise.

While he had his reasons (ones that I’m almost prepared to agree with), the event set him on a path towards incarceration. He was jailed in late-2015 for two years with a 10-month no parole period. During his stay, and with the invisible hands of depression taking a hold, he turned to creative endeavours as an effort of self-reform. The prison system wasn’t helping, so he helped himself.

What arose was the fictitious thriller novel, Scarred, written over 5-months, that has since been published, as well as a collection of hyper realistic artworks of public figures like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X, that were exhibited in a group exhibition, “Beyond the Bars”, upon his release. In 2021, his drawings would be published by Penguin House in an illustrated book titled, This is Ear Hustle.

With a newfound realisation of the benefits of creative outlets while imprisoned, Linnane became the editor of Paper Chained, a magazine showcasing the artistic endeavours of prisoners. Inside are poems, fictional stories, essays and artworks depicting the often depressing (in his own words) lives of those incarcerated.

While the magazine experienced a rocky start at its genesis in 2017 – banned from several prisons – the determination of prisoners petitioning saw the bans overturned at several facilities.

These days, Linnane gets multiple submissions a week, working 15 hours under funding through the Community Restorative Centre – a Sydney-based organisation that provides support for people involved in the criminal justice system – to compile true stories of the prison experience – works about missing their families, being in isolation or struggling with mental health.

“It’s really helpful for prisoners. They can read the magazine and know that other people understand what they’re going through,” he told VICE.

VICE: Nice to meet you Damien. Can you tell us a bit about yourself: who you are, what you do?

Damien: So essentially two things keep me busy. I'm completing a PhD through Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle. And I'm editor of the magazine, and both of these things were motivated by my time in prison. 

So I'm not saying people shouldn't be punished. But prison didn't address the cause of my offending. And so I went in there and what I wanted and needed was mental health treatment. And there's none available because prisoners don't have access to Medicare. So that's what my PhD is focused on – trying to make mental health treatment available for general population inmates and primarily through making Medicare available in prisons. There's nothing that's provided by Medicare, like mental health care plans, telehealth, anything like that. So yeah, I split my day between working on my PhD and working as the editor of the magazine, Paper Chained.

Do you mind if I ask what you went to prison for?

I'm definitely happy to talk about that. So I probably have to wind back a bit and explain how everything happened. So when I was eight, I was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance of my father and stepmother. And when I told my father and stepmother about it, they didn't believe me. And that was, for me, more traumatising than being abused in the first place. But because they didn't believe me, I just tried to bury it. And then exactly 20 years later my partner at the time was confiding in me and she told me that she'd been historically raped. It obviously wasn't her fault at all, but by telling me, she was unintentionally re-traumatising me as her story reminded me of the abuse that I had suffered, which I’d been trying to forget about. I had a complete and total nervous breakdown. And over a period of a year with this knowledge and not knowing what to do about it, I made the decision to go to this man's house. I was planning on beating the living hell out of him, but long story short, he wasn't home, but I was there and I was angry. So I set fire to his home. The entire place burned down. 

I'm really sorry that that happened to you. That's awful. How long were you incarcerated for?

So, I got a two year sentence, but with a non parole period of 10 months. And so I got out after 10 months. But there's some interesting background there as well. I was originally assessed for what's called an intensive corrections order, which is a way to serve your sentence in society, through community service and mandatory reporting. I was living in Armidale, and my pre-sentencing report recommended that I have regular therapy with someone who specialised in autism, since it was accepted in court that my autism limited my ability to understand and process the emotions leading to my crime. And our small town didn't have one of those. And I couldn't afford to leave and they couldn't cater to someone who had a disability, so the magistrate found that I was unsuitable for the community sentence and had no choice but to send me to prison. 

It's incredibly unjust. But I look at prison as one of the most constructive periods of my life. So I'm not upset that things ended up the way they did. But, I mean, I definitely think it's very wrong that people with disabilities get treated a lot worse in the criminal justice system because of their lack of resources. 

So you said this was a constructive period. What do you think was constructive about it?

I have a lot of strengths and weaknesses. But one of my strengths is that I've always been self motivated. I've always had this kind of internal drive. I just finished an undergraduate degree and I wanted to start a Masters in prison. But they said I was dreaming. There's very limited educational courses in prison. It's pretty much just basic literacy. And then I had the mandatory appointment with the prison psychologist, but they don't actually provide any therapy because of funding. I'm ex-military so I wasn't afraid of going in, but I was afraid once I realised that the prison wasn’t going to give me anything constructive to do for 10 months. 

And then I was like, alright, well, what can I do? All I had in my cell was pen and paper. So I just started writing this story. And basically, the only way I escaped in prison was by diving myself into this fantasy land. And so over a period of five months, I wrote the entire draft of this novel, and then I spent the second half teaching myself to draw. 

How did having a creative outlet inspire you to create or build this platform [Paper Chained] to let other people explore that?

Like I said, I've always had this internal drive, whereas a lot of people in prison don't have that. They've had a lot of failures in life, and they've given up. So it was all well and good that I wrote and I was making all this art, but there was no constructive way for me to share it with anyone. I was making it and putting it in a box underneath my bed. And that was actually kind of depressing. I just wanted to share everything with the world. 

So I remember thinking, “Why isn't there some kind of creative outlet for us?” And I asked around: “Is there a prison magazine?” And there have been many in the past actually, but it's been so long that nobody could remember one and nobody had heard of one. So that was ridiculous. There's no mental health support there. There's no creative outlets. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't been isolated like that, how much you need some kind of recognition or to be given a voice. Even getting a letter completely changes your entire day in prison, like it makes it a lot less depressing. So I knew how much mental health support it would give them to have a creative outlet.

So I thought, “When I get out, I'm gonna help set one up”. 

How would you describe the submissions that you get? Do they mostly reflect the prison experience?

So, in terms of writing, it's overwhelmingly poetry, and I also get opinion pieces on the prison system. One thing I've always wished we got more of was fiction. We actually share a series, in every issue, that’s this western story, which I very much enjoy. And yeah, it's mostly themes of incarceration. People are talking about their own experiences, being separated from their families, feeling isolated from the world or not feeling heard. 

Depression is definitely a theme. Art has always been a bit tricky. It's mostly limited to what people can fit in an envelope. They'd have to apply for permission to post something if it didn't fit in an envelope. And once they get it to me, I can't give it back to them. Sending something out of a prison is one thing but there'd be too much chance that I could have put a dab of LSD on the corner or something. So then the prisoners would be hesitant to send things because they know they can't get it back.

Are there any standout artists or poets or writers that you've come across?

We were getting these incredible photographs from a prisoner of the most incredible model motorbikes. This prisoner, David John Gay, he makes these incredible motorbike sculptures out of sanded down matchsticks. And I was really enjoying sharing those in the magazine. Unfortunately, and this is another issue, he got transferred to another prison in New Zealand, which happens all the time, often without warning, it could be just because of overcrowding. But he's now been moved to a different prison in New Zealand that doesn't allow matchsticks as part of the art and craft supplies. So those have stopped now. 

And something I got, that I never expected, was from one prisoner in New South Wales. He actually got permission to crochet in his cell. So I got a photograph of his crochet work that I shared in the magazine. But that prisoner was finding it hard to get wool, so I said, “Well, I'll send you some” and so I posted some. But they decided he wasn't allowed to have access to wool. There were also two pieces of writing that people told me they found particularly powerful. “Until” by an anonymous contributor, and “I believe” by Stacy Stokes.

What kind of reception do you get from people that are incarcerated or even people that read the magazine?

I'm always blown away by the feedback I get from people in prison. People send me letters every week telling me how important it's been to them to see their work. There’s also a couple of people who have gone out of their way to tell me, “I'm not sure if you understand how popular this magazine is in prison”. So, for example, with the tablets in New South Wales, they're slowly being rolled out, they're not in all the prisons yet, but one guy said to me, “We've only got one tablet for the entire wing in this prison. And people are putting up their hands saying ‘I'm next because I want to read the magazine on the tablet’.” I get letters all the time. 

Do you think these creative endeavours are influential in helping aid reform?

Yes, definitely. Something that our corrections have never understood is that the benefits from education in person don't come from getting a certificate at the end, they come from the experience of learning. So studies consistently show that informal learning, such as a teacher just teaching someone how to read and where there's no formal assessments and no test at the end, those are really beneficial. 

You’ve got these really bullshit courses that exist in prison where you can go to 10 classes, and you get a certificate that says you've successfully completed the course. Even if you’re just sleeping up the back because the prison system just wants to hit their KPIs. Art is a lot different because there's no stress, there's no formal assessments, it's something you can do on your own time. And so it's a huge boost of self esteem and self worth when people feel something more constructive. I've met several people who actually have art careers now from things they've taught themselves in prison.

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