Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

That is essentially the sadness I felt throughout my 11-week stay, that an
officer apologises to those who are penalised by the few who do the wrong
thing. But the drug addiction is an addiction that leads to violence because
an addict needs to feed the addiction. It is better to treat addicts as sick, and
develop non-criminal strategies, otherwise such a centre as Cadell is merely
a drug rehabilitation centre for those the courts criminalise!
I think of those addicted to food, the excessively obese individuals, who
feed their addiction by having good individuals provide the food for them
while they themselves have reached the point of immobility.
Visiting sessions, weekends and public holidays only, with exceptions for
interstate visitors, are 1–4 p.m. My visitors came from Victoria and New
South Wales as well as from South Australia: Peter, Dagmar, Polydoros,
Mohammed, Robert, Dave and Jock, David, Christopher, Kai ...
Here are some accounts by visitors that give a good feel for what happened
when I received them.
A visit to Dr Töben, Saturday 29th August 2009
Yesterday, Saturday, 29 August, three of Fredrick's friends, myself
included, visited him at Cadell Training Centre. It was a two and a half
hour drive to Cadell, which is located 180 km from Adelaide.
We arrived just before 2pm, running late as we had planned to arrive at
1pm. Upon arrival we entered the gates, parked our vehicle and went to
the visitors office. We were met by quite friendly prison officers, and given
a form to complete with our personal particulars, and identification. After
checking this and our IDs, we had to place any keys or money in a locker
provided and then have our bodies scanned with a hand held metal
detector, after which we passed through the glass doors to the visitors’
area.
We were greeted by quite a pleasant surrounding, approximately 20 picnic
style benches under some leafy gum trees. About 10 of these benches
were occupied by varying groups of visitors, obviously family and friends.
One of the guards had gone to inform the prisoner of our arrival, and after
a couple of minutes we saw a figure approaching from the surrounding
buildings. At first I was unsure if this was Fredrick. I had never seen him
wearing Jeans!! He also looked much younger than the last time that I had
seen him, on the day that he was imprisoned, 13th August, just over 2
weeks ago.
At first Fredrick, displaying his particular sense of humour, pretended to
have lost his mind and seemed to have been in a state of consciousness
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