From Country Girl to Kings Cross Drug Dealer; Gary Jubelin’s ‘I catch killers’ podcast.
Alyson Colquitt provides a window into the world of remand and custody procedures in NSW. She was arrested in 2015 and spent over a year in a remand facility with no support during her painful forced detox from drugs and alcohol.
A country girl who found herself caught up in the underbelly of Sydney’s criminal activities and had no idea how the remand or prison process worked. “I didn’t get to go in front of a judge for 14 months.”
“Being on remand means that you can’t access any of the drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs, you can’t access counselling, you can’t access a lot of stuff.”
Unlike in prisons (during a person’s custodial sentence) where there is access to a Services and Programs Officer who is a link to the outside world and can assist in reaching out to services or family, there is no access to these Officers from a remand centre.
Alyson, who since her release has worked hard to stay sober and move forward in life and now assists in programs helping at-risk women, still remembers the trauma of being remanded with no real explanation or help from the outside world. Her forced detox was incredibly painful and she hopes improvements will be made to support those who have found themselves on the wrong path in life.
Highly recommend listening to the podcast episode, incredibly insightful and certainly gives pause for thought on how the system treats those who are not yet to be convicted.