After doing a quick wine tasting at the famed Voyager Estate, we drove back up to Fremantle to do the Fremantle Prison tunnel tour. The prison tunnel tour is a bit different than your usual prison tour in that it’s very intensive in what they require you to do. Because you will be canoeing in water and climbing very long ladders in a harness, they mandate that you take a breathalyzer test (can’t have any drunks on this tour), tie your hair up if it’s long, wear socks so that you can put on gum boots, and also wear helmets and body suits to cover yourself from all the dust and debris that may get on you. I’ve never heard of any tour that makes you do a breathalyzer test, so I knew we were in for something crazy.

The tunnels are were the prisoners of the Fremantle Prison worked under the prison during the end of the 1800s, and it was eye opening to see the terrible conditions that prisoners have always had to endure up until today. Not that prisons in the U.S. are known for treating their inmates well, but here, they were forced to wear kilos-heavy shackles on their ankles and climb ominously unstable and thin ladders, carrying all types of heavy material to do their work in tunnels and holes that barely had any light. If anyone died in the prison, their family would be notified only of their death, but not how they died. They had virtually zero rights. And if an inmate ever got on the bad side of another inmate, it would be easy to fake an accidental death by pushing them off the ladder or beating them over the head with shackles. No one would ever find out, so what was there to lose?

I always feel so sad for prisoners. In most cases, many of them did commit wrong and violent crimes. But at the end of the day, they are still human beings who have rights. It especially pains me to think of prisoners who have spouses and children that they can barely see if at all (in the U.S. at least, I know that minors are not allowed to visit inmates). What have the spouses or the children done to have deserved being separated from their husband or wife or father or mother?