Across the last 18 seasons of the Clink, We have had some really raw conversations. This is one of most listened to episodes with Joe Kwan.
In this “Best of The Clink” feature, Brent sits down once again with Joe Kwon — founder of Confit and a man on a mission to change lives from the inside out. In this powerful excerpt, Joe opens up about the realities of working with today’s youth caught up in postcode wars, violence, and the lure of fast respect.
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Episode Transcript
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Do you know what.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I love that And I want to ask you something
just straight up because I think, you know, like with
the crimes that we're seeing in our youth today, like
they're really becoming quite ruthless. I think, you know, whatever
it may be, out of what choices this knife crime
and their shootings. You know, people don't realize, but they're
(00:38):
using a lot of our young people to do these
dirty work. And you know, you've got kids in there
that you know, and you would remember back in the day,
you know, like to be in Minda or something like that,
or Patterson or carry on, when it was just you know,
to have a murderer in there, you know, like I'm
talking back in the days, you know, like Mintran and
you know Michael Jong and you know all those boys
(00:59):
from Gleebear and there was a few boys that were done.
But today it's like pretty normal for kid to be
going in for stabbing, for murder or you know, things
like this. And I can't help but think that there'd
be a bit of ego and attitude with that, them
going in their feeling and thinking that they're the fucking shit.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
How is it to talk to.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Us about what's funny because you know, our days used
to be gangs, different gangs, different nationalities and all that
kind of stuff. Right, I go in there, It's so
funny because I see the most odd bunch. They're all
co offenders, the most odd bunch.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm like, can I keep them?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
All the curies get to stay together?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
So they get they get moved there. Because we go
to every center, we know who'se co offenders with sure,
every young person that you see on the news, we
get to see them inside. You know, they at one
point they will go through. At one point they will
go through our program. And it's funny because you know,
back then it was very gang related, you know, culture related,
(02:00):
but now it's all about postcodes.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah, I don't understand, so what because I'm sure everybody's
asking these same questions, And if anyone's qualified now to speak.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
On it, it's you.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
You really are.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You know, even now, I don't understand it.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
But they at one point they segregated all the different
units based on their postcode. So you had all the
Mount durl boards on one side, you have all the
Campbelltown boys on one side, you had all like you know, yeah,
so they they were all in different units, right, because
depending on what postcode they are in. And it's so
funny because I go, you know the part of post codes, Yeah,
(02:39):
I know. And the biggest, the biggest part of what
we do is we continue this mentoring out in the community,
right for these young people. So when once they get released,
we continue that mentoring out in the community. They come
to our gyms where we're working at and we give
them a training session, we catch up with them, and
the funny thing is some of them are like, I
can't go there because I'll probably get jumped at the
(02:59):
train station.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I'm like, God, are you guys fucking serious?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
And that it's to that point some what comes to
just say, paramount of train station, the paramount of boys
are going to stab them just for the fact that
they're from a different postcode.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And this is the reality of it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
This is that's the reality, is the.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
World that they're living in, this bubble that these young
people have put themselves in basically now because it is
by choice.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, and that's the reality.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
But the funny thing is once they come to once
I meet them, like, you know, you hear about their
stories on the media, right, and then you actually meet
them inside. They are completely different people that you can
understand the young kids. And when you thought you know
these you know, when these young people, you know, after
doing stabbings and all that stuff, they might be beating
the chairs and we've got a bit of pride.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
They're not like that.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
You know. At the start, we've had some you know,
some of them thinking that they're a little bit too
cool and they won't they won't connect. But we know
who the older guys are and they're all in our program.
So we've set it up so these older guys who
are like like sweepers sort of thing within their union
or are they just not sweepers, but they're.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Like what we used to call them the delegates.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
They're kind of they're like kind of the delegates.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
They're like the delegates, but they're not like racially segregated.
They're just like delegates because they're a little bit older
and they've got a little bit of a pool. So they
just love coming and training with us. So once they
come they come in, everyone else just comes in. They
go all right, okay, so this is a pretty cool program,
you know, And it's just like the first when we
first tell us stories straight from the get go.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
We're straight away bonding with.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Them, with the young girls, it's a complete different story
really tell us.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
So, so the only center that holds our young females
in New South Wales is Reby.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Oh that's always had the females, gosh I remember, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Years ago.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Yeah, So Rebe is down towards Campbelltown, so that your ads. Yeah,
so they hold they hold boys from ten to fift
ten years old, so the really young ones they stay there,
and they hold the females as well.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So it used to be Yasma as well, but obviously
Yasma hasn't even existing anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
No, unless unless they've changed the name.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
It was on PARAMOUNTA Road.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Oh yeah, that that's now a pre released unit for
the suks. They changed the name. I can't remember what
they've changed changed, Serious Defenders. Yeah, it's the works release
unit now within the juvenile system. No corrections, Ah right, okay,
so that went through many hands. If it was it
was a women's prison, it started off with the jew
(05:42):
started off as a Juvi women.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
It was because you had Minda and Yasma Yea and
that was pretty much in the city, that's where you went.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And obviously, yes, it's changed now.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Yes, So for the girls, it's really completely different. You've
got a mixed bunch over there. One girl will prove
is pretty much running the show, and if she doesn't
like it, then none of the girls gets to participate.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, because it's there's.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
At one point the max that we've ever had in
one center was like ten girls. Right, So these are actual,
real serious offenders, and they don't like locking up young females.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
So the one when you say serious offenders like and
I know we speak, we predominantly speak about male And
is this.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Been weird because we should? Well it is.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It's just naturally when you speak to jail, we instantly
go to male.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
But as you would see and know, the females are
quite ruthless as well. You know, what are some of
the crimes when you say serious crimes, same as the.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Men stabbing, A lot of them are like gang related,
post some gang related.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Some are habitual offenders, so they've got substance abuse issues,
consistently breaking, entering all the time, stanning car.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Doing arm robs period. Yeah, there's a lot a lot of.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Violence that comes into it as well. But when I
see a lot of these young girls they've been I
see them as victims, to be honest with you, They've
got some deep seated trauma, trauma like bad. And it's
so funny because we thought, you know, oh, yeah, the
girls are going to be the same as the boys,
you know, being very naive and going in with like
(07:31):
a bunch of men to run these programs, mentoring programs
for the girls. And what we did, what we didn't
realize was the core reason why these young girls are
in custody and have that trauma was because of amount
amount influence.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Absolutely, yeah, I have to agree that.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
With and and and We're just we just had to
sit back and go listen, we might have to rethink
what we're doing with the girls with a bunch of
boys going in trying to run these programs, you know.
So that's why we were thinking straight, we need to
get females on board. We need to get female mentors
on board.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You can see that though, Joe and I get it
because while you know, especially a young woman who's just
had a horrific start to life at the hands of
a male, how is she going to ever listen or
respect exactly another male, especially someone's coming in there trying
to well, I guess help obviously, but you know still
you've got to be a little bit straight up and
blunt with them. You know, you've got to be that
(08:27):
sort of strong male in their presence. You're an educator,
you're there to provide a program. So there's no like
I said, there's no bullshit. You've got to you know,
that's how it is. And the next minute she's like, well,
book up, you.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Talk to me a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
I'm really sort of inquisitive about what you said about
one female can just yeap.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
So there's always the head on cho in the only
because it's such a small unit.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So like in the younger girls have still got the top.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yeah, so there's always the biggest girl, and we don't
know what goes on during the week in that girl, right,
So they might be punching on and hating each other,
but they made.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
To all come to this program. Yeah, so they go.
You have to all go.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
So now we're trying to get them to you know,
talk and stuff, and it's absolute silence. I still remember
my first program that I did at Rebe. I came
out traumatized. But we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna restructure this.
We're gonna think differently about how we run the girls
programs because I remember that I won't mention the name,
but the head honcho. At the time, we're sitting down,
(09:36):
none of the girls are talking, and you can tell
some of the younger ones wanted to get involved, but
she was just giving them the look and they were
all just like.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Had the specific and in for like a violent sort
of crime.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Crime.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, I think I think it was something to do
with the kidnapping and something else.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And she was asking me, she was like, oh, why.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Is your feet so big? Why is your shoes so big?
I was like, I don't know, since they designed the shoes.
And she goes, oh, you shave your legs?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Are you gay?
Speaker 4 (10:06):
And I was like, man, it's fucking like a bit
more aerodynamic. In my head, I'm thinking when I snog
kick you nu.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
But like she was just bluntly just rude, straight up
just rude, trying to put you on show sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
They put you but they play a lot of mind games.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
And I was like, god, this is completely different to
how we run programs with the boys. With the boys,
it's like you lay down the hammer, you tell a story.
This is who we are. Let's do our training session.
We all bond with the girls. It's like you just
can't get them to do anything. You know, we tell
a story, they'll listen. They'll listen. You might go in
some girls is but then one girl would like take
over and I should act like she's like, you know,
(10:44):
running the whole program herself, and she's just yapping on,
like what is going on? It is completely different. Yeah,
it's a complete different vibe.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
So yeah, be tough. It was tough.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
It wasn't to be really frustrating because you've still got
to remain composed and profession
Speaker 1 (11:05):
To hate you jump
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