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Joseph Friedman

Joseph Friedman

Researcher

Oct 20, 2026

17:21
And when it comes to accessing doctors and maybe nurses and healthcare professionals, what, they're not there in the prison or you have to wait months and months? What are the issues around access?
17:32
That's right.
17:33
It's probably the latter.
17:34
So most prisons do have clinics and at least for the men's prisons, there's 24-7 clinics.
17:39
attendees in the clinics, whether they're nurses, most likely other healthcare professionals.
17:44
In South Australia, for example, at the women's prison, they don't have anyone 24-7 on site, and that has caused issues before.
17:51
But yeah, it's more that requesting to see a medical professional If you're in the wider community, you book in an appointment and you go and see a doctor.

8 MINS LATER

26:17
Joseph, what do you want Australians to know about health care inside prisons? I think

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The Newspaper Behind Bars: Joseph Friedman Tells Jeremy Cordeaux How About Time Got Over the Wall | Court of Public Opinion

Oct 2 · 24m

1:47
Did you have any trouble getting it off the ground and over the wall? [laughs]
1:51
Uh, [laughs] we w- yeah, it's, it's, it...
1:55
We, we thought we would have more trouble than we did.
1:57
Um, we thought that no matter how much money we were able to raise, no matter how many supporters from similar organizations around the country, ultimately, to, to get anything into prison, you need approval from the state or territory's corrections authority.
2:12
Um, and here in Australia, we have eight separate authorities.
2:16
You need approval from each to go into a particular facility.
2:20
Um, and we don't have any free speech protections like the US, and so we thought, "Well, they'll just say no." Um, but slowly but surely, we were able to organize meetings with each department.

19 MINS LATER

21:04
How many innocent people do you think are in there?
2:15
Are there cases that stuck with you from that exchange, Joseph?
2:19
Yeah, for sure.
2:20
I was on a team.
2:22
We had four or five clients across the country, mostly in the Midwest and South region.
2:28
And what was really hard is that The post-conviction process takes many, many years and usually it fails.
2:34
So we had one client, a Georgian man named Albert Debelbot, who was in jail for the alleged murder and convicted murder of his son.
2:45
And it was highly likely, we believed, that the son had actually died of natural causes of sudden infant death syndrome.

8 MINS LATER

10:32
How do you approach the reality that many people who are incarcerated have had cognitive issues, head injuries, things like hearing loss during school and may not be able to express themselves to their full wish and to be able to read the stories of others?

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