A judge hopes the next three months will be the last a man who helped instigate a prison riot spends in jail after reaching a “turning point”.
Jirra Murphy has already spent most of his adult life in prison.
“I’m just done with jail,” he has told the NSW District Court.
The 25-year-old helped incite a riot at Parklea jail in July 2021 in a bid to be transferred, inspired by his previous scaling of a juvenile detention facility’s roof.
Tension was building at Parklea as the COVID-19 lockdown prevented visitation.
Murphy and three other inmates pushed past a corrections officer at a gate and began climbing a fence, smashing a perspex skylight with broomsticks.
Acting Judge Paul Conlon said those four were the “instigators” of the riot and their actions were “swift, direct and planned”.
Murphy then began retrieving and injecting drugs from the prison roof, as inmates lit fires and assaulted officers, egged on by others.
The damage bill at the privately managed prison in Sydney’s west was estimated at about $8 million.
Murphy appeared in court on-screen over the riot on Monday.
He was also sentenced for a January 2021 crime spree, when he took a stolen car from Canberra to Orange in the NSW central tablelands to visit a relative, driving co-offenders as they stole sunglasses, a wallet and a carton of soft drink from properties before demanding a woman’s car keys, fleeing when her husband and his son arrived.
The “opportunistic and poorly planned” crimes occurred over about two hours, the judge said.
“It was a dumb thing to do … but it’s just normal for us to do that,” Murphy later told a psychologist.
Murphy was paroled months earlier in October 2020 and was back in jail by May 2021, refused bail on other matters.
He has spent less than 12 months outside prison since becoming an adult and is at serious risk of institutionalisation, according to the psychologist’s report.
However, the judge is optimistic.
“Every now and then an offender comes before the court having reached a turning point in their life,” Judge Conlon said on Monday.
“I have some positive hope Mr Murphy does fall into that category.”
After pleading guilty, Murphy was sentenced to four years, with a non-parole period of two years and four months, backdated to July 2021.
The judge was swayed by the psychologist’s report as well as affidavits from Murphy and his mother.
He demonstrated “a real insight in respect of where he is at the moment and how he has got there,” the judge said.
Murphy fell in with antisocial peers after his mother moved to try escaping his abusive father, who tracked them down anyway.
She told the court her life was out of control and she was unable to help her son when he started being locked up as a teenager, where he faced further abuse.
Now his younger siblings are finding work and having families of their own.
“I see the change in him each time I see him,” Murphy’s mother said.
“He sees life has moved on for everyone else and gotten better, and now it’s time for Jirra to catch up.”
He is eligible for parole in November.
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