Free The October Killings by Wessel Ebersohn

new youngsters and an academic from UPE. You’ll get on well with him, a highly educated man. He’ll be invaluable to you. So I’ve got twenty-four now.” He paused for dramatic effect that was not needed on Yudel. “Twenty-four psychologists and one hundred and sixteen thousand…”
    â€œâ€¦ two hundred and twenty prisoners,” Yudel completed the number for him. “So what do you want from me…” He paused for a moment before experimentally using the commissioner’s first name. “… Joshua?” he finished.
    â€œI want you to train selected, ordinary warders to use your system. I want you to coordinate the program nationally and Lesela to be in charge in this province.”
    â€œLesela?”
    â€œThe academic. We can call the warders you choose parapsychologists, like paramedics.”
    â€œI understand, but we’ll need a different name. Parapsychology is something else. We could call them psychology interns.”
    The impatient hand was waving again, but the beginnings of a smile were in the commissioner’s eyes. “Any name, I don’t care. But I think you are not against the idea.”
    â€œIt can be done,” Yudel said. “We’d need to select the men carefully, both interns and prisoners. It doesn’t work with all prisoners.”
    â€œI know. You’ll have to do it all.”
    â€œThere’s one other thing,” Yudel said. Despite always having done some private work in his own time during his years in the department, he had always been embarrassed about discussing money. Three years without his monthly paycheck had cured him of that. “I need to make a living,” he said.
    The commissioner had thought of that. “I’ll give you a year’s contract and I’ll pay you three times what you earned when you were with us. I will also not expect you to come in for the usual forty hours a week. I know I’ll get my money’s worth from you.”
    Yudel considered the matter briefly, very briefly. He tried unsuccessfully to restrain his right hand from shooting out in the direction of the commissioner. He was still trying to avoid looking too enthusiastic when the commissioner started shaking his hand, a lot more vigorously than their earlier handshake.
    â€œI need to do something about my psychology section, Yudel. Right now it’s a joke. And the country is suffering because of it.” Yudel had always seen him as a man who was determined to do his job well. Holding that view of him had made Yudel more surprised and disappointed at his retrenchment than he would otherwise have been. “And I like your methods. I believe in them.”
    In several long meetings in the past Yudel had told the commissioner that teaching a criminal to lay bricks did not turn him into a bricklayer. It made of him a criminal who knew how to lay bricks. Yudel’s thinking was that, while teaching crafts to criminals was not a bad thing, it did nothing toward rehabilitating them. To Yudel, criminals were a subculture in rebellion against mainstream society. Their code of morals was different from that of other people. For them, to give evidence against other criminals was immoral. One of them who ratted on another was an outsider to be shunned. In extreme cases they were lowlifes to be killed. Anyone who had dealings with criminals knew that they did possess a moral code; it was just that it was an inverted form of the one that applied to regular society. Straight society was out to get them and they had to fight back.
    It was this basis of the criminal culture that had to be confronted before rehabilitation could take place. In Yudel’s view, until the criminal had come to the realization that the rest of humanity was not the enemy, there could be no reconciliation between them. And rehabilitation, ultimately, was a matter of reconciliation. He agreed with the commissioner that the department