Fall Among Thieves - LH Evers

The author took a job in an Australian prison because – well, he needed a job, and any job would do.  What had been a stop gap became and all-absorbing preoccupation with the problem of men in prison.

One day, he was asked if he remembered the Greek bloke who had killed his wife with half a house brick.  He couldn’t remember the particular Greek – and he realised that over the seven years of his employment there, that the stone and steel had crept into his heart to the extent that a man who had killed his wife with half a house brick had left no impression on him. 

In search of what beliefs and values he had left to him after prolonged exposure to the brutality, cynicism and despair of a big maximum-security prison, the author examines his experiences, not as a psychologist, but as a man whose profession is psychology. In the process, comes to several important conclusions.

Leonard Herbert Evers (25 May 1926-18 February 1985) was an Australian novelist and writer for children who was born in Brisbane, Queensland

After dropping out of high school at age fourteen, Len Evers joined the Australian Imperial Force during World War II and later served with the Occupation Force in Japan. Following the war he trained as a teacher and later attained an Arts Degree from Sydney University and a Diploma in Psychology. He left teaching in 1960 to become a psychologist in the NSW prison service