My cell at Yasmar detention centre, Sydney, during the Whitelion Bailout experience.

I’d played by the rules, I’d done nothing wrong yet here I was in the back of a police van; the confined metal interior clammy and claustrophobic.

Through a gap in the mesh I could see the last flickers of the day disappear while outside all I could hear was shouts from uniformed men and women. None look friendly.

The door clattered open and a guard ordered me out of the van, ordered me to stand in line, ordered me to give up what little belongings I had, ordered me to drop and do 10 press ups if my eye so much as looked in the wrong direction.

Above me, planes passed and I was jealous knowing the passengers were headed to a thousand different destinations, aided by beers and movies, and the only place I was going to end up was this detention centre in the Sydney suburbs.

A metal fence, in a shade of urine yellow seemingly designed to make you feel queasy, rose five metres next to me. From beyond it you could hear the constant grumble of the peak-hour traffic on Parramatta Road. It sounded like freedom.

“Welcome to Hawaii, your island in the sun,” a guard barked at me with a smile that seemed to beg me to play up so he could teach a new prisoner a lesson.

One of the cells at Sydney’s Yasmar detention centre.Source:Supplied

‘YOU’RE NOTHING’

I’m fingerprinted, photographed, my keepsakes are taken and the only thing I’m given is a thin jumpsuit, as worthless as I felt. I had done nothing and I was being treated like a criminal.

Maybe, I was naive, but I didn’t expect the cells to be quite so basic. A wooden desk and bed base, in a putrid pea green. There’s no door on the toilet and shower; it wouldn’t take much for a guard to see me through the reinforced glass.

“There’s no privacy at all. No matter where you are, you have someone looking over your shoulder,” 20-year-old John*, who has been in and out of “juvie” or juvenile detention, since he was 14, confides in me.

It’s only been an hour on the inside and already all the newbies are marching in line and in silence, desperately trying not to attract attention. “You’re nothing,” one hollers at us in the yard. “Society has decided there is no place for you out there, that’s why they’ve dumped you here.”

And then I make a mistake. I look one of the guards in the eye. It seems a natural, normal thing to do. Not here. Not now.

“You eyeballing me? Why are you eyeballing me?” he screams. He’s so close; I can see the weave of his shirt, the heat of his breath, feel the spittle from his mouth.

“Are you OK?” asks Tish, an events manager from Sydney in the dinner hall a bit later. “They really singled you out for punishment.”

Prisoners on parade at the detention centre.Source:Supplied

FIVE STAR HOTEL

John isn’t fazed; he’s used to this kind of thing. “This is a five-star hotel compared to where I was before. We were in the middle of the mountains, 10 degrees sometimes.”

I only had to spend one long night in Yasmar, a former youth detention facility in Sydney’s inner west now reborn as a training centre for prison guards. It may no longer have the same role, but it has the same bars, the same security and the same isolation.

The experience is courtesy of Bailout, a unique event which lets the innocent know what it’s like to be the guilty and banged up. The fundraising event is held annually by Whitelion, a charity that works with vulnerable young people, some of whom have ended up in institutions just like this, to get their lives back on track.

“The idea behind Bailout is it puts participants in the shoes of a young person for the night while also showing them some of the many situations that can lead disadvantaged young people to being incarcerated,” Whitelion’s CEO Mark Watt tells news.com.au.

If volunteers raise enough they can bail themselves out, and go home for the night.

As well as experiencing prison life, those taking part also attend talks on the problems facing disadvantaged young people, such as the drug ice, and get to sit in on a mock trial.

As the night draws to an end some of the prison warders can be bribed to slip you some moonshine. In real life a combination of charity workers and actors, the guards even pose for selfies with their charges when no one’s looking.

‘NEEDLES HANGING OUT THEIR ARMS’

Originally from the NSW north coast, John was homeless at 12. “I’ve been to my fair share of juries, been there done that,” he tells news.com.au.

“Couple of robberies, drugs, stuff like that; I just went down the wrong path trying to get money to live.”

It says he’ll never forget the first day he spent in youth detention.

“You spend 16 hours a day in a cell with a person you’d never met before in your life. Then you come out to a yard with 30 other kids you know they’ve done something wrong, they could be in for anything, that’s intimidating.”

John has been out of detention for several years and has come along to give the overnight inmates a first-hand view of what being on the inside is really like. He now has a flat, a girlfriend, a new puppy, and works six days a week as a removalist. His aim is to be a youth worker and he credits Whitelion with giving him an exit route from the streets.

“I don’t want to be one of them guys sitting on the side of the road begging for change when I’m 30. Seeing people walk through the streets at night, needles hanging out of their arms, that’s what smacks you in the face. Is this who you want to be?”

At dawn, the ‘prisoners’ were up early from their cells.Source:Supplied

SECOND CHANCE

Daniel Ayalew, an outreach worker from Whitelion, remembers when he first found John.

“When I met him, he told me that didn’t have anywhere to stay and that’s how it started. I said, you can go from one friend to another friend, but that not going to solve this problem. The solution is we can work together so we can get accommodation you can call your own home and no one will kick you out.”

Daniel says he searches for the “hot spots” where troubled young people gather and slowly forms a relationship with them.

“Most of the young people have been mistreated by parents, physically and mentally abused and some of them have witnessed parents being beaten so they have issues of trust. It’s a gradual process to show them when they need us, we’re there.”

“We don’t reject any young people, whether they’ve served time, whatever. We’ve supported them because unless you give them a second chance who will?” Daniel says.

“It’s not what happens in the past that matters. It’s are they at the point they actually want to see a future?”

Daniel says he has seen some dramatic changes. “Young people who I met sleeping the streets, now they are completely self-sufficient and that’s a massive transformation and that’s where I get the drive.”

I haven’t made bail so it’s lights out at 11pm and my only perk is solitary — a cell to my own. All too soon, at dawn, the light comes on, the shouting begins again and the doors are swung open.

My release, in little more than an hour, can’t come soon enough.

*Not his real name. ‘John’ wished to keep his identity private.

Whitelion will be holding Bailouts at prisons in Hobart, Adelaide and Melbourne during May. To become a crim for the night, visit the Whitelion website.

benedict.brook@news.com.au