‘I’m gonna stab ya’: How Hugh Jackman’s brother dealt with his toughest crowd

On his first day as a teacher at a notorious Melbourne youth detention centre, Ralph Jackman got a frightening reality check while being led past a row of cells.

“I’m gonna stab ya, ya white c—,” an inmate yelled at him.

Jackman says he jumped “a mile”, even though the culprit was locked up.

“My tormentor pissed himself laughing,” Jackman writes in Detention, his new memoir about working with young inmates at Parkville College, which is part of Parkville Youth Justice Precinct.

One of Jackman’s brothers is the superstar actor Hugh Jackman, but Ralph has also faced some tough crowds in his two years, in 2021 and 2022, in what must be one of teaching’s hardest gigs.

Some of his students had been arrested for murder, home invasions and car chases, and he saw some of them trash equipment, start fights, and attack staff.

But he found that, if you engaged with students and their interests, they could surprise you, such as one tough student who had a talent for poetry.

In the end, Jackman grew frustrated at what he saw as the school’s sparse resources and overly punitive mindset, including the use of isolation and solitary confinement.

“Heaps of investment is needed in youth justice,” he told this masthead in an interview this week.

“I talk in the book about the vicious cycle — they’re under-staffed which means the young people have to be locked down, which leads to them becoming more heightened, which leads to more attacks when they’re out of their cells, which leads to more staff taking time off.”

Jackman understands why people in the community might want to lock up offenders and throw away the key.

But he says education and community support are the best preventatives to recidivism.

Jackman taught algebra to a student named Miles by taking less conventional approaches such as replacing the letters x and y with cookies.

Miles “got it”, and later Jackman heard that while Miles had previously wanted to leave school, after his release he studied Year 10 and wanted to be an electrician.

Jackman says that most Parkville students had had traumatic childhoods.

“There were refugees who had seen relatives killed in war.”

One 15-year-old car thief, Jimmy, had a reading age of six and blurry eyesight from being hit.

He had severe ADHD, and grew up in a drug-filled household. He had lived at 50 addresses.

“I really want to learn to read,” Jimmy told him. Jackman read children’s books with Jimmy and gradually his literacy improved.

Jackman grew up on Sydney’s affluent North Shore and went to a posh school, Knox Grammar.

However, as Jackman told one class, his mother left his family to live in her native UK when he was nine, and after that, he’d see her once a year on average.

Jackman says working in Parkville reminded him how well his father Chris kept things together for him and his four siblings.

“It made me think about how precarious families can be.”

Jackman also experienced how the smallest piece of guidance can help young people.

When Jackman was in his mid-20s, and in a mediocre sales job, his brother Hugh, then a student at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, sent him a pamphlet for a broadcasting course in Perth and suggested Ralph apply.

Jackman got in, graduated and had a 25-year career in TV reporting and producing sport and news.

For three years, from 2014, Jackman and his wife Kat and two children lived in New York while Kat worked for human rights organisation Reprieve.

While there, Jackman volunteered at a secondary school, Harlem Village Academies, helping disadvantaged young people apply for college.

In 2017, they moved to Kat’s home town, Melbourne, and after a bid to start a media company failed, Jackman studied teaching. After graduating he found there weren’t many offers from schools for teachers with his specialty in history.

However at Parkville, “I got an interview and was offered a job later that day”.

After two years working at Parkville, Jackman suffered seizures thought to have been exacerbated by stress and lack of sleep. He decided, for his health, to resign.

In his resignation letter, Jackman complained about how some inmates were being isolated for 22 hours or more per day, without meaningful human contact, which he said caused their declining mental health and suicide attempts and was excluding them from class.

In March 2023, The Age published an extract from that letter, while not identifying Jackman.

The article also said that 14 whistleblowers – all teachers – had approached independent federal MP Zoe Daniel with similar concerns, who in turn had raised them with Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass, Premier Daniel Andrews and federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

At the time, Corrections Minister Enver Erdogan said the government’s top priority was ensuring the safety and wellbeing of staff and young people at youth justice centres, and that the use of isolation was “always a last resort”.

However, looking back now Jackman says that teaching at Parkville was “an incredible experience”.

Jackman now teaches at Saints College in North Melbourne, a school for young people who have dropped out of the mainstream.

Jackman says that at Parkville, many young offenders wanted to turn their lives around, and just needed the support to do so.

“I think this idea that we can make our communities safer through harsher punishments is a disastrous approach to it,” he said.

“I think the only solution, and it’s a long-term solution, is through providing opportunities.”

The Victorian Department of Justice was approached for comment.

The book Detention by Ralph Jackman will be released by publisher Allen and Unwin on June 2.