Interview - Anthony Prince

Author of Bank Robbery For Beginners

By Michael Tancredi

Australia has an odd and proud history of criminals. From Ned Kelly, to Chopper Reid, to the exploits of the Underbelly - our fascination with the darker side of the human condition has kept us entertained for decades.

The first anyone had heard of Anthony Prince and Luke Carroll was when a photograph of them flashing wads of US dollars grabbed headlines across Australia and the USA.

Bank Robbery For Beginners is Anthony Prince's incredible account of how a single act of (criminal) stupidity changed his life forever.

Web Wombat caught up with the ex-con to talk all things prison, youth and family...

Where would you say this book fits - it's a bit of crime, a bit of an autobiography, a bit of comedy...

It's a bit of a self help book too. As you said - there is a merging of the genres. Obviously it's true crime to begin with, but what I really tried to demonstrate with it was the mindset I was in, where I really had no reality of the consequences that were to come. 

I was paying no respect to those consequences - so I highlighted the fantasy I was living in.

I think a lot of young people, and every human, does live in that [frame of mind] from time to time, where you are doing things that are a means to an end - but they are not really considering what would happen if they did get caught : what kind of repercussions would it have on your family, or the things that you love most in life.

It was really just trying to highlight that. To show that - yeah - I was young, I was reckless and I didn't have a lot of self respect. 

It was only when I pulled the gun on Jessica [The Bank Teller]... the pain that it caused her, and the ripple effect it had on my family. That's what hurt - to see the pain I caused to the people I loved. For me, I didn't care about my self, it was just seeing the people, that I loved so much, struggle - that's what broke my heart.

Would you say that the emotional pain hurt more than the 48 to 52 months of incarceration... or was it a different pain?

A different pain, for sure. It's a longer lasting pain in the way it affected my family. My parents divorced while I was in there and my actions had a huge effect on that.

I obviously don't think about that every day, but when I reminisce, it really does make me quite emotional to think about it. To have contact with Jessica [one of the bank tellers] and have her forgiveness eased that considerably. But at the time, going through prison, it was a much different pain.

Prison wasn't so much a physical pain as it was a daily kind of anguish. Not being at home with everything you're familiar with, being in a foreign environment, to put on that "hard side"... because that's not really like me.

I'm not physically scarred by that, so I've been able to let go of a lot of that pain and move on from it. But I would say the emotional effect it's had on my family has left a permanent scar on me, for sure.

A lot of parenting advice suggests to give your kids a good structure which they will, hopefully, carry them on into their adult life. Yet, you say you came from a loving, caring family - but it's pretty extreme thng what you did...

Very extreme. My parents, and their parenting skills, I appreciated it and was always viewed in a positive light. It was text book parenting in the way there was so much love and affection.

We were given a lot of independence - my mum would always came down to my level if I'd done something wrong and she'd say, "Look, this is what you've done, this is how it's hurt this person - do you understand that?". She would just talk to me on a human and mature level.

I was given a lot of independence earlier on, and I think having that independence - going overseas with a mate in a foreign country, at a time when my emotions and hormones were raging - they were all just factors that came together and really allowed me to step outside of that structure and framework which my parents had given me. 

I just ran wild.

You say it's a self help book - from a parenting perspective, is there anything that parents could get from this to stop their own kids from going in the wrong direction?

I just flipped. How do parents gain something from that? That's the thing - my old man never saw those things coming, never knew I was in that teen troubled mind. I'd always have that [Smiles] "Hey Dad!" - shining personality when I'd see him. But underneath I was having trouble finding myself, being accepted with my friends and having my own moral framework.

I didn't have that, I was all over the place, so it was much easier for me to do something like I did.

The lead up to the robbery is a very firmly structured narrative - however, once you go into prison, you've seemed to cherry pick moments. One get's the sense that there is much more to the prison story that we don't hear...

Obviously, for one, me and Jack [Marx] only had six or seven months to write this. But I had journals - hundreds and hundreds of pages of daily emotions and activities. I know there are a lot of things that have been left out.

I've read the book and I know there are at least five things that were quite major that I wish I could have had in there. We didn't have the time and maybe Jack - or the publishers - didn't think it fitted into the story.

Could you enlighten us with some of those major moments while you were in prison?

One thing I didn't really touch on was just the constant regulation and control by other men - being prison officials and staff - on a day to day basis at every point in time.

"Inmate, pick that paper up. Inmate, do this. Piss into that cup. Stand up, it's 4 o'clock count".

No man likes to be told what to do, especially when it's every moment of the day, being spoken to like a dog and being ordered around. Your pride is just squashed on the floor. My self esteem had a difficult time during that stage - it was only through my studies and my letter writing back home that I was able to find a little bit of solace.

Things like that, which I could harp on about for a long time, that did bring me down and did make me feel like "This isn't worth it". I touched on that in the book, that there were times where I really dug myself into a mental and emotional rut. I could speak about that - but I'm not sure people are really interested in reading it.

I understand you did 30 days of solitary confinement...

30 days, then 7 months straight [Laughs].

So 7 months with no contact with anyone, apart from the guards?

I spent about 2 months with another inmate, then my security level went up [going up from minimum level security to medium].

In that time I spent six and a half to seven months in tiny cell. I had one hour where I could go out, at five in the morning, where it would be heavy snow - so you wouldn't want to [go outside]. Even sitting here in your office, with the artificial light brings back those emotions. There are those moments, for sure, that grimmer time...

But my personality is light hearted and positive - and I feel that comes out in the book.

Going back to that moment before you went into the bank - if you had of turned away, what do you think your life would be like now?

I think my life, now, wouldn't be as wholesome as I feel it is at the moment. I'm really confident about myself, I feel like I'm a new man, I'm really happy with the man that I am and the growth that I've gone through.

I also feel quite positive about the love that it's brought into my family - even though my parents are split - there is still this unconditional, undying love that's between us that's created a stronger bond than ever before.

A lot of my mates at that time were in the party scene, going crazy, little jobs here and there, not sure whether they were going to study or not.

For me, it snapped me right out of that. I thought : "F**k, I'm in a s**t situation here, I'm going to have to do something about it". So I started to study, started to get serious about rehabilitating my life and showing my family and myself that I wasn't just what the media portrayed - I can be much more.

So when I came home, all of my friends were just coming out of that scene and starting to establish good careers and uni and what not. So I hadn't really missed out on anything besides a bunch of 21st's and parties and things like that. I've come home with this drive and dreams and aspirations.

I really do regret the pain I caused - but at the same time - the growth I developed throughout that time, I wouldn't take it away.

Bank Robbery For Beginners is out now through Pan Macmillan