Brian Rudman: How to contain prisoners? Send them to Auckland's towers

Minister Judith Collins' wacky idea of putting her prisoners to work building their own living quarters out of shipping containers is not exactly new. Not the "living in containers" bit, anyway.

A home created from a container and jutting out of a cliff along the Wellington waterfront was a sight to be shown to visiting Aucklanders by proud locals a few years back.

I suspect, though, that if that pioneer container-dweller had had the $380,000 a bed to spend that Mrs Collins is quoting as the cost of turning her containers into cells, he would have used more traditional building materials.

Mrs Collins told the Sunday Star-Times the build-your-own-prison concept was a great idea for several reasons. It kept idle hands busy. It would give a better standard of housing than older prisons such as Mt Eden. And it would be much cheaper than the $643,000-a-bed cost of the new Spring Hill Prison near Meremere.

All fair points - especially if you're determined to achieve the Guinness Book of Records prize for locking up more citizens per head of population than any other country in the free world.

But if Mrs Collins is shopping on price and "better standards", why doesn't she indulge her free-market impulses, and open her mind to all the options. A couple of years back her predecessor Damien O'Connor was similarly agonising over bed shortages, although his problem was related to a desire to empty the 19th century dungeons at Mt Eden as soon as possible.

At the time I suggested the answer lay in the commercial property market.

Then, the average retail cost of the 417 two-bedroom apartments in The Volt, on the corner of Queen St and Mayoral Drive, was a mere $143,000 a bed, and with that went a kitchen with appliances, and a toilet rather less en suite than in Her Majesty's accommodation.

Even with the cost of a few rolls of razor wire, the savings to the taxpayer seemed amazing. Everyone, indeed, would have been happy, the developer, the inmates and the overcrowded prison service.

But the wimpy socialists in power feared they'd be seen as going soft on the prisoners if they took up the opportunity, and persevered instead with new prisons costing four times as much.

Since then, Auckland's property market has become even more attractive to the canny buyer.

This year, a studio apartment in the 220-unit Railway Campus - the converted old central railway station - sold for just $18,000. Certainly the purchaser was liable for a further $19,000 for his share of the remedial work on the leaky roof, but the total is still a fraction of the cost of Mrs Collins' planned container conversion project.

In the same auction, two two-bedroom apartments went for $30,000 and $44,000, the dearer one with a carpark.

Of course the place does have its problems with damp, but on the plus side, that would remind old lags of Mt Eden, and please the vindictive among us who don't think imprisonment in itself is punishment enough.

A quick check on the web offers Mrs Collins plenty of other deals that make much better economic sense than Chez Containerville.

The Eclipse Apartments, in "prime central Auckland", have one- and two-bedroom deals for between $288,000 and $345,000.

The good news for Finance Minister Bill English is he has to put down only 15 per cent, and doesn't have to begin repayments until November.

Finance is on offer from only 4 per cent, and the units come with free furniture, quality appliances and an internal gymnasium and pool.

Nearby is the 15-storey Federal Apartments with two-bedroom units from $279,000. They have balconies, free furniture and interest rates from 4 per cent. I'm sure if Mrs Collins waved the cash around she'd be able to pick up a whole tower block.

Admittedly, this sort of accommodation wouldn't suit every prisoner. The ones with a propensity to put their heads through solid wallboard, for example. Or those likely to scarper.

But there must be many among the 8500 rotting inside our prisons who just want to get on with serving out their time. Would it be so stupid to put them in a halfway tower block in preparation for release into the wider community?

Certainly it would save the taxpayer millions of dollars.