Dialogue: New prison in Northland will involve the whole community

By MATT ROBSON

This week I gave the green light for a prison to be built in Northland at the Ngawha site. It was not an easy decision to make. I took several weeks to read through a pile of submissions that stood over 1m high. I am well aware of the feelings of some local people who simply don't want a prison in their area. I understand those feelings.

Opening a new prison doesn't seem like good news. Certainly, I want to be in the business of closing prisons, not opening them. But I have to be realistic. The first step must be to do what we can to reduce reoffending, to prevent crime and, therefore, lower the need for prisons. Then I can put myself and my department out of the business of building prisons.

Perhaps you think that sounds good, but is simply good intentions and, after all, who doesn't want to reduce reoffending?

Words don't mean much. So here's what I have that is more than good intentions. If we have to have a new prison to provide enough beds, let's make it an effective one when it comes to changing offenders' behaviour and reducing reoffending.

We will make this prison an effective facility in the job of reducing crime in three ways: first, by having the resources to run the best rehabilitation programmes available; secondly, by designing a prison in real partnership with the community; and, thirdly, by keeping offenders from the North in the North, close to family and whanau. There are local solutions to local problems, and those of us in Wellington need to acknowledge that.

I know I can deliver on these initiatives. I have $4.2 million extra, on top of existing funding, in the upcoming Budget to increase the level of educational opportunities available to inmates across New Zealand, particularly to focus on employment skills. I have almost $1 million extra for tikanga Maori programmes.

I have made available the resources for an iwi liaison person to improve and to build on consultation with local people.

I know that Maori leaders and representatives from the North have some of the best, most progressive ideas in the country about how to turn around offending patterns of some of their own people.

I know we can make this work. It won't be easy. Whether this new facility succeeds will be determined by many more people than myself.

We have the resources to include in this prison a Maori focus unit, one of the more successful schemes piloted recently in places such as Hawkes Bay prison (these total immersion units are quite literally turning Maori offenders into future leaders), a youth unit to tackle youth offending in particular, special cells to handle suicidal inmates to reduce the risk of self-harm, and much more.

Success will also be determined by our ability as a Government to deliver a robust regional development package for the North. There is no point in having the best-run Maori focus unit in the prison, and equipping inmates for the job market, if we don't have local jobs for them to go to on release.

The Minister of Economic Development, Jim Anderton, is committed to job-creation in the North. He knows there is much potential. Maori in the North account for a very high proportion of registered unemployed - 57 per cent of the total, compared with a national average of 30 per cent.

Yet there are fantastic opportunities - the shortage, for example, in the North of basic plumbing, electrical, building and small engineering businesses. Northland has no major tourist hotel. Big-game fishing has potential for managed growth. The possibilities are endless.

This may all seem unrelated to a new prison - which in itself will create local jobs for local people - but it isn't. Creating working communities in the North will give us the best chance of success in reducing reoffending, if we also have the right programmes inside the prison.

The formula is the same, too. The best people to come up with a job plan for the North are the people of the North. Just like the best people to make this prison work are the people of the North.

Prisons today are too often seen as the mental institutions of the past - grey, damp secret-looking places hidden behind rows of sad trees and impossibly high fences.

For the sake of community safety, we still need the high fences and the best security modern technology can supply. But the time has come to lift the veil of secrecy from our prisons, just as we did from the mental institutions of the past.

This facility at Ngawha will not be a cold brick tower with no windows simply dropped in a paddock by the Department of Corrections. What it becomes will emerge from the community in partnership with the Government.

This prison won't simply be in the North, it must come from the North. That is why we must continue and improve on community consultation and participation. The rest of the country will be watching to see if this, the first facility in a new era of rehabilitation, succeeds in reducing reoffending. We have every chance of achieving that goal.

* Matt Robson is the Minister of Corrections.