Construction of new prison rehabilitation units begins

The ground was ripped open at Hawke's Bay Prison yesterday as construction began on the country's first new-style rehabilitation units.
Associate Minister of Corrections Pita Sharples took control of the digger to begin construction, which over the next six months will turn the prison's livestock paddock into the 16-bed low security rehabilitation unit Whare Oranga Ake.
Whare Oranga Ake offers a revolutionary approach to mainstream corrections practices and, based on Maori philosophies, will be a stepping stone to help prisoners reintegrate into the community.
Prisoners with high rehabilitation needs, who meet selection criteria, will spend about the last six months of their sentence in Whare Oranga Ake, outside the main prison's barbed fences.
They will participate in day-to-day programmes in conjunction with Maori service providers, sports clubs, counsellors, mentors and education institutes to relearn basic life skills such as cooking, grocery shopping and finding employment.
Another unit will be built at Waikato's Spring Hill Corrections Facility. The $18 million pilot project aims to reduce New Zealand's high recidivist rate.
It will create a Maori environment through its practices, values and language, in order to address the needs of the high numbers of Maori inmates.
Fifty-five per cent of Maori offenders return to prison within four years, compared to 45 per cent of Pakeha and 36 per cent of Pacific Islanders offenders.
Dr Sharples said the units were a "major step for rehabilitating people who've run off the rails, no matter who they are, Maori or Pakeha", and marked the beginning of a new approach to corrections that worked with community support.
"This isn't just another prison. It's not even a healing house, Whare Oranga Ake takes it beyond that and repatriates the inmates with their families and with the skills to survive in a job when they leave this place.
"This will be an example to New Zealand and ultimately I foresee these things being taken up all over the world," he said.
The first four, four-bedroom units will be finished by July 1, and a further four units are scheduled for construction in a year's time.
Choices Health and Community Services has secured the contract to operate Whare Oranga Ake and will work in partnership with Ngati Kahungunu Iwi and Rourou Consultancy Trust.
The finer details were still being ironed out, but Choices chief executive officer Jean Te Huia said it was an "awesome opportunity" that would ultimately build a safer community.
Don Hutana, who was appointed cultural adviser, said the rehabilitation programme would bring inmates into positive activities in the community, and central to that was whanau.
"In prison we're not actually able to work with their families," he said. "There are heaps of psychiatrists in prison but when we work with them, we will work with the family, the iwi, the land, the trees ... it's all about connecting.
"We're going to stop calling them inmates by the time they get to us. We're going to call them whanau."