Mike Williams: Concerts in jails have long and positive history

Mike Williams says the Topp Twins are immensely talented entertainers - musicians, dancers and hilarious comedians. Photo / File

The White Island tragedy has had an unexpected impact on a significant milestone in the life of the New Zealand Howard League, the charity I head.

On Thursday the league mounted one of its biggest ever prisoner graduations at Auckland Regional Women's Jail with eight women receiving beekeeping certificates, 12 acknowledged for their achievements in mastering English as a second language and two gaining certificates for learning to read and write.

This occasion was special as we were honoured with a concert by the Topp Twins to accompany the event.

Concerts in jails have a long and positive history.

Sometime in the 1960s, the iconic American singer-songwriter, Johnny Cash, who'd been a heavy drug user, spent a night in jail at La Fayette in Georgia USA, saw the error of his ways, and mounted a series of concerts in jails, both in America and in other countries.

Johnny Cash became a positive role model for prisoners who decided to turn their lives around.

Though he was to "fall off the wagon" a couple more times in a long career, Cash's music lives on and his service to prisoners remains a beacon for people who get involved in organisations like the Howard League.

I have not had the opportunity to see the Topp Twins, both honoured with damehoods in a recent honours list, and it was an experience I won't forget.

They are immensely talented entertainers – musicians, dancers and hilarious comedians. The large audience of women prisoners, Corrections staff and Howard League volunteer were in the palms of their hands.

It was simply the best show I've been to in many years and if anyone who reads this gets the opportunity to attend a Topp Twins performance, it shouldn't be missed.

TV, newspaper and radio representatives who were to cover the event and bring it to a wider audience, were all diverted to cover the White Island story so it's likely that this column amounts to most of the coverage that this event will get.

This occasion also marks the retirement from the Howard League of president Tony Gibbs and patron Dame Catherine Tizard, and I'd hoped that there would be some coverage of their contributions to an organisation that has grown beyond recognition in the time of their service.

In 2010 when Tony Gibbs was invited to become involved in the Howard League, the organisation - which had been around in New Zealand since 1923 - was effectively moribund with a handful of members, no money and no positive programme to address New Zealand's appallingly high incarceration rate.

Now, as Tony and Cath make their exit the Howard League has its literacy programmes established in all but one of the 19 New Zealand jails, and have extended its jail education programmes into beekeeping, CV preparation, English as a second language training, learning driver's licensing and a wide range of other volunteer-based services.

Several thousand prisoners have benefited from the one-on-one attention of a Howard League volunteer and the results are beginning to show up in Corrections Department statistics.

Mike Williams

Between 2015 and 2018, the proportion of prisoners judged functionally illiterate dropped by eight percentage points from 65 per cent to 57 per cent. The severely illiterate group, which benefits most from the one-on-one tutoring offered by the Howard League volunteers, has also dropped by 4 per cent, from 22 per cent to 18.

This amounts to a dramatic improvement over a short period and while the activities of the Howard League volunteers have made a big contribution to this outcome, a great deal of credit must go to the Corrections Department and its major literacy training supplier, Te Wananga O Aotearoa.

Corrections people have begun to take prisoner literacy seriously and the wananga staff have done a good job.

With more that half of prisoners still functionally illiterate and lacking that most basic of necessities of adult life, a driver's licence, there's still a big job ahead!

The Howard League has been fortunate to get government funding to offer driver's licensing to many probationers on the way to a jail sentence or on release in 14 provincial locations, but drivers' licence programmes in jails are ad hoc and poorly funded.

Leaving the women's jail, uplifted by the Topp Twins' impact on their prisoner audience, there was more good news.

Justice Minister Andrew Little has announced that the two trial Alcohol and Drugs Courts based in Auckland will be permanent and that a third to be based in Hamilton will be launched.

These are courts where offenders swap a prison sentence for closely monitored abstinence. These courts were an innovation of the previous National-led Government and after seven years of trials their success has been measured and has resulted in this correct decision.

In the justice space, it's a good way to end the year.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.