Jail manager George Massingham deserves a lot of the credit for this achievement but the prison staff, our volunteers and, of course, the prisoners who decide on a path of self-improvement must also get much credit.
If New Zealand is to reduce its sky-high rate of imprisonment, this is a problem we must confront with real determination.
Last week Corrections Department figures were released which showed that 60 per cent of prisoners lacked the reading skills to undertake normal literacy tasks. Activities like reading an employment contract, a tenancy agreement or even understanding their kid's school reports were beyond the majority of New Zealand's jail population.
There is a strong connection between illiteracy and offending, both direct and indirect.
One of the Howard League's very early Hawke's Bay literacy graduates demonstrated just how direct the connection between illiteracy and offending can be.
Jerry (name changed), a 31-year-old manual worker with three kids, had lost track of the number of sentences he had served but it was either 11 or 12. Practically all this prison time was for driving without a licence.
Jerry's problem was not criminality, it was that he couldn't read and couldn't therefore get a driver's licence.
He learnt to read in 12 weeks with a Howard League tutor and when next released sat and passed his driver's licence. He will almost certainly not reoffend as the cause of his offending has now been removed.
Indirect links between illiteracy and imprisonment were highlighted by Corrections Minister Judith Collins.
When commenting on the statistics showing poor levels of literacy amongst prisoners, she wisely made the link between unemployment and reoffending, in the knowledge that getting a job on release more than halved the chance of reoffending.
When I was a teenager in Hawke's Bay you could go down to Wattie's, Birdseye or either of the big freezing works at Tomoana or Whakatu and get a job just by scribbling your name on a piece of paper.
This is no longer true. Some basic literacy is now essential for just about any job, and with health and safety regulations tightening as a result of the Pike River disaster, employers who take on illiterate workers may well be doubling their risk of prosecution.
Poor literacy may also be a factor behind high rates of Maori imprisonment.
Although Maori make up less than 15 per cent of New Zealand's population, Maori identifiers amount to more than 50 per cent of the male prison population and more than 60 per cent of female prisoners.
It has been reported that 65 per cent of Maori prisoners began their imprisonment career with a driving offence and you can bet much of this statistic comes from unlicensed driving.
Sadly, jails are universities of crime and once a career in imprisonment begins, many young offenders are drawn into gangs and more serious offending.
Thus an inability to read and write and to pass a driving test can, and too often does, lead to jail time and further offending.
As Minister of Statistics and Associate Minister of Transport, Craig Foss offered to evaluate both the Howard League's prisoner literacy programme and our Hawke's Bay Unlicensed Drivers Initiative.
We have had a lot of anecdotal evidence which suggests, for example, that many of the more than 200 "graduates" of the Howard League Hawke's Bay unlicensed drivers programme have ceased offending, but Mr Foss' statistical analysis will enable us to accurately judge just how successful this programme has become.
New data and Mr Foss' analytical tools could also tell us how many of our driver's licence successes also got jobs.
We will watch this space with interest!
