After 20 years working behind bars, she finally broke free from her own past to follow her dreams! Photo / Hagen Hopkins
For most of her life, Rhonda Hāpi-Smith was certain about one thing: she wasn’t going to be a prison officer like her father and siblings. But in her thirties, after drifting through unsatisfying jobs, she felt a different kind of pull – toward purpose, structure and service.
Though she knew she would be forever changed once she put on the uniform, she says dedicating the past 20 years of her life to prison work was the right decision.
“I came out battered and worn, but I’d do it all again,” shares the 58-year-old from her home in Wellington. “There was something about the job that gave me a reason.”
She has now turned the wild and often dangerous experiences of the past two decades into her first book, Inside the Wire: True Stories from a New Zealand Prison Officer.
Throughout her time working in prisons, writing was always an outlet for Rhonda. From the very beginning, she committed to separating her identity on the inside from who she was in the outside world.
At work, she had a tough exterior to shield herself from constant verbal abuse, and she knew how to handle herself in a fight if needed.
As a woman working in men’s prisons, she had to work twice as hard to prove that she was not someone to be messed with.
But over the years, her emotional armour began to crack. She longed to show vulnerability. However, after so long building a reputation for toughness, her cries for help often went unheard.
“I kept getting the response, ‘You’re hard, Rhonda. You’ll handle it,’” she recalls. “I started to think, ‘What do I do if I can’t get through it?’”
And so, she started a Facebook page called Memoirs of a Female Prison Officer, hoping to find fellow officers who understood her struggle.
She reflects, “It was a place for me to vent, but I also thought, ‘If this can help somebody, I’m happy.’”
On long night shifts, she always dreamed of writing a book. When she retired from the job eight years ago, she finally had the freedom to do so.
“It was a really healing process for me,” she smiles. “I can’t believe someone saw my words and was interested in me telling my story.”
Violence was an unavoidable part of the job and when riots broke out, Rhonda was part of the team that would restore order.
In the 1990s, just six months after joining the service, she became one of the first women invited to join the elite riot squad.
They were the last line of defence when chaos erupted – decked out in heavy protective gear, wielding large shields and trained to move as an impenetrable wall to regain control.
Rhonda attended riots of every size, but one of the most memorable came when a group of prisoners, drunk on homebrew, started tearing up their unit.
In the past, the prison worked to keep Mongrel Mob and Black Power members separated to keep peace. But the higher-ups decided they were done placating the gangs and had started mixing them.
With homebrew in their bellies, the two factions had formed a temporary truce to wreak havoc and demanded to be returned back to their separate units.
Rhonda was one of 40 officers who stepped into the fray.
For more than three hours, they faced down prisoners hurling pipes and brandishing crude weapons.
“It was scary and vicious,” recalls Rhonda. “The level of violence was off the charts. But we had trained hard. Once the switch was turned, we were on. We didn’t have to say anything to each other.”
In 2017, while on medical leave, Rhonda realised she had nothing left to give the job. She never went back – even to collect her things. She just quietly closed that chapter and walked away.
After years of scanning every room for threats and keeping her emotions under lock and key, she finally chose peace.
Though adjusting to civilian life has brought its own challenges, she’s embracing what comes next.
“I have PTSD from the constant stress and some of the situations I faced,” explains Rhonda. “I’ll have that for the rest of my life. It’s really hard to try and find your place in society.
“But I’m really glad I left when I did because now I’m living life. My days are filled with creating new and lovely memories.”
Inside the Wire: True Stories from a New Zealand Prison Officer (HarperCollins NZ, rrp $37.99) is on shelves now.