KEY POINTS:
David Garrett conjures up an idyllic picture of prison - a life free of domestic and financial responsibilities, three meals a day, and volleyball on demand. A life quite different from that depicted by Simon Collins in the Herald's excellent 2006 series, Our Idle Jails.
I have been closely involved with prisons and ex-prisoners for more than 40 years. Prisoners love to play parlour games - and one of them is to portray to outsiders a view of "prison as paradise". Professionals who attempt to enter with a predetermined world view are particularly vulnerable.
Those who assume only the middle class experience a sense of deprivation in prison are quickly "sussed' by prisoners.
Prisoners live in a distinct culture, and it is not easy for middle class barristers and psychiatrists to gain access to it.
Once or twice a month I receive a phone call from middle class professionals whose sons have been sent to prison - usually for one-off drug deals.
What picture should I portray? Prison as paradise? Or reality? That if their sons are well formed and half-way good looking, they are likely to be spread-eagled in the showers?
That if they are unacquainted with drugs, that gap in their education is about to be taken care of? That violence is king - a pecking order exists and their sons are at the bottom of the rung?
That every moral value instilled in their children is, in many cases, permanently modified? That their sons may never re-offend, but their capacity to love, nurture and trust will be seriously impaired? That their children will never be the same?
I confess to taking a middle ground. There is hope for some - a programme, an insight, a reaffirmation of faith, a compassionate officer. When people want desperately to change, (and most do), opportunities exist.
Recent increases in the prison population mitigate against that possibility. At Rimutaka, where the prisoner population has increased by 50 per cent in four years, and 40 per cent of the staff have less than two years' experience, their sons are likely to leave with more understanding about prisons than half of the people responsible for them.
The other myth is that the prison provides an opportunity for the underclass to refrain from work, family responsibilities, and engagement in civil society.
Apart from a small group who are so seriously institutionalised they cannot conceive of another existence, most prisoners want the same things - regardless of social class.
They want meaningful and loving relationships with their partners and children, to respect and be respected, to contribute to their families through work, to find a way of saying sorry to those they've harmed, and to have a go at changing their lives.
The 5 per cent who don't - the psychopaths, the serial offenders, the mentally disordered - may be beyond our reach.
For the remainder, the community has to match the prisoners' desire to change with a willingness to engage - to hold them accountable; to offer opportunities; to accept them back into the community, knowing that if we want to reduce victims in society, we must first reduce the number of offenders.
The final myth perpetuated by David Garrett is that "military" prisons and "boot camps" would produce a better result.
All the available international research shows the reverse. The sentence of "corrective training" for young offenders - a three month "short, sharp, shock" - was abandoned in New Zealand in the early 1990s.
The reconviction rate after two years was about 96 per cent - far higher than the general reoffending rate of 73 per cent.
Military-type punishment was developed to instil in soldiers an understanding of what was expected of them in a disciplined and ordered environment - and it served its purpose well. They were not, by and large, serious criminal offenders.
In prison, the challenge is to deal with men and women with a range of complex needs - most of whom would not be accepted for military service. Twenty per cent have mental health issues, and around 70 per cent are either drug or alcohol dependent.
How do we change the popular perception of prisons and prisoners? The Minister of Corrections, Damien O'Connor, suggests most people who visit prisons want to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps one visit is not enough. Winston Churchill, himself a prisoner during the Boer War, oversaw a period of decarceration between 1910 and 1930, unprecedented in Western history.
Many of the Scandinavians who in the 1950s implemented the most enlightened penal policy of our times, were themselves prisoners during World War II.
The solution is simple enough. Sentence by ballot 20 per cent of the nation's parliamentarians to three months' imprisonment - and then watch the action.
If such an approach is not acceptable, I have a modified proposal. My colleagues and I would be please to facilitate meetings between prisoners and parliamentarians, so they could understand there are universal values and needs to which we all aspire.
For some, it is a long, difficult, challenging journey, but with support, they can make it.
* Kim Workman is the National Director of Prison Fellowship, and Manager for the Rethinking Crime and Punishment project. He is a former head of prisons.
