Jake Bailey: I've spent a bit of time inside. Let me tell you about the inmates

Doors open, doors close. Jake Bailey has met quite a few inmates. Photo / Dean Purcell.

Opinion

COMMENT: I've spent a good share of my life in prison so far. Fortunately, as of yet I've stuck close to
the people who come and go as they please, which in a place with so many locks, is always the key - and have been allowed out as many times as I've been allowed in.

My mum worked in a prison for 20-something years, leading on from my grandfather's 20-something years prior. She went into labour with me while at Rolleston Prison, and bought me back there in time to be used as the prop for the parenting course where I was passed around hands.

By the time I was four or five, I was old enough to take the lollies offered by some of the
prisoners. By six or seven we played in the courtyard with basketballs sometimes. The balls didn't always bounce. Razor-wire pops balls.

Once, during such a game, a man stopped, leant over me, looked down. He blocked out the sun and cloaked me in shade like something from a children's movie- at least in my memory he does. Baring down into my wide eyes as I recoiled away, he sneered out, "does your mum beat you?".

I thought for a minute, and long before the anti-smacking bill, answered a small "no". He paused for thought, and then replied, "well she must be a pretty good mum
then".

I don't remember his face, or anything of him at all, other than his words. I don't remember a lot of the visits I made there. I don't remember what the prisoners were like.
Hence the shock I got when I was invited to speak at a juvenile justice facility a few months ago.

The clientele are in their late teens or early twenties. That's one thing they've got in
common. The other is that, since this is a maximum-security facility, they've either killed,
raped, or similar. As the guard assigned to escort me jokes, "you don't get in here by
stealing chocolate bars". "Or anything short of a life, really", he adds with a chuckle.

Prisons are much of a muchness, and they probably look a fair bit like what you think they
do. The doors do make that buzzing noise when they open, and that mechanical clanging
when they close. The officer's keys do jingle with every step they take. People often do yell out from cells. There's a lot less bars than you might picture, but other than that you're probably about right.

And the prisoners are just as terrifying as you'd expect. I'm not a big guy, and they mostly tower over me. Wads of muscle, stubble, tattoos.

That's intimidating. But it's what they do when you meet them which is most sinister.
Not many people know about this. You'd never know by seeing them in the dock on TV, or in photos in the paper. It catches you off guard something wicked.

When they meet you, they look you in the eye, and they greet you by your first name or by
'sir'. They shake your hand with a grip as firm as any top CEO sealing a business deal.

They introduce themselves, and they might share a joke with you, and then they move on.
And when you speak, they sit in the front row, and they listen better than half of the kids I
speak to. Hell, half of the adults as well.

And afterwards, they ask, well, measured, thoughtful questions. They come and thank you with poise and tell you what they took away from your talk. They shake your hand again.

Then they're marched back to their cells for another day of the next 20 years.
And in a blind test, you couldn't separate them from some year 12 lad you'd picked out of the 3rd division rugby team at school.

That's the part when the cold fear and discomfort begin to form inside you, like thick
droplets of condensation. Exactly what the source of it is, you're not sure. But something is at boiling point.

Is that fear just the sensation of your own hard-line views being bent? Is that what is
evaporating? You scramble to try and balance it with the other side of the story in that
moment.

You try and picture a victim, or the victim's parents crying at a funeral. But you can't,
because they aren't in front of you. In front of you looks like the guy from the 3rd XI, and he's smiling, and you might as well be on the sideline after the match chatting.

Is it the fear you are being deceived - your heart and head clashing as alarm bells scream
that you're being manipulated? Like falling for someone too fast and fighting to keep your
defences up? Because you are staring at evil in front of you, and evil knows how to play with your head.

Or is it the alternative, which is that good people can do horrendous things, and these
people used to be good people like you? If so, what even is a 'good' person, if we are all
capable of it? Are they still good people? Am I?

Because as I look into the eyes of these young guys, I can't tell all of them apart from me.
Some of them I can - the guy with the gang tattoo on his face - but not all of them. So you begin to silently barter with yourself- maybe what that guy did wasn't that bad, maybe he's innocent, maybe it was a misunderstanding.

Though it's fruitless, because you'll never know the answer. These people don't wear their charge around their neck anymore, they're not on the 6pm news. You can't put the act to the face.

So you shake their hand, and you think 'what a nice young man', and you spend the next
month trying to make sense of it all.