Aerial view of Waikeria Prison 2024
A couple of weeks ago the Te Awamutu News published a story on their front page that, I thought, went a long way in showing the nuance of any community issue.
Samuel Pullenger
Waikeria Prison has had a long history of change and growth and recently has put into place big plans for reclaiming the title of New Zealand’s largest prison; a title that, I would suggest, should not instil pride in any community.
However, the article published was written from the perspective of the construction company that had been hired to build this extension and others. This company clearly does a lot of good for the community by providing a significant amount of jobs as well as employment for several prisoners who are in rehabilitation. I have spoken in previous articles about the need to be supporting the community and providing ways to enable others to flourish. It is vital that we have companies who are prepared to hire ex-prisoners to enable them to find a way back into the community.
Prisons, however, especially ones that have a majority of their inhabitants on remand, which seems to be able to be extended indefinitely, are not the future for any community to flourish. In the Bible, one of the major themes running from beginning to end, is that God loves all people and all creation. What follows along with this is that God desires for all people to be able to flourish. In fact, the life of Jesus, his death, resurrection and ascension back to God, was in order that all creation would be healed. In one of the books of the Bible called 2 Corinthians, the author declares that since we have been healed by Jesus, we are given the responsibility to be people who heal with Jesus.
It is clear that prisons hold an important role in forming safe communities. In some instances people need to be removed from society for a period of time both for their own safety and for the safety of others. However, simply removing a person from society should not be the goal, this would be to strip hope from both parties. The goal must be healing; hope that one day, this person will be able to benefit society through their own flourishing. Rehabilitation is the way for a prisoner who has confronted what they have done wrong and is paying or has paid the debt, to slowly re-enter society as a co-building member of that community.
So, we are left with a problem. Prison does not often do a good job of rehabilitation, and building bigger prisons will only enable us to put more people inside. But there are companies like the one hired to build this new extension who are helping in rehabilitation. I wonder what it would look like for us here in the Waipā to find new ways of rehabilitating prisoners without using them to build bigger prisons, while providing other opportunities for these construction companies to flourish as well?
Aerial view of the facility. The building housing the mental health and addiction service is in the foreground.
Waikeria Prison exterior
