Features

The Otago Corrections Facility at Milburn, otherwise known as the Milton Hilton (so named for its underfloor heating, en suites, flashy gymnasium, basketball court and full-size rugby field), is the closest prison to Dunedin city, housing up to 485 low to medium security men.


There’s something more than a little bit intriguing about prisons. First of all, some of the best movies of all time concern prisons: The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Kala Pani (haven’t heard of it? Neither had I, until I discovered that it got half a star on prisonmovies.net; it’s described as “one man's earnest pursuit of his long lost, adulterous, alleged murderer father”. With singing, apparently). But what’s a real life prison like, such as our neighborino the Milton Hilton? Is there singing? Is there soap-dropping? Will we ever know?

Never fear, dear readers, some among us are regular visitors to the Milburn Corrections Facility, and more than just acquainted with some of its inmates.

Libby Fraser, Tom English, and Georgie Fulford are the kind of everyday heroes who make you want to do something a tad more meaningful with the extra minutes in your day. Busy students themselves, they volunteer regularly for Vinnies, a student branch of the worldwide organisation St Vincent de Paul (named after an 18th-century Catholic priest who was dedicated to serving the poor, and by all accounts had an excellent goatee). Vinnies are young people who help those less fortunate than themselves, in any number of ways. The student group here in Dunedin was started only two years ago, but has slowly expanded to undertake many diverse projects from operating a night shelter, helping out with hospital chaplaincy, and running an opshop, to making veggie parcels for those who can't afford enough food, making rest home visits, and, as of next year, helping a community in Sri Lanka.

Last year, Vinnies also started up a prison-visit programme: once a week, volunteers make the hour-ish trip down to Milton to hang out with the inmates. These visits are part of the prison’s wider rehabilitation and reintegration programme. Says Georgie, “We as volunteers are quite valuable in that sense, because the prisoners don’t see us as guards or anything. We’re giving up our time to go in there, show an interest in their lives, and meet their spiritual needs.” Don’t worry though, this ain’t no Student Life. Libby says “it’s a broad, spiritual service”, and the emphasis tends to be on common compassionate values, rather than the strictly Christian side of things.

Although the prison only houses low and middle security prisoners, it’s not exactly a summer camp. When volunteers arrive, they sign in, take off their shoes and anything metallic, leave all their possessions at the entrance and are escorted to the facility’s “spiritual centre”, equipped with safety buttons (think St. John lifelink alarm and that distressing television ad where the elderly lady smashes her favourite mug on the kitchen floor). Georgie says, “It’s a privilege for the men to be [in the spiritual centre]…There are no guards, no cameras. There are men [coming to the sessions] who are on 23-hour lockdown basically, so to have contact with people from the outside world is special.”

On a typical visit, the men (who’ve been behaving well enough to have the privilege) and the volunteers join in a Bible reading and reflection, with some accompany beats: “[The inmates] provide the music: that’s a privilege too, to be in the prison band. They all negotiate as to who can be in the band. It’s all based on respect. One guy snuck guitar strings [out of practice] in his socks and he was kicked out of the band.”

Then there’s tea time and chat for around half an hour or so. Tom says, “That’s the bit they get the most value out of, they just enjoy having a yarn.”
 
Making polite conversation with criminals not your cup of tea (‘scuse the pun)? For starters, Libby points out that you can’t exactly make small talk like “oh, so, what did you get up to today?”, and as a result, conversations tend to go straight into really deep issues – like, says Georgie, talking about the wife and children that the men haven’t seen for years.

Tom says, “You’d think they would be curious about what’s happening in the outside world, but they’re not. It doesn’t really occur to them to ask about what’s happening outside because they’ve got this insulated world where it doesn’t really matter what happens outside. They’ll talk about what they’re doing, sport, their job or if they’re studying.”

The men are also insatiably curious about the volunteers themselves, says Libby. “They want to know where you’re from, what you’re studying… It can be difficult sometimes to give those sorts of details. You want it to be personal and you don’t want to withhold information, but you want to kind of direct it so that they are talking more than you.”
 
Luckily, they’re often keen to talk about themselves too. Many of the lower-security prisoners are involved in working on nearby farms (fencing, milking cows and the like), helping out in the prison kitchen or engaged in study by correspondence. One inmate was studying towards his commercial pilot’s licence while inside – quite a sneaky way to get around paying study fees, really.
 
Putting aside all talk of cups of tea and spiritual healing, do the volunteers ever feel unsafe? Georgie says, “no, not unsafe. It’s just really interesting to see the way in which they approach you [as a woman]. Last time, I went up to this guy who was massive and staunch – he looked like Jake the Muss from Once Were Warriors: tats everywhere, strong build. I introduced myself and said that I hadn’t seen him at any of the services, and just sort of thanked him for his participation in the discussion. As I was talking to him, all of his responses were really short and he was looking a bit shifty the whole time. After a couple of minutes he said ‘you’ve probably noticed I find it difficult to give you eye contact. I just find it really hard – I haven’t spoken to a woman in so many years’”.
 
“That was quite a frank admission”, says Tom.
 
Given the seething cauldron of testosterone that is a 500-strong male-only population, female volunteers have to be conservative in the way they dress: “High-necked tops, nothing too short. No bright red or blue, or anything else that might signify gang affiliations.”
 
In general, it might be that if some of the prisoners were walking down George Street in their gang regalia, you could be more than a little alarmed. But in the prison setting, with their matching tracksuits, the volunteers find that many of them prove to be surprisingly jolly and approachable types.
 
Says Libby, “it’s given me a whole new outlook. Obviously when you’re in there you still have to be aware of your surroundings – they are there for a reason - but I feel quite safe.”
 
The question it has raised, for all three volunteers, is what can be done to stop more men ending up inside? “How can we take a preventative approach to avoid [the men] from getting there in the first place? That’s a really difficult question, because it start off right from birth as to how these guys have been raised. I think for a lot of them, they haven’t really experienced love, or trust or respect before.” – Georgie.
 
Tom says “It’s softened my approach on what should happen to [convicted criminals]. You realise that it’s not like you or I going off and committing a crime, knowing what’s right or wrong and having the choice… You get the impression that for a lot of these guys, they have grown up in a society or community in which committing crimes and going to prison isn’t a choice… They’re sort of a product of their environment and the way they’re raised… There must be a better way. It’s pretty ridiculous to take away someone’s rights to move freely.”
 
The other problem? Prison breeds criminals. Georgie: “They’re in there, and they’re actually learning lots of skills from the other inmates…. Half the time, [prison] isn’t addressing the root problem.”
 
One thing all three have taken away from their experiences at Milton so far is that there is no typical prisoner. All of the inmates have come from different circumstances, and backgrounds. Their roads to prison are unique.
 
Of her ongoing involvement, Georgie says “I almost feel like I get more out of it than they do. When you walk away, I don’t know, I’m buzzing. It’s an incredible feeling having sort of shared experiences with these guys.”
 
If that makes you want to get involved too, Georgie, Libby and Tom encourage you: “don’t hold back”. You can get in touch with Georgie, who organises the Vinnies prisons visits, at volunteer.prison@gmail.com or with Vinnies in general at svdp.student@gmail.com.
 
 
Alternatively, Tom English is in the process of setting up a volunteer programme through SOULS (the Society of Otago University Law Students) to make similar visits to the Vinnies crew, perhaps focusing on helping inmates with their academic needs, or running quizzes and the like. “My feeling is that SOULS should be more outward-looking… Given the resources that we’ve got, it seems like we should be offering a bit more to the community than just sort of sucking it all up [in our social events]… I think it’s also really important for law students to see [the prison], instead of just reading about crimes… Knowing the characters involved is something different.”
 
Of course, if you want to get involved you’ll have to send a few forms off, show that you don’t have criminal convictions yourself, and declare if you know anyone in prison, then undergo a half-day training session in which you get clued up on prison protocol and the like. But it’s worth it:

 
“It’s quite a powerful thing once you get involved. I imagine I’ll want to be involved as long as I’m capable.” – Tom.