Behind the wire: Meet the men who get paid as little as 20 cents an hour

Trusted with welding torches, left in paddocks with nothing but a radio and a tractor and tasked with looking after thousands of pigs - it's hardly a level of trust you'd expect to be invested in convicted criminals. But with the freedom to learn behind bars comes some remarkable stories of success. Ethan Griffiths went behind the wire to find out what inmates do when they head off to work - in prison.

It felt just like any other industrial warehouse, albeit for the man wearing a stab-proof vest we waved down to let us through the wire gate.

The health and safety checks upon arrival were a bit stricter than a sign-in sheet and a visitor sticker too. Boots and belts were removed, pockets emptied and bags X-rayed.

We weren't in an industrial estate, but rather the South Island's largest prison, walking towards the otherwise typical workshop where men behind the wire were trying their hands at jobs prison staff hope they will eventually have a shot at doing outside the wire.

Inside, Dire Straits is booming from both ends of the large warehouse, interrupted only by the odd laugh or the squall of a slice of sheet metal being split.

Art adjourns the walls from one end to the other, a mix of murals and other work seemingly informed by prisoners' passions, notably an aluminium cutout of the Harley Davidson badge.

Mark, who has been in prison for nearly five years, grabs two bits of steel and dons his mask.

"You want a shot of the flame, mate?" he gestures to the photographer.

Twenty minutes earlier we'd gone through security and been guided around Christchurch Men's Prison. While around 700 men are locked up inside, two dozen have access to the prison's engineering training workshop which sits behind another fence on the grounds of the prison.

Our guide for the morning is instructor Chris Sigmund, a staunch bearded bloke who looks like he'd take no prisoners. Indeed, he took on two dozen of them.

One of his trainees, Mark, arrived at Christchurch Men's Prison recently. Previously locked up at a prison in the North Island, he was moved south to take part in Corrections' in-prison workshop training programme.

"We have up to 24 men in here at the moment, all working towards various NZQA standards in engineering," Sigmund explains. "To me, they're all here to learn. It's not my place to judge what they've done or how long they're in."

There are around 8500 prisoners in New Zealand's 18 prisons. According to Corrections the majority of those inmates have limited education or work experience, a high percentage have no formal qualifications and less than half were in paid work before going to prison.

One in two will go on to offend within two years of being released. One in three will return to a prison cell within the same period.

The goal of in-prison training is to end the cycle of reoffending, giving prisoners both the skills to find work and a willingness to stay there, building themselves better lives.

Mark, who goes before the Parole Board in around two years, had dabbled in a bit of carpentry before he was locked up. But as he sits with me on an office couch, he readily admits his life before prison wasn't healthy.

"I've completed nearly 30 standards since I started here. Before that I was sitting around in my cell doing nothing." He tells me he hasn't felt so accomplished in some time.

In recent months his work has involved manufacturing thick steel doors that are shipped to prisons around the country, as well as other repair jobs for prison infrastructure that get allocated to the boys in the workshop.

"Days out here are good. We're working towards something and accomplishing things. And we're trusted to get on with it."

To get into the workshop, potential trainees go through a panel to determine if they're suitable. They have to be low-security inmates with a proven track record of good behaviour.

While there are some bad eggs, being granted the privilege acts almost like a guarantee that they'll behave. Mark says if the men play up, they'll be back to their cells for the foreseeable future - something few of them wish for.

The first step to being trusted with tools is health and safety. All men complete NZQA papers on workplace safety, including first aid.

At that point they're introduced to the warehouse, completing standards as they create items for the prison. Corrections also has contracts with various companies, producing items such as skip bins.

As the purpose of the operation is training, the men aren't paid a wage but instead get an "incentive" - between 20 and 60 cents an hour. They can use the money at the prison canteen for things like fruit, biscuits, coffee and nicer toiletries.

There are more than 140 business-like industries operating in prisons across the country and nearly 60 per cent of inmates participate in employment or industry training. Those industries include construction, nurseries, forestry, timber processing, furniture making, textiles, catering, engineering, concrete product manufacturing, printing, laundries and farming.

The multimillion-dollar pigs

The prison on the outskirts of our second-largest city encompasses one of those farms.

Most of the prison grounds are used for a mammoth farming operation, bringing in millions in revenue each year and training men, at least a quarter of whom have never held a job in their lives.

As we round a dirt corner in a Hiace, a man in high-vis sits on a tractor contently moving around stacks of feed.

"Come meet Sam," our driver Warren says.

Having just been introduced to the staff that run the farm at Christchurch Men's, I suspected the bloke in high-vis left on his own directly next to a public road was a Corrections' staff member. I was wrong.

"This guy here basically ran the farm last year when I was between staff," principal farm instructor Warren Chilton tells me. "He knows how everything works".

The farm is an impressive operation - 200 beef cows, 2300 ewes and around 8000 pigs, all managed by a small team of Corrections instructors, three dogs and just over two dozen prisoners. There are hopes to resume a small dairy operation in the near future.

The men work from 7.30am each morning until mid-afternoon, usually beginning work towards the end of their sentence, although some join earlier.

The piggery is the most labour-intensive operation on the farm; its scale evident in the $3 million Corrections spends annually on pig feed alone. It's understood to be the country's second-largest piggery, turning over a pretty penny each year which goes on to fund the broader prison system.

If you're a regular consumer of pork, chances are it came from the prison farm through their supply agreement with Freedom Farms, which receives around 17,000 prison pigs annually.

Sam the tractor man is perhaps the sharpest prisoner in the paddocks, with farm boss Warren talking up his efforts.

"I just help out where I can," Sam tells me, saying his job out on the farm makes his days, and therefore his lag, shorter. At the pig farm his tasks include feeding, moving huts, weening and artificial insemination.

Docking pigtails is a job for the prisoners also - a necessary evil to prevent the pigs from chewing on each other in the pen.

He speaks modestly of his work on the land. "It can be challenging, but I'm learning. It's taught me a few new things on the farm - I spent a bit of time on a farm when I was 12, 13."

Similar to the boys in the workshop, the farm workers need to be low-security prisoners who have been cleared for outside work. The level of trust is high - Sam has access to a tractor in a paddock on his own, and could essentially flee if he wanted. A public road separates the piggery, secured only by a typical farm fence.

All prisoners are sighted at minimum every hour and constantly checked in on via a radio they carry with them.

"I wouldn't say I was a model prisoner, but I played by the rules to get out here. I'm happier being out here than being locked up."

Back in the Hiace, Chilton says his trainee was being modest. "I tell ya, he was under-talking himself."

While the main purpose of the farm is rehabilitation and not revenue, the operation is undoubtedly a boost to Corrections' coffers - although the department is hesitant to reveal just how much it brings in.

Chilton, who has worked at the farm for two decades, takes great pride in both his product and his team. He talks highly of four men who had recently been placed in employment through relationships Corrections has with businesses on the hunt for workers with farm skills.

"When they're out, they're expected to contribute like everybody else in society. We try and give them the skills to do that."

Corrections says it doesn't keep a record of the men who actually enter the workforce using the skills they were taught behind bars. The success of the programme lies solely in anecdotes.

"We get emails often from men who learnt everything they knew here on the farm, now working in the industry and getting their lives on track," Chilton says.

It also has the benefit of humanising some of the tougher men. "We've had senior gang members out here where their demeanour has completely changed."

The three farm staff interviewed all agreed that being around animals gives the men a sense of responsibility. That in turn can change their behaviour. When a new recruit launched a piglet with his foot, the other men took to him with some force.

Not everyone's going to be perfect, Warren says, but once they're on the farm they tend to be pretty good.

Warren also speaks fondly of one prisoner who became so close with the farm dogs, that instructors essentially gave him his own dog that he took responsibility for.

"He'd go off for the day with the dog, do his work, and come back. He loved that dog."

'It's about giving them a chance'

"For many of them, it'll be the first time they've ever experienced pride on the basis of their actions. The confidence that comes with the idea you can change and grow, man that is powerful stuff."

Dr Paul Wood knows it better than most. His is perhaps one of New Zealand's most impressive rehabilitation success stories.

In 1995, 18-year-old Wood murdered his drug dealer. His mum had died just four days earlier and the murder victim had attempted to sexually assault Wood shortly before he retaliated.

Imprisoned for 11 years, Wood became the first prisoner in Aotearoa to complete an undergraduate and masters degree, and the first to begin a doctorate. These days he's a father, a professional speaker and advocate for rehabilitation in our prisons.

He's a fan of programmes that give prisoners purpose. Programmes that both instill a sense of pride, but also provide lifelong skills that can assist offenders when they're released should be the focus, he says.

"Addressing what got them in there in the first place is not enough. We need to give them a path forward, not spending more bloody taxes on them when they return.

"Make no mistake, there are some people who are so neurologically damaged and divergent that society needs to be protected from them. But that is the overwhelming minority, and we can't let that minority stop paths to success for everyone else."

Wood says it is a completely natural instinct of victims to seek punishment and hardship, but the system should be geared towards what's best for society.

"If you can actually have a conversation with people about what we want to achieve with imprisonment, the vast majority of people want what works.

"But we've been sold a false set of goods, which is the idea that if we just punish more, if we just lock them up a bit longer, they'll come out better. It's just not true."

- This story was first published by NZ Herald