Carefully selected, long-serving prisoners are teaching their fellow prisoners, thanks to an innovative programme launched four weeks ago at the Northland Region Corrections Facility.
Keen to encourage leadership skills, NRCF has designed a peer-tutoring programme that draws on the teaching prisoners' skills, sense of responsibility and desire to rehabilitate themselves.
The classes - te reo, kapa haka, whakawhanaungatanga (bringing alive family connections), whakairo (carving) and mau rakau (the discipline required for Maori martial arts) - are all taught within a strict cultural activities framework approved by the prison and the local Maori community.
Several ex-prisoners are also contracted to deliver classes which NRCF programme manager Mark Lynds says is proving highly successful for all parties.
"The prison and the peer tutoring scheme receive strong support from Kaitiaki (guardians of local tikanga)," Mr Lynds says.
"The first group of resident tutors began work about four weeks ago having gone through a rigorous approval process involving the prison's custodial staff, myself and Kaumatua.
"The selected men know their subjects well, they have the skills required for the task, they meet the behaviour criteria set down and they have signed a binding contract," Mr Lynds says.
"We hope the resident tutors will continue to teach once they leave prison. It could be that they find employment in their communities or, if the opportunity exists, in the prison."
The peer tutors have the opportunity to work towards NZQA unit standards level 3 and above in programme facilitation and assessment of learning. Many are keen to achieve the Certificate in Adult Teaching through the Open Polytechnic.
Mr Lynds says prisoner peer tutoring is not new to New Zealand prisons. Several run similar programmes although not perhaps on the scale planned for NRCF.
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