Words & Images by Sarah Horrocks — AngusPRO Magazine 2024
*The prisoner’s name has been changed
In life, everyone and perhaps everything deserves a second chance. At Tongariro Prison in Turangi at the foot of Lake Taupo, the focus is on keeping people safe and giving the prisoners a second chance.
All prisons in New Zealand have an industry space for vocational training. Reading and writing come first if that’s not been taught previously, followed by ITO training to give real-life work experience and deliver practical skills up to level 4 NCEA. Tongariro offers 14 industry programmes, ranging from barista courses to carpentry, catering, engineering, gardening and forestry. The programmes are part of the rehabilitation pathways selected by and for prisoners – the first part being treatment for the cause of their being incarcerated in the first place.
Manager of Industries at Tongariro Luan Kloppers says the industries give purpose, training and qualification, setting the men up for life after prison.
“Everyone in prison is a burden on the taxpayer so the earlier rehabilitation and reintegration is successful, the better,” he says.
Of the 18 prisons in New Zealand, Tongariro is the only one to have both internal and external farming industry programmes. The unique operation has a 15ha farm inside the prison wire which is used solely as a training farm. Levels 2 and 3 ITO courses can be done within this space with a small number of sheep, beef and dairy stock.
“The stock inside the wire are the most frequently weighed animals in the country,” jokes Luan.
That’s all part of the training though, and it provides a positive experience for many of the prisoners who have come from a life of conflict and family issues.
“Getting certificates and having to care for something is often completely foreign to them,” Principal Instructor Claire Goddard says.
The prisoners are all men of a low-security class and range in age from 17 to 84. Once they’re within six months of their parole eligibility and have completed rehabilitative programmes they may be assessed as safe to progress to the external farm outside the wire, where they’re monitored with electronic bracelets. For men who come from a farming background or see their future in farming, this is a great opportunity to upskill and get themselves employable.
There are currently 16 men working on the external farm and that number is set to double in the next 12 months.
The farm itself is 660ha and hosts 450 Angus females and 2500 Romney females (Focus Genetics Goudie-based). There is also 30ha of forestry in small pockets, used for forestry industry training – pruning, thinning, planting and other relevant skills.
The Angus programme went through drastic change four years ago, shifting from being a generic beef programme that serviced the industry programme to a high-performance herd with a drive for profitability.
“There is a responsibility when working with public money to do things in the most cost-effective way possible,” says Luan.
The farm has a long history and was always a sheep farm, with some cattle. That is now shifting to a beef focus, with some sheep. They hope to eventually lift cow numbers to 800 and have only trade lambs. Steers were always traded in the past but now they’re all finished on farm and processed at AFFCO.
When they decided to make changes, Luan and Claire visited several studs to discuss how they could use genetics to shift the direction of the programme.
“Roger and Susan Hayward at Twin Oaks buy into what we’re doing here with these men,” Luan says, adding that the Haywards understand that farming here is about the rehabilitation and skills programme and that it’s not a normal farming system.
“We used to have a focus on fertility and easy calving and now focus is on growth – the 200- and 400-day weights,” says Luan.
Claire reiterates that while the three instructors are working as farmers, they are corrections officers first and foremost and the 16 farm-worker prisoners are also only on the farm for limited hours, to work around mealtimes and recreational time, so working out the exact staffing rate is nearly impossible.
Aside from staff, the farm runs as a normal commercial system, with standard animal health practices.
When they first transitioned into high-growth genetics in 2020, Tongariro purchased four bulls from Twin Oaks but now that number sits at six to eight a year.
In another recent change, the 100 heifers are put through artificial insemination, which was more successful in 2023 than it was in their first attempt in 2022. A separate group of low-birthweight bulls are used as the follow-up sires after AI in the heifers.
The replacement heifers are selected using the Zoetis’ HeiferSELECT™ genomic selection tool, which removes environmental influence and allows Tongariro to select the heifers with the best EBVs to take through.
“It’s such good technology,” says Claire.
Within seven years the whole herd will be DNA tested and they expect to have seen drastic shifts in production rates.
Prisoner Perspective
When talking with *Simon, a prisoner who has completed both his level 2 and level 3 certificates in primary industry skills within the last four years, he says it’s been interesting to see how bull selection alters the outcome of the calves on the ground.
Genomics was covered by Simon in the level 3 classroom work and after completing industry work inside the wire for three years and now having worked outside the wire for
12 months, he has seen the shift in gross production first-hand.
“The time from weaning to kill weight has reduced a lot.”
Everything is grass finished, with the steers and sale heifers also given palm kernel in feed bins. Claire says it’s lolly for them, so they always go straight onto it, and it makes giving mineral supplements very easy as it’s just mixed through.
“The pumice country means we’re always deficient in something,” Luan says.
Supplement feed is grown as necessary, including 12ha of baled lucerne, kale for the cows over winter, chicory for lamb finishing and 1000 tonnes of grass silage which is stored in pits.
The growing season is very short and while they’re theoretically summer safe with 1600mm annually, the balance date for the grass curve is quite late – mid-December.
The daily diary always looks pretty similar for Simon, who collects his packed lunch and is picked up at the prison gate first thing, after having his electronic monitor fitted. The work is general stock work, fencing, tractor work, and of course extends to dipping, dagging and drenching the sheep – it seems nobody will be sorry to see the sheep numbers reduced!
If the opportunity arises, Simon will move to the ‘release to work’ section of the pathway programme where the men work for an external employer on a nearby farm during the day and return to the prison at night.
After his release Simon plans to move to full-time work either in farming or somewhere in the agriculture industry.
Transition to Society
Luan stresses that public safety is always first and foremost with everything they take on during the industries programme.
“Prison is not what you see on TV, it’s a completely different place to the way most people perceive it,” he says.
One of the main things they’ve seen is that as employment becomes important, the success rate with reintegration into the community and not landing back in prison is much higher.
“They have a purpose and self-respect.”
In the last four years, there have been 32 men employed on farms outside the prison system. These jobs are aided through liaising with Federated Farmers and Rural Support Trust, but the transition from incarceration back into society is really important;Luan says that’s where most guys will fall over, so finding the right farmer to ensure they get the right support is crucial.
The long-service prisoners are going out into a world that is completely different from the world they left behind.
“A lot haven’t seen mobile phones or EFTPOS cards,” Luan says.
Tongariro staff can give employers the full background story so they know everything about what goes on inside their employee’s head and how things were addressed to ensure they don’t reoffend.
Claire says Tongariro issues an employability report that gives full details about numeracy, literacy, attitude and work ethic, and outlines all the skills and tasks they’ve completed.
“They’ve been labelled prisoners but it’s all about second chances,” she says.
During release to farm work, prisoners are paid a standard working wage that’s held in a trust account.
There are always going to be prisoners who don’t want to get their lives back on track but this programme is here for the ones who do. Don’t they deserve a second chance?