When actions defy logic

In the NZ Herald, Jim Hopkins examines current crime issues in light of the experience of his father, a prison chaplain:

Prison chaplains were a novelty 45 years ago and Dad was one of the first. Being your standard, smug adolescent, convinced that age and incompetence were synonymous, I didn't appreciate how fit he was for the job.

I do now. He knew what it was to be a prisoner. He'd been one. An army padre during World War II, he was captured after choosing to stay with wounded soldiers in Crete and spent the next four years as a prisoner of war.

In 1945, with thousands of others, many weak and ill, he'd been marched across Germany, away from the Russians. When soldiers died on the side of the road, he was there.

When men said they couldn't keep going, he told them they could. When there was bread to break, he broke it.

Not that I heard about that from him - or very little, anyway. It was other people - some at the prison - who remembered those things.

But they were experiences which helped him to help those who were Her Majesty's unwilling guests at Paparua.

Forty-five years ago there wasn't a mighty task force of highly trained Corrections staff assiduously overseeing the William Bells and Graeme Burtons of this world. There wasn't much of anything, really.

When inmates convicted of serious crimes neared the end of their 10, 15 or 20-year sentences, the thought occurred that a little reintegration might be advisable.

So, at weekends, prisoners convicted of assault, burglary, rape, manslaughter or murder would arrive to mow the lawn, dig the garden, repair a fence then - often with surprising diffidence and timidity - join us for a meal.

Sometimes, Dad would tell us something of their crime and its causes. Talking to violent offenders, he'd noticed a pattern. Nearly all of them had, as children, been regularly beaten, often with wood or lengths of wire.