Paremoremo revisited Some highlights from Rosemary McLeod's original story in The Sunday Times.
THEY MADE me sign the visitor's book, and I became the first woman reporter to see over Paremoremo. Men were marshalled from the loos in their cells for fear of offending a lady, but blushes were still in store for me and a young Maori caught in his underpants and private tattoos. "Wow!" he said, and I didn't dare return the compliment.
It's just as well I wasn't playing the role of sweet young thing. It wouldn't have paid off anyway, even with me tactfully clad from neck to toes.
replica tag heruer watches A woman is a woman in such circumstances. You can forget about Elizabeth Fry acts among the "top crims". They'll see through you anyway.
When a government architect set out to design Paremoremo he was told to imagine each prisoner had a gun, a hacksaw blade, a ladder, rope, and a stick of gelignite.
So it's the safest place in New Zealand to be locked up.
This leads deputy superintendent Sid Ward to say there's less regimentation in Paremoremo than in any other jail he's worked in.
I passed the classification block, where prisoners are to be sorted out when they arrive.
"How long are you doing?" one of them called as I walked past.
With him was one of New Zealand's most famous criminals. He was carrying a copy of Mad magazine.
ONE PRISONER was poring over a race book as I walked past. The prisoners bet 10-cent chocolate bars on the horses - without the staff's blessing. I never did find out who the bookie is. But on usual odds he must have the sweetest tooth in Paremoremo.
They buy sweets, cigarettes, fruit and toilet necessities out of their pay. The prison shop sells them at near-wholesale rates.
The most a prisoner can earn on the new bonus rates and grading system, which began this year, is 56 cents a day. The least is 12 cents a day.
Sixty percent of his earnings are banked for his release. He can spend the rest.
INMATES DO all the cooking. In the Clip on charms butchering section a tall, tattooed prisoner tossed a carving knife from hand to hand as he watched me. He kept it up to the count of three.
I sighed with relief - probably audibly - as he put it on the table and advanced.
"I don't believe I've had the pleasure," he said with considerable charm.
A prison officer told me who he was - one of New Zealand's most notorious criminals, serving a life sentence for murder.
To see the full story, go to sstimes/prison.pdf
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once proudly described as among the most modern in the world, is the visitors' room, as far inside the jail as prisoners' families ever get. Gang culture, along with the growth of the illegal drug trade, has certainly changed things since the old days, when prisoners might actually have physical contact with outsiders. Today visitors are locked in a kind of plastic aquarium within the large room. They can communicate with inmates, seated around and outside the box, only through small metal grilles with holes too fine for anything to pass through - I imagine even words would be a challenge.
The old lino in here looks truly gross, as it
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