“A breath of fresh air” is how Brigadier-General Ioane Naivalurua has been described inside the country’s prison walls. And it’s easy to see why.

A prisoner at work... at the Suva Gaol art gallery.

The man oozes with enthusiasm and passion, all the while poised and focused, when talking about the rehabilitation work underway in the 13 correctional facilities around the country.

His honesty and sincerity as he animatedly discusses the idea behind the Fiji Prisons & Correctional Service's Yellow Ribbon Project (YRP) are hard to miss.

A conversation with him on the subject is generously peppered with words like “God”, “family values”, “purpose in life”, “sustainable rehabilitation” and “institutional strengthening”. Naivalurua is obviously a liberal and visionary when it comes to the running of the institution.

But this story, he insists, is not about him.

It’s about the rehabilitation work, the inmates, the prison staff and it’s about society playing a role in taking over the reform work when a prisoner has done his time and walks out the prison door.

“The more important issue, I believe, is what we are doing now and our intent for the future,” Naivalurua stressed in an interview with Fiji Business.

“And this is what we are concentrating on. What I envisage is a truly functional prison system where offenders are given realistic opportunities through meaningful rehabilitation and correctional programmes to prepare them well for re-integration back into society when they are released.”

Brigadier-General Ioane Naivalurua

Yet, it is difficult to keep the now Commissioner of Prisons out of the picture. Ever since his assignment there following the December 2006 military takeover, the senior army officer has been drawing from strategic and tactical thinking experience gained from his 31 years in the military service to engineer some very basic and essential changes at the Fiji Prisons & Correctional Service.

As shared to this magazine by Mansa Ram, Supervisor of Prisons Central/Eastern Division, “he really honours the chair and that was the message taken right down below. To honour your chair, play your role so that you can fulfill the requirements of change.”

Ram, who has spent 33 years in the Prisons service and has seen eight Prison Commissioners come and go, described Naivalurua as one who has come “with a lot of new changes delivered in a focused and structured way.”

The Yellow Ribbon Project

At prison facilities around the country, everyone—staff and inmates alike—wear a small yellow ribbon pinned on their left chests. It’s a symbol and a constant reminder of what the Yellow Ribbon Project (YRP) is all about and, in Naivalurua’s words, how important it is “that when changes happen, everyone is moving together”.

“The YRP is about giving offenders a second chance in life,” said Naivalurua.

“Yes they’ve made wrong decisions in the past but they need moral and family support and love to make them better people.

“An offender is a son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister, niece or nephew, grandmother or grandfather.

“They feel the same emotions that we feel and are just as human as we are. They also have the potential to become better people and it’s that potential that we want to draw out and we need the help of the wider community in this effort.”

An offender, he reasoned, had two choices before him or her upon release.

“We can all assist him or her to become useful and productive members of society by giving him a second chance. Or, he falls back into his old ways and the cycle of crime continues. So this is the choice before us all.
The gap is yawning and calling out for attention. Yes, society may be unforgiving and yes, offenders have betrayed the trust of society. But do we get embroiled in this perennial academic but futile rhetoric or do we take the bull by the horn and do something about the problem to make Fiji a better society, a safe place to live in and more importantly, reintegrating a life back into his family as a better person?”

The YRP is “taking the bull by the horn,” although Naivalurua’s critics tell him that it’s a “soft approach” to rehabilitation.

The project does have its skeptics. “I tell them no, this is not the soft approach. This is the correct, proper and right approach. And don’t get me wrong. I believe that when a person breaks the law, he or she must be punished. But when they are put here in prison, this (new approach to rehabilitation through the YRP) is what I will do.”

Prisoners therefore are not left to idle away their time in prison. Under the Yellow Ribbon programme, they are being put to use.

Naivalurua firmly believes that with government’s strained financial position leading to challenges of funding for the prisons service, whatever resources at his disposal will be used—including labour capacity, ploughed back into the service’s operation as self-help skill-building experiences for inmates and revenue-generating efforts for the institution.

“The prisons have great potential to be a revenue earner for government,” he said.

“Last year alone, with our current resources and capacity, we returned to the government over $120,000 in revenue. When we go into commercial activities, the potentials are very attractive. We now have a broiler for raising meat chicken, which earned the Prisons Service over $20,000 last year. We have our traditional programmes of tailoring, joinery, bakery, poultry, piggery, vegetable farming and dairy farming.

“Labasa Prison is now involved in rice farming in Dreketi. Pre-release inmates now sell farm produce and income is banked into their personal accounts. There are now commercial activities in the pipeline for joinery in coffin making. Tailoring skills need upgrading to enable the Medium Security Prison to do officers’ uniforms and other marketable apparel. There are other exciting programmes such as beekeeping for Minimum Security Prison and food catering for the Women’s Prison.

“There has been some interest expressed to us to provide labour and possibly taking out working contracts but we need time to think through these proposals further to ensure those under our care get useful training as well as reasonable returns.

“We need to have the foundation right. However, at the core of our rehabilitation programme is spiritual development of offenders. For wholesome and enduring transformation to occur, I believe one needs profound spiritual and personal experience in God.”

It may sound like a very rosy deal for criminals in Fiji—and mind you, in the spirit of the YRP, the use of the word “criminal” itself to refer to an inmate might not be so politically correct.

Yet, how else does one deal with such a sensitive subject as crime with all its economic costs, social burdens and seemingly lack of sensible solutions?

Naivalurua believes the answer for Fiji is what the YRP is all about—genuine rehab and acceptance of the offender by society.

“Genuine rehabilitation can only occur with the support and meaningful involvement of the wider community, especially key stakeholders,” said Naivalurua.

“We realise we cannot do this on our own. I mean, these prisoners didn’t just fall from Mars and landed in my backyard. They are somebody’s child, wife, husband, they belong to a church, come from a province, a family...so, the next important and pressing issue for us is: ‘who do we hand over to when the offender is released from our care?’ Therefore, the support and active involvement of the family, keeping the family intact, is top priority.

“It was always going to be a heart and mind challenge to win over society. So my first year on the job has been one of public visibility and engagement. We have engaged in community projects.

“For the key stakeholders to empathise with us, we need to bring them over to the prisons to see the situation first-hand.

“We brought in policymakers, key government ministers including the Prime Minister. We also hosted His Excellency the President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo. We had the Rotary Club, the Suva City Council, and most recently, a high level delegation of the Methodist Church led by Reverend Laisiasa Ratabacaca.

“Our YRP awareness teams have also been going out to the community taking this message of hope, of giving a second chance, forgiveness and acceptance. They have and are still going to workplaces, schools, churches, businesses and professional associations, tertiary institutions, government departments, provincial councils, villages and urban communities to take action and take ownership of this initiative.

“Offenders need sympathy, understanding and real opportunity extended to them instead of rejection and ostracism.”

New laws, new image

In a way, Naivalurua executes plans as if he is “going to battle,” as he puts it—"identify the weak points in the system and formulate strategies to counter those weaknesses".

It’s plain common sense, he said, and "you don't have to be Einstein to figure out what's lacking and what to do about it. When a job has to be done, it has to be done".

With a will, passion and commitment that he holds for his job, he wants to bring about positiveness to the organisation.

“An air of positiveness gives an organisation confidence in moving forward. When I first came in, two things stood out clearly. One: this was an introverted organisation. Two: leadership was poor. So on the first week, I gathered all my staff and told them, ‘look, I don’t have any agenda. I respect what you know and I know you know your work so you are going to help me do mine.’ The need to empower both inmates and staff was obviously necessary.

“ I put up a stack of documents containing all the work that had to be done but on very top of it, I put the Holy Bible and told them: ‘this, is going to be our prime document.’”

To him, the spiritual element of the prison reform could not be understated.

The “no stones unturned” approach to rehabilitation work also sees physical changes to prison facilities, as well as in the legal aspects of crime.

“Our prison system has been operating under laws which have outlived their usefulness for a very long time,” said Naivalurua.

“But we now have the new Fiji Prisons and Corrections Act of 2006 which has moved away from the traditional penal code of containment to one of correction and rehabilitation.

“The prisons are an integral and very vital link, though often neglected, in the chain of law and order, justice and security of our nation.

“The situation in our prisons should be the concern of every right-thinking citizen because what becomes of an offender who has been through the prison system has direct implications on society as a whole.”

Prison facilities too have gone under the knife. “It is also very important for us that we are in compliance with international standards, particularly the relevant UN conventions regarding prisons and the right of prisoners,” said Naivalurua.

“Obviously, I did an initial assessment of the prisons in terms of population and facilities as well as the morale of staff. What I saw was not a happy one. It is no secret that the facilities were dilapidated and needed urgent attention, especially in Suva and some of the smaller prisons; they were overcrowded. We have given the necessary attention to these areas. The Main Block in Suva Prison has been closed down and so is the Remand Centre.

“The remand prisoners are now in better facilities and additional self-containing cells have been added. The Labasa Prison is almost brand new with its self-containing facilities.

“Ba is next and so forth. We have reduced the population to a manageable ratio and we hope to bring that down further. The officers are now travelling on a decent dedicated bus instead of the back of trucks and prisoners in Suva have their own mini-buses. Roads in Naboro are now tarsealed.

“But these are only necessary tools for the necessary and ultimate task of rehabilitation. I can say with some confidence that we are now complying with OHS standards, Fiji Human Rights expectations and more importantly with the relevant international conventions.”

Naivalurua has a revealing "first measure" of how he will rate the success of the YRP: that "before the end of December, when we have our church service to break up for the year, I want to see at least a mother, father or relative sitting beside a prisoner. To me, that will be a measure of our success".

The inaugural launch of the Yellow Ribbon Project was held in June and preparation of its major launch is underway for October 11, when Fiji hosts the Heads of Pacific Islands Correctional Services.
Naivalurua said the launch of YRP will be an annual programme.