Greg Newbold

Good bonhomie and then we went to the Maidment Theatre where the debate was to take place and the whole room was packed and there was news reporters and everything. Was there any suggestion that any of you might try to escape?

Absolutely not, because it would have torpedoed the entire debating program. And we had immense loyalty to Don and Jeff, immense amount of loyalty. We would never have done anything to screw it up.

There was a lot of solidarity in that jail, you know. We had really, really solid principles. There was a great deal of group feeling because we were so proud of ourselves. We were proud of our jail. We were proud of the institution. And clearly security was pretty relaxed because Greg was able to meet up with a visitor, Robin.

Well, see, there was no toilets in the Madman Theatre. I just said to a screw-up, I'm just going out for a piss, mister. And he said, oh, yeah, OK. Didn't go with you? No, he didn't go with me. And I took Robin out and hopped under the bloody psychology building, came back with my elbows and my knees all covered in dirt.

And nobody said, when you got back, nobody said, where have you been? No, no, no, no, they knew. You could see the dirt on my gear. What happened after the debate was over? Did you just get back in the van and go back? Well, after the debate was over, there was a big feast and lots and lots of wine, you know, and we were all drinking and eating and having a ball. Oh, it was wonderful.

And then I think we had to be back by 12 o'clock and we all hopped back in the van and off we went back to the jail. How did it feel to be going back to the jail? Well, we'd won and we had the big trophy. But you didn't feel like, oh, I wish I wasn't going back? No, well, we were all half pissed.

So you weren't thinking about that? No, no, we were chatting away and blah blah, very loquacious. And then we got to the jail and they were all awake waiting to see how we'd done. We'd won the trophy and there was a big chair, went through the wing and that.

And by then Don McKinnon was coaching you because you were the A team. Yeah, Don coached us right through the A team. He had immense, immense mana in the jail. Everybody, not just the debating team, everybody loved Don.

And I can remember one time in particular, it was nearly Christmas time, and Don came in. And the inmates had, some of the inmates had decided that they were going to take hostages in the visiting room. They were going to take, it was, I think it was Tikorians, a female team, and they were going to take them all hostage. And the reason...

was that Jack Hobson had put some restrictions on our Christmas parcels. I think we were only allowed a one pound cake instead of a two pound cake. I think it was something really... And they were going to take hostages over there and demand a two pound cake in their Christmas parcels. I said to Don, Don, the inmates are going to take hostages. And he goes, oh yeah, who's organising it? And I said, it's Solly. He went over and he said...

Hi Soli, how are you going? And Soli goes, oh, oh, oh, it was really good Don, it was not bad. And that was the end of the, that was the end of the, that was the end of the hostage. He couldn't carry on with it. He went around whispering, the hostages are off. Now remember this all happened 50 odd years ago and Don's version is a little different.

Do you think it was good for you being in a debating team? Was it good for those in the team? It was incredibly good for the morale of the whole jail. There was a great feeling of solidarity and commitment. It's like an old boarding school, you know. It was that kind of an atmosphere in the jail.

And when you're in a group like that and everyone's under a microscope, your whole reputation depends on the way you behave. If you fall out with someone or if you do something bad, the whole community is going to be down on you. So there was very, very strong social pressures to conform and very strong social pressures to fit in.

Prisons are a completely different world now to what they were. During the second national government with Ralph Hannon, Minister of Justice, and John Robson, Dr John Robson, the Secretary for Justice, they liberalised the prison system from the 1950s, lock them up and leave them. They wanted to liberalise and make New Zealand prison system the most advanced system.

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They screwed the jails down. Suddenly an escape became a major failure and they screwed down on drug use and they screwed down on pretty much everything. So the prisons became far more disciplinary and far more oppressive and that resulted in more tension between inmates and more tension between inmates and staff.

To some extent the inmates are responsible for it because the gangs are so prominent in prisons now. I came out a different person. I served five and a half years of the seven and a half years in it. And I came out with knowledge and understanding of people who I would never have met. Did it get you out of that whole drug scene?

I continued to use drugs the whole time I was in jail, and I continued to use drugs when I got out, but not very often. Because I started running marathons, Bill Hodge, Professor of Law at Auckland University, took me under his wing and got me into marathon running, and I started in my PhD program. So really I didn't have time to get into drugs very much.

I dabbled from time to time, but it was never a major feature of my life, which it was becoming that when I got busted. I was starting to use four times a week. As I say in the book, going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me. If I had my life again, I wouldn't change anything. I'd live it pretty much exactly the way I lived it. I don't regret anything really.