Lashlie's cure to end cycle of crime

By Catherine Masters - Saturday Aug 28, 2010 , New Zealand Herald.

Right - Celia Lashlie. Photo / Mark Mitchell.

When Celia Lashlie was manager of Christchurch Women's Prison, Maka Renata's mum was jailed there.
Renata is the boy who Child, Youth and Family put into the care of an uncle who taught him how to rape.
His mum, writes Lashlie in her new book, was a hard woman, a woman for whom life had not been gentle.
She wasn't easy to manage in prison with her tough exterior and she didn't let anyone draw too close.
In Lashlie's view, the woman saw her criminal offending as the way it had to be in order for her and her children and grandchildren to survive in an unforgiving world.

On the evening Lashlie delivered the news of her 14-year-old son's arrest for rape, the tough woman wept.
"Her beloved son, barely out of childhood, had just inflicted violence of the sort she had experienced numerous times in her life," writes Lashlie. "Her son was a rapist... It was as I watched her weep and felt her genuine sorrow and grief that I realised, not for the first time, that in some way I had yet to fully understand the mothers of our at-risk children are part of the answer."

Lashlie is sometimes angry and often cynical in The Power of Mothers: Releasing Our Children.

Read Catherine Masters' full piece at NZH.

Footnote:
The author was interviewed by Kim Hill on Radio NZ National this morning.
The book, published by Harper Collins ($36.99), will be released 1 September.
About the author:
Celia Lashlie was the first woman prison officer to work in a male prison. Later she conducted seminars with prison officers, aimed at challenging macho attitudes and behaviour. Perceptive and straight-talking, she was soon earmarked for higher office, and became manager of Christchurch Women’s Prison in 1997, where she was highly effective in bridging the gap between prison and the community at large. She then worked with Special Education Services in Nelson, which occasioned the events of 2001.
Celia has a degree in Anthropology and Maori, and is the mother of two children.
 She lives in Wellington, and is currently working a consultant in the social justice area.