On a 60-hectare plot of land in far west New South Wales, a man tightens his grip on a shovel as he listens to the chirps of birdlife undercut by the low buzz of machinery.

It’s an atmosphere Andrew (not his real name) will only experience for a few hours that day before he returns to the Broken Hill Correctional Centre, one of the state’s most remote prisons.

But as he reflects on the work in front of him and a small group of fellow inmates, he is feeling optimistic — about both the area’s future and his own.

“Jail’s normally a routine … nothing, just walls [but there are] no walls here, so best jail I’ve ever been in,” Andrew says.

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The work ranges from clearing out weeds to constructing cement slabs, and even cultivating native plants within the prison’s walls to later plant at the site.

As it progresses, the rehabilitation of this natural wonder could provide a blueprint for something experts say is missing in Australia’s prison system: the rehabilitation of people.

With one of the highest re-incarceration rates in the world, at 60 per cent, criminologist Lorana Bartels from the Australian National University said the system was not working.

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“If we were doing everything right, people would go to prison once, they’d do their time, we’d send them back into the community better than they were when they started and they wouldn’t go back,” she said.

“That’s just not happening at the moment.”

Wide open spaces

The Imperial Lakes site was once a sprawling recreation space for locals but was left largely untouched for more than four decades.

Now, a unique partnership between Corrective Services NSW and not-for-profit organisation Broken Hill Landcare is hoping to resurrect it for wildlife and people.

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The early days of that restoration were “daunting”, according to Landcare ranger David Elston.

Volunteers could not tackle the magnitude of the clean-up alone, they needed backup.

That help came in the form of Andrew and six other men from the prison, who volunteered for the project.

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“We can’t come every day, but the days we come, we all put in 100 per cent,” Andrew said.

“We wake up every morning hoping we’re coming out … it’s devastating when we don’t.

Reducing reoffending

Professor Bartels, who is also a board director at the Justice Reform Initiative, said for rehabilitation to work in a prison setting, it needed to address “the underlying issues that brought people into prison”.

She said 60 per cent of people in prison had been there before.

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“Some of [the] factors that make people likely to cycle in and out of prison can be addressed in the prison context,” Professor Bartels said.

Professor Bartels said despite high modern-day reoffending rates, rehabilitation programs in Australia could be traced all the way back to settlement.

“Historically, we’re a rehabilitation success story because it was this mass transition of people who were at the bottom rungs of society in Britain [and] within a generation or two they were seen as leaders of society,” she said.

“Obviously, that happened at the same time as massive theft of land from Indigenous people, [but] they participated in what was effectively a large-scale rehabilitation program.”

Cultural connection

Centuries later, Aboriginal people like Andrew make up a large ratio of those in prison, with 70 per cent of Broken Hill’s prison population identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

But he said programs like the Imperial Lakes partnership had helped him nurture his connection to country and culture, even from behind bars.

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Professor Bartels, who works with Indigenous organisations and people in custody, said programs taking this approach should get more recognition.

While acknowledging the model might not be applicable for all prison systems in Australia, she said it had the potential to play an important role in helping people in the final stages of their sentence reintegrate into society.

“The connection to country and culture is so crucial and so healing, and we need a lot more programs [that] support this,” she said.

“There’s a strong and growing evidence base that this is part of the way of addressing Indigenous over-representation in the justice system.”

She said it was also important that the men saw the tangible impact they were having on the landscape around them.

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Paving the way for mutual rehabilitation

For Andrew, words like “pride”, “joy” and “important” came to mind when he thought about his contributions to the Imperial Lakes project.

“I’ve been in jail a while … in and out. And I think [this prison term is] the end, this one’s done it.

“So [there’s a] big chance it’s rehabilitated me.”

While the upcoming nature park is currently only open to Landcare members, the organisation’s long-term plans include a plant nursery, children’s activities, and a biodiversity reserve.

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Additional staff would likely be required to accomplish this goal, and Landcare president Simon Molesworth KC and ranger David Elston were both keen to look at providing the inmates with work opportunities once the project got off the ground.

“They learn wonderful skills … and then later on when they finish their term, they can [one day] be employed as our park rangers,” Mr Molesworth said.

Future dreams

Andrew has learnt new skills, such as welding, through his work at Imperial Lakes.

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While he did not know exactly what his future held, he hoped the work he and the others were doing would ultimately contribute to the Imperial Lakes site becoming one of the far west’s greatest attractions.

“I’d like to see it fully restored … I’d love to bring my granddaughter here [and] show her, my son, [and] my grandson,” he said.

“It’s helped me anyway. I never had the chance to do anything like this in jail, and this is pretty good.”