'How do you fix a human being that's been damaged over years and years?'

Crime was not discussed when Walker spoke to former inmates for A Voice for the Silenced. Instead, their unique personal stories were his focus.

"I tried to pull out what is good about them, their whakapapa and the history that they come from.

"It's not just them, the individual in front of me, that I have to respect, but their whānau. I don't know who their ancestors are, who might be listening in. It's strange saying that, but that's how I view it. If I disrespect these guys and women in front of me that I'm speaking with, then I'm also disrespecting their ancestors."

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There are people working hard to improve the New Zealand justice system, Walker says, including judges "who know what goes on", but the debilitating effects of generational trauma, marginalisation and culture loss are crystal-clear in A Voice for the Silenced.

One interviewee phoned up later just to thank him for listening.

"For some of these people, this is the first time they've talked - and I listened."

Another man Walker visited for an interview said nothing to him for a long time, which he knew was a way of "testing him out".

"I was just thinking, 'I'm here. I don't mind the deafening noise of silence. And we'll see where we go."

When the man eventually started to speak, he and Walker found a connection talking about their shared link to the East Coast iwi Ngāti Porou and their respective mountains.

"We kind of connected genealogically, is how I would put it, and talked about the relationships wider than just him and I.

"He cried, that particular guy. And I just think, 'Whoa, geez.' He was seen as extremely violent, but there was a soft side to him, too. He birthed his daughter, you know?"

Walker spoke to six of the 17 Waikeria Prison inmates who took to the roof of the high-security unit in December 2020 in A Voice for the Silenced.

Although the men were prosecuted for being in a riot, he views their stand-off with police as a "protest" against unjust prison conditions.

"The State has created a hell of a narrative around that situation. I just think [the motivations of the men involved] need to be examined a lot closer, because who cares about these people in jail?"

Many people in Walker's book speak of being abused in residential care institutions like boys' homes, Walker says.

In his view, last year's formal public apology on behalf of the Crown is "meaningless" because the Crown is an inanimate body without feelings.

Generational trauma stemming from World War II is another theme in A Voice for the Silenced, Walker says, and many in the book are the grandkids of those who served.

"One of the people in there, his grandfather was a veteran, and his grandfather brutalised his father, who in turn, brutalised him. It just keeps on keeping on."

People who've been to prison are too often written off as "damaged goods", Walker says.

"How do you actually fix a human being that's been damaged over years and years and years?"

"People need to be loved. They need to be respected."

On Sunday 13 July at 3pm, Harry Walker will discuss A Voice for the Silenced with journalist Aaron Smale at Unity Books in Wellington.