(Transcript from World News Radio)
Stories of prison -- and particularly death-row -- transformations are often treated with understandable scepticism.
But in the case of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, facing execution in Indonesia, few seem to question the legitimacy of their rehabilitation.
That especially includes two men with first-hand experience of drug crime and recovery.
Luke Waters has the story.
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In a windy backstreet of Seminyak, Bali, Australian man Richard Smith runs a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation facility.
It's less than two kilometres from Kerobokan Prison, where Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are living what could be their final days.
Mr Smith, a one-time chaotic heroin addict, says he has empathy for the men.
In the 1970s, he, too, smuggled drugs in and out of Asian countries -- defying the ever-present threat of a death penalty.
"Same sort of quantities as what these guys have been caught with. You know, strapping heroin to our bodies and going through customs."
Mr Smith's redemption was long and painful.
It included a stint in Melbourne's notorious Pentridge Prison, before he eventually qualified as a counsellor and established successful rehabilitation clinics in Australia and abroad.
He says faking rehabilitation is possible but he believes Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are absolutely genuine.
"They've sustained this support, this work, so they've actually changed their lives. So it's a complete, what I would call, a 'psychic reversal'."
One of Mr Smith's Indonesian employees, Sandy Syahram, is quick to back up his boss's assertions.
Another former heroin user-turned-counsellor, Mr Syahram says he has volunteered at Kerobokan and seen first-hand the impact of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran on the prison.
And on their fellow inmates, he says in his limited English.
"They (are) real, they (are) real. After I see him ... after first time, I do volunteer work in jail, he totally changed ... New people come into the jail, and he helping a lot, like give motivation. That's what I know (of) Myuran and Andrew."
Mr Syahram points out other prisoners have volunteered to be executed instead of the pair.
He says they fear the men's absence will leave a big void inside the white walls of Kerobokan.
"It's going to be stop, for sure. No-one going to be get course for computer, no-one going to be get course for painting, because (they're) the only helping people in there ... If they get killed and execution, who's going to be ... who's going to be do that?"
Except for a quirk of fate, or an observant customs official, Richard Smith's life could have been quite different.
Opportunity, he says, is the only road to rehab.
And he says that is possible inside or outside prison.
"Keep them in the prison for the rest of their lives. You know, have them help the prisoners when they arrive. They're a productive part of that prison community. To end their lives ends all of their programs."
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