The Government's Criminal Justice Summit is being seen as a very good start by one former inmate.

Alex Swney served just over two years of a five year seven month sentence for stealing $2.5 million from Auckland's Heart of the City organisation.

He's reinvented himself as a prison reform advocate.

Swney told Kate Hawkesby our prisons are a failure by international standards, with unnecessarily long and punitive sentences are being served.

"Prisoners that longer than they need to in prison become hard to rehab and the likelihood of reoffending is greater."

He says prisoners are going to return to the community but New Zealanders don't worry about it until they're their neighbour.

LISTEN ABOVE AS ALEX SWNEY SPEAKS WITH KATE HAWKESBY