Ice and "a bit of heroin" controlled Jason Hawkins for nearly 20 years, as he was in and out of jail for burglaries and assaults.

He said, while he now recognised what he was doing was wrong, he justified his behaviour by focusing on the fact that he had chosen businesses, rather than individuals, to rob, and that they would be insured.

"But it might have been their first business — they might have mortgaged their house to get a start for their children," he said.

"When I started to think about that it really hit home and I was feeling bad about it."

Jason Hawkins is now part of an employment training program. ( ABC News: Luke Stephenson )

Fellow prisoner Mark Brown* said drugs also led him to turn to crime.

He was stuck on ice, stealing cars with his friends.

"I was hanging out with them and they were doing stupid stuff and so was I," he said.

But, after a year in jail at Canberra's Alexander Maconochie Centre, Mark said he was never going back.

"I don't associate with them anymore, I've got new friends and mostly I hang out with family," he said.

Both men hope they were now heading in the right direction thanks to a Federal Government pilot program.

Staring down the statistics

Mark Brown hopes to turn his life around through the Worldview program. ( ABC News: Luke Stephenson )

The Worldview program aims to help prisoners like Jason and Mark go from jail to employment training and eventually a job of their own.

Indigenous Australians make up less than 1.6 per cent of Canberra's population but represent one in five inmates at the jail.

Set up to address the staggering growth in the number of Indigenous people behind bars over the past decade, Worldview runs an E-waste facility, where former prisoners earn wages as they work towards a new life.

The program focuses not just on employment, but also education, accommodation and mentoring.

Participants are trained in how to lead a healthy lifestyle, to tackle generational disadvantage, with what is a holistic approach.

Worldview senior mentor Anthony Longbottom said the program had already helped one graduate land a full-time job.

However, he said changing the perceptions of employers was just as important as getting the participants ready for work.

"A lot of employers sort of look and go 'oh Indigenous, oh detainee', but we should get rid of that myth," Mr Longbottom said.

"There is value there. My aim is to give them the positive way to get across to the employer.

"Say 'hey yes, I done something wrong, but that's in the past, I want a future'."

Mentor Anthony Longbottom is helping Indigenous ex-prisoners find employment. ( ABC News: Luke Stephenson )

'Never go back'

Albert Barker was serving an eight-year sentence for aggravated robberies when he heard about Worldview.

He has since gone on to become a mentor to others, acquired a licence and a car, and is aiming to get his truck licence by next year.

"I'm enjoying the mentor role ... because we've all pretty much been there ourselves and we've all faced these things before," he said.

"We can all help each other through it."

About the Worldview program: The Worldview program assists Indigenous prisoners in finding work after jail

The Worldview program assists Indigenous prisoners in finding work after jail The number of Indigenous prisoners in Canberra's prison system has doubled in 10 years

The number of Indigenous prisoners in Canberra's prison system has doubled in 10 years Senior mentor Anthony Longbottom said the program had already helped one graduate land a full-time job

Senior mentor Anthony Longbottom said the program had already helped one graduate land a full-time job He said Worldview also hoped to shift employers' perceptions of workers with a criminal history

He said he had come to understand the value of a "normal" existence.

"What I see as a success is just being normal — success is structure and routine, getting up every day, having a purpose like coming to work," he said.

"A lot of these boys have come from pretty much nothing, and now they are going places.

"I don't think I'll ever go back to jail."

Rate of Indigenous incarceration in Canberra 'unacceptable'

Shane Rattenbury said the ACT Government welcomed programs that made a difference. ( ABC News: Jake Evans )

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that in 2007, the percentage of Indigenous prisoners of the total number of detainees in the ACT was 10 per cent.

Since then, that number has doubled to about 22 per cent, while the national figure grew only slightly to 27.6 per cent.

During that same timeframe, imprisonment rates have also jumped to the point where Indigenous Canberrans are about 19.5 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous citizens, ABS data show.

That ratio is far worse than it was in 2008, when the Alexander Maconochie Centre opened and Indigenous Canberrans were about 10 times more likely to be locked up than non-Indigenous people.

While the increases were in line with national trends, ACT Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury admitted the situation was "unacceptable".

"It's something that's been building up for generations and it's not something we're going to fix overnight," Mr Rattenbury said.

"But we now have a really clear sense of what the problem is — we know that things we've been doing haven't been working, we have to embrace change, we have to be willing to do it differently, and ... need to make sure the Indigenous community are much more involved in both the design of these programs and also running them.

"We need to look at the underlying factors, generations of trauma, disadvantage, low levels of education in some cases, children being taken away into custody. These sort of things are drivers that lead to adult incarceration and we can only address adult incarceration by going back to the beginning."

Mr Rattenbury said the government was exploring alternatives to imprisonment and did not want to spend more money expanding the jail.

"We want to spend money on the programs that make a difference," he said.

"A great example is the Yarrabi Bamirr program, that actually seeks to work with not just individuals, but with the whole family.

"These are the sorts of things that make a difference to people's life trajectories and maximise the chance of them not going into custody."

*Name has been changed