By using participatory action research, we can advance public education on the need to enhance the capabilities of prisoners with hearing loss and the capacity of prison staff to understand the needs of such prisoners. New Zealand Prison officers work in a situation where 1:3 prisoners have hearing loss and endure presenting compensatory behaviours such as anger, frustration and depression. Prisoners with disabilities are viewed by some as society’s most powerless and vulnerable, yet they can elicit negative judgments of shame and disgust from the more powerful, who are those most able to initiate change so desperately needed by prisoners to change their life paths from recidivism to successful re-integration. Nussbaum’s list of Central Human Capabilities outlines substantial freedoms that every person has the opportunity to apply, which prisoners with hearing loss need, to gain equity. When considering the practical application of these capabilities we can hypothesize they will offer prisoners the range of rights defined by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. By applying the Capabilities Approach through the CRPD the power of vulnerable prisoners increases, enabling all in society to originate from the same level and thus the application of the equally balanced social contract becomes possible. From that the Aristotelian approach can apply, whereby it is the job of a good political arrangement to provide each and every person with what they need to become capable of living rich and flourishing human lives.