Comment: In these difficult times, when even the Prime Minister regularly intones as a mantra that “we know that many Kiwis are doing it tough” – other Kiwis, that is – it is heartening to see the Government pressing ahead ahead with clarity and determination to grow an already significant industry by over a third.
It’s an industry where we are already an OECD leader, and which attracts overseas investment and creates jobs – an industry so attractive that the Government is prepared to apply precious limited public funds to achieve its goal of growth, one which will involve a great many young Māori.
That industry is, of course, imprisonment. Recent projections from the Ministry of Justice both reveal the planned growth and attribute it directly to government policies. So the coalition can justifiably claim credit, unlike the shameless showboating around other success stories to which politicians are so attached. They have chosen to put so many people in prisons, so they own this one.
Many of these people are yet to even be found guilty of a crime, let alone convicted. Many are affected with some form of illness or disability. Many have been in prison before, and many will be again. Imprisonment is often common amongst their family and friends. Many of the victims of whatever actions got them in prison share these things with them. Most are Māori.
The choice to imprison so many people is not because it improves life for them, nor for past or future victims. It can do, but it is not the typical outcome. Like a physical product designed to break down so that it must be repurchased – better known as planned obsolescence – the prison population cycles. It may, sadly and absurdly, be one of the more effective recycling programmes we have.
The roots of this situation lie deep in our history, from the first raupō gaols to the modern industrial complexes, but that’s not my point. This situation belongs to each of us, here and now. The trauma may be felt mainly or wholly by others, but the responsibility lies with those today who want this to happen, those who make the laws, those who enforce them, and those who simply pass on by. The “moral failure” of mass imprisonment, as a previous National Party leader called it, is repeated each day by all of us who put up with it.
The consequences of this failure fall disproportionately on Māori. Over years, their leaders old and young have cried out for change and dealt with the consequences of inaction, with initiatives, proposals, pilots and projects scattered about over time.
There are brave, dedicated and caring people trying new ways of handling the damage across marae, in communities, and within the “justice” and “corrections” systems. One new and positive one, Korowai Taonui, was launched last week at Government House, aimed at supporting young people from the Rangatahi Kōti process to avoid being sucked into the prison system. Others, like Grace Foundation, support people to heal after incarceration. All such initiatives merit our support.
There are activist groups campaigning against the prison system as a whole. Good on them, though imprisonment is so much part of the colonial economy and society that their longevity is probably inseparable. Reform can’t wait. The situation of those behind bars has to be improved dramatically – and must be while the social restructure that can end the inequities driving their imprisonment looks some distance off, to put it mildly.
Fortunately, we know a good deal about how to make these improvements, both from local knowledge and overseas experience. The task is to create places and processes that are less punitive, more recuperative, restorative and supportive. I’m no expert but I can read, observe and listen to those who are. Overwhelmingly the evidence is that for a great many of those who we currently cage, the much more effective option would be to place them closer to their communities, run according to their values and integrated into the local population.
The models can be run according to te ao Māori, or vā Pasifika, or for that matter any other set of values more appropriate to the people concerned than industrial incarceration. For imprisoned Māori, there are much better pathways that can be offered, as there are for health and other social issues. There is no reason to think that such pathways are more expensive – quite the opposite.
Too many minds are themselves in a prison, seeing only crime and punishment through the bars. That stunted vision is harming us all.
