Corrections wasting billions
Nicholas Boyack spent 26 years in journalism before quitting to become a probation officer in January. He lasted six months before throwing in the towel and returning to Stuff.
Imagine sitting in a room where someone tells you the graphic details of kicking a man to death. Many years later, he remains proud of what he did and boasts that despite a long stretch in prison, hewould not hesitate do it again.
Jack* was typical of the offenders I met. He was unemployed, a gang associate and an alcoholic, and he had spent 40 years in and out of prison. He had no fixed abode. He was Ma¯ori but had no real connection to his culture.
His cheerful grin displayed his lack of teeth. Like most offenders, he did not have a GP and his general health was poor.
It seemed like only amatter of time before he drank himself to death or got into a serious brawl with someone younger and stronger.
Having always believed in rehabilitation and that everybody deserves a second chance, I left journalism to pursue a career where I hoped to help people like Jack.
In the city where Iwas based, there was a strong link between poverty and crime.
The role of probation officers (in theory) was to motivate and encourage offenders to make positive changes in their lives and ensure they complied with their community-based sentences and orders.
Officers are supposed to spend 50 per cent of their time face to face with offenders and their remaining time preparing reports and recommendations for the courts and the New Zealand Parole Board. In reality, it is just a paper war.
People who’d been sentenced by the courts to report weekly to the probation servicewould trudge in late – or not at all. Probation officers could technically find them in breach for failing to report in, but often took the view that laying further charges would only heap more misery on them.
When they reported in for the first time, for their ‘‘induction’’, offenderswere reminded that if they breached conditions set by the courts, we could report them to the Ministry of Social Development, which could stop their social welfare benefit.
That would lead to some becoming homeless and broke, forcing them to steal or take a loan from a gang.
We would ask people why they had been shoplifting and were homeless. They would respond by saying ‘‘because you people cut my benefit’’.
I never understood why anybody thought it was a good idea to kick people when they were already down.
Often people would fail to report in because they had no driver’s licence or car, or no money to pay for public transport. It was not uncommon for people to be arrested when they were driving to Probation because they had no licence. The reporting in system appeared to be designed to fail.
When I had an offender in front of me, Iwould inevitably think like a journalist. Why are they in this situation? What is their real story? How is it they have been doing the same dumb offending for 30 years?
A flick through their file would often reveal they had mental health issues or a brain injury, an addiction to drugs or that they had been sexually abused. Many were physically, mentally or sexually abused in the state organisations that were supposed to protect them.
I found it depressing that the offenders who came through our doorswere overwhelmingly Ma¯ori. We did not keep statistics, but Iwould estimate 70 per cent. Pasifika males were also overrepresented.
As of June, there were 9469 people in our prisons. Ma¯ori make up 52.9 per cent of prisoners and Pasifika 11.7 per cent – making them vastly overrepresented since they make up 16 per cent and 7 per cent of the population respectively.
My colleagues at Probation stoically did their best but seldom questioned how such a grim reality exists inNew Zealand in 2020. Perhaps it was my background in journalism, but that iswhat troubled me the most. The current situation only exists becausewe allow it to.
Imight be naive but I believe that most people have a good heart and, given a chance, want to do nothing else but lead a happy life, have a family, and stay out of trouble.
The annual budget for the Department of Corrections in the current financial year is $2.429 billion. We are spending more each year on Corrections than the Government has spent in total on Treaty of Waitangi claims.
There is nothing glamorous about being a probation officer. Working with some of New Zealand’s most dangerous people on a daily basis, probation officers are expected to try to keep law-abiding citizens safe.
In my experience, probation officers put all their effort into high-risk offenders, concentrating not on rehabilitation but largely on making sure they do not endanger the public.
Training revolves around trying to avoid repeating the mistakes Probation made in dealing with Graham Burton, who murdered Karl Kuchenbecker in 2007 after Probation officers failed to adequately monitor him in Wellington.
Surprisingly, the name Kim Workman did not feature in our training.
Workman has spent decades studying and advocating for prison reform and the need to reduce recidivism. He has consistently argued that aMa¯oriled approach is the only way to reduce our shockingly high rate of Ma¯ori imprisonment. I agree.
Officers have a case load that often exceeds 40 people, and the job is dominated by paperwork. Rehabilitation was talked about and occasionally someone would claim amodest success, but mostly the job involved keeping track of offenders and making sure paperwork was up to date. I saw little evidence the causes of the problems probation officers deal with – institutionalised racism, poverty and our apparent reluctance to address the issues associated with gangs – were being addressed or even acknowledged.
A senior manager told me he saw no hope in the current generation and the answer was to lock them all up. He argued that all the effort should then be put into youth as the only way of breaking the cycle of recidivism.
From what I saw, the answer involves a radical change of thinking. Prisons do not work and the billions we waste on Corrections should be spent on rehabilitation, bettermental health facilities and reducing drug dependency. We also need to stop tolerating gangs and be much more proactive in stamping them out.
Corrections is looking at introducingwidespread Ma¯ori restorative justice, which basicallymeans letting Ma¯ori take responsibility for an area where Pa¯keha¯ justice has failed them miserably.
A separate Ma¯ori justice system would be politically hard to accept but that iswhat the Labour-led Government effectively announced in August 2019 with its commitment to Ho¯kai Rangi.
It is a long-term strategy that aims to put oranga (wellbeing) and other core Ma¯ori values at the heart of the way Corrections deals with prisoners.
The goal is to drastically cut the number ofMa¯ori in prison to 16 per cent or less, in line with the overall Ma¯ori population.
The key pointwas that Ma¯ori should co-design the Corrections system, alongside the department, in a Treaty of Waitangi partnership, according to Kelvin Davis, who was corrections minister at the time it was announced.
Before rejecting such an idea, we need to think about what a waste of money it is to spend $2.429 billion on keeping people like Jack in prison.
Why not spend that money on finding a solution that actually works for him?
For this, Ma¯ori need to be at the centre of the decisionmaking process and be part of the solution, if we are to reduce recidivism and inmate numbers.