Try a Maori prison - the current penal system is failing

I’m ready for all the negative comments that will flow from this column – no doubt a fiery backlash is heading my way. But please, let’s be bold and brave and not revert to our usual lazy and predictable colonial type.

I’m asking for everyone to think outside the square for a few minutes. Please. I support trying a kaupapa Maori prison - run by Maori, for predominately Maori, along Maori lines. Is your blood boiling yet? Bear with me.

The reality is prison is mainly a Maori issue. And the current prison system is an abject failure – they’re just a finishing school for crims and a recruitment dream for gangs. This is not some cry or justification for separatism, we have that already in our jails, just look at who lives behind bars: 52 per cent of all inmates are Maori.

Our prisons are the emblems of our two New Zealands. One people? What. Ever. That’s just the political marketing phrase of a cowardly politician.

Yes, we’re all New Zealanders, but don’t tell me my Dad’s conservative Pakeha mates have much in common with Maori.

They have no idea - nor do they really care - about these Maori prisoners and how they ended up behind bars. It’s a world away. Colonisation? Get real and get on with your life, they’d say.

Aspirations might be similar, but culture, the makeup of the whanau, hui, beliefs, language, marae, it’s all very different to the dog-eat-dog individualistic capitalist Pakeha model.

So we must address growing Maori incarceration and recidivism. Because as a country we just can’t carry on like this. Our prisons look like holding pens for apartheid yet we proudly fought that system and won.

I’ve asked what a Maori prison would look like - I’m told Maori inmates would be taught their language, their customs, kapa haka, who they are and where they come from. Who is their whanau, where is their marae.

These men are lost warriors. They are bad buggers. They have gang affiliations. They can barely read or write. They have drug, alcohol and violence issues.

They have never had role models. Or rehabilitation. And many have been abused by the very people who brought them into this world. They don’t have a sense of belonging and they certainly don’t really understand love. But we shouldn’t give up. For one simple reason really - they will be back out in our community one day. We need them to change. Their kids and whanau need them to change. Not for a moment should we go soft - but these men need a sense of belonging after decades of isolation and crime.

I’m not talking about the baddest ones. I accept they probably can’t be helped and being locked away is the best answer.

But thousands of others are there and they can be helped and they want to change. Yet until now we have completely failed to rehabilitate them. Only now are we trying. So let’s send them to meet their iwi and use that resource. Maori prisons will still be tough jails. Yes, we lock them up each night. But we also take them home to be taught who they are and to meet their whanau.

Let their whanau judge them and help them. No prisoner is eligible for a spot in the Maori prison unless they ditch their gang patch. No gangs, no booze, no drugs - just a will to learn and change. Break the rules, and you’re straight back to a traditional prison.

I’m not suggesting all our jails go this way - let’s just try one.

What’s the worst that can happen? It doesn’t work? Too late we’re there. Make Maori responsible for turning around Maori. That’s tino rangatiratanga if I’ve ever seen it.

I liked Labour MP Kelvin Davis’ call for a Maori prison this week. Labour leader Andrew Little didn’t have the balls to support Davis – it’s election year after all and it’s time to re-start peddling all this tough on crime bollocks that politicians spout. Plus Labour prefer their Maori MPs on the doormat to be walked over.

And this week Davis certainly knew his place. He should walk from the party and see if the Maori Party will have him. He was humiliated. It’s time to try something genuinely new.