Before colonisation, Te Ao Māori didn’t have prison structures

By Mariam 

According to Corrections, New Zealand has one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world. While other OECD countries on average have an incarceration rate of below 150 per 100,000, New Zealand imprisons over 200 people per 100,000. There have been a multitude of factors leading New Zealand to this point of mass incarceration.

1. In 1999, 92% of New Zealanders supported the referendum to impose minimum sentences for all serious violent offences.
2. In 2002, The Sentencing and Parole Acts abolished parole at two-thirds of the way into a sentence, extended the minimum non-parole period from 10 years to 17 years, and extended the waiting time between parole hearings.
3. By 2010, prison numbers were becoming both socially and economically unsustainable, and the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act or the “three strikes law” was introduced. In this case, the third strike meant receiving the maximum prison sentence without any chance of parole (Devlin, 2019).

Prison abolition as a means to ending domestic violence?

By Maddie Little 

The recent announcement that the New Zealand Police Armed Response Team trial will not be continued was in response to resitance and collective action from New Zealanders. A large part of this restance was due to Māori people being eight times more likely to be victims of police violence and therefore possible victims of the armed police teams (Arms Down NZ, n.d.).

 This led me to pondering further why as a society we rely so heavily on police, and our motives for reporting. Intersectional analysis must also be applied to who the police are called on, and how the outcome of police intervention has disproportionately negative outcomes for people of colour around the world, and especially for Māori people in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Prison, huh… what is it good for?

By Arohata Springhill

Absolutely nothing.

Maybe that seems extreme but I wonder if, when we start discussions of the issues with prison from the perspective of the things that we might change to make it ‘better’, we might be missing the point that perhaps something far more radical is needed.