A Critical Analysis of the Reintegration of Prisoners Back into Aotearoa New Zealand Society
By Tulsi Khanna
Aotearoa New Zealand has the second-highest rate of imprisonment in the world, right behind the USA. In 2018, New Zealand had imprisoned 212 people for every 100,000 and had a reoffending rate of 50 percent. Maori represented over 50 percent of the prison population, but only 15 percent of the population. These statistics suggest that our prisons are unlikely working the way they should be, particularly considering re-offending rates. What should be a cause of great international shame and a financial disaster for our nation continues to be swept under the rug. It is important to keep in mind that New Zealand has a punitive approach to crime, we believe the harsher we are on crime, the less it will occur. However, it is crucial to challenge this view as the reintegration of prisoners back into New Zealand society, for many, also means starting their journey back to prison.
In order to be able to examine whether the reintegration of prisoners is happening effectively, we must first look at some numbers of how money is spent on prisons. The cost of keeping one person in prison for one year is excess of $120,000. As of the 31st of March 2021, the penal population of Aotearoa sits at 8,655. This means that the current costs of operating prisons are more than $1 billion per year. More importantly however, are the unquantifiable, inter-generational health and social costs of a system which does not work. University of Auckland Doctoral Scholar Luke Oldfield says it is unlikely that taxpayers properly appreciate the broader costs of imprisoning people. If enormous amounts of taxpayer money is being spent on an issue that is nowhere near being fixed, it is imperative to critically analyze whether money could be spent elsewhere in the system.
These are only the costs we concur when individuals are in prison and ignores the social cost of their families while they are incarcerated. But, what happens when they leave? Particularly, when they leave with the stigma of a criminal record, a gap in their employment history and potentially not much support from society or the state. Although the Government spent $181 million on prisoner reintegration in 2017, after 12 months of release, 31.2 percent were back in prison. Although we may not have the power to stop crime altogether, we may have ways to change the way we punish it so that individuals never go back to prison. Prisoners are often released with $350 from WINZ, no job, no home, no safety and no transferable skills. This is not likely to be providing an individual with anywhere near stable enough conditions to reintegrate back into a society which is built with an intrinsic prejudice against them. This raises the question best phrased by Oldfield, “why not give them a fighting chance?”.
Although the Government now seeks to reduce the prison population by 30 percent in the next 15 years, it will be intriguing to see whether they stay out of prison for good. Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis stated that when the prison population started to spiral, less prisoners were able to leave as it became increasingly difficult for the Department of Corrections to ensure they were rehabilitated to an appropriate extent to be let out into society. When prisoners are not tested “outside on the wire”, referring to reintegration programs, where long term prisoners move into living arrangements and care for themselves, getting prepared for the outside world, it becomes harder and harder for prisoners to leave, and most importantly, to survive outside prison. Oldfield says that with prisoners who have spent long periods of time behind bars, making sure they remain crime-free requires wrap around services with a long tail, not just those which cease on or shortly after their release.
It seems like the Government is starting to take a better approach to releasing prisoners in recent times. Another prevalent issue when it comes to releasing prisoners, is remand prisoners. This is where inmates are incarcerated when awaiting their trial, this peaked in March 2018 with 4,000 inmates awaiting their trial. The most important thing that the Department of Correction looks at here, is if the inmate is granted bail, where will they go, and will they be safe and taken care of? To try and grant bail more often for remand prisoners, they seek to install more of a rehabilitative approach to the individual’s potential sentence by allowing them to spend their pre-conviction time in the community to address their offending, rather than being incarcerated before trial. This initiative priorities restorative justice, by not just keeping “bodies out of prison beds, it may also have a long-term impact on reoffending rates.”.
Along with this initiative, the Department of Corrections is setting up new programs to holistically rehabilitate prisoners. The designing of Hikitia at Waikeria Prison which is specifically tailored to help individuals through mental health and addiction struggles, and Te Mana Wāhine Pathway for women in Canterbury which provides an end-to-end kuapapa pathway for women in the region being managed by Corrections, these initiatives will hopefully provide culturally appropriate and restorative ways for individuals to connect with others and break the cycle of crime and incarceration.
Thus, we find that the reintegration of prisoners back into Aotearoa’s society is an incredibly complex and multi-layered issue, socially and legally. However, it is likely that our criminal justice system ought to learn from their mistakes of overcrowded prisons and high re-offending rates and prioritise restorative justice in order to give our prisoners a fighting chance on the outside.
Correction: 9 December 2021
A prior version of this article omitted the elaboration of Mr Oldfield’s views in the fourth paragraph. His views are not confined to those quoted in paragraph three.
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