GUEST BLOG: Jackie Foster – Open Letter to Kelvin Davis

Having been written to by many whanau of many prison inmates, simply asking for support as they watch their loved ones get pushed around in our prison system, I decided to collectively write an open letter to you, in the hope that you, in your capacity as Minister of Corrections, could assist in one way or another.

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on achieving your 2017 election pledge of reducing the prison population. Well done although two prisoners were murdered during that time but possibly their deaths were caused by the stamped of the exiting prison population.

The 2018 Criminal Justice Summit brought together a lot of high-profile people from a lot of government departments and NGO’s costing millions, also bringing hope of change but five years on very little has changed, if it hasn’t actually worsened.

Covid-19 has stripped prisoners of their visiting rights and connection with their whanau, as it did for the rest of Aotearoa but for some strange reason Covid 19 is still active in most prisons, still not allowing face to face visits, stripping prisoners of their mental wellbeing not to mention rehabilitation or reintegration rights.

You may be interested to hear that I am currently supporting a whanau whose son was given a sentence of nine years 3 years ago. To date their son has received no rehabilitation in line with his offending still waiting on a corrections psychologist report, ending up so frustrated with your system that they paid for a private psychologist to try and help, but they do appreciate the few bits of clothing, one blanket and a little bit of food provided during his stay.

Minister these are just a few of the concerns I as a support person have, and I too will freely admit, I have moments of anguish especially when I hear mothers of inmates say to me “Sadly, it seems that it is the inmates who must suffer the consequences of mismanagement across the board, staff incompetence, inadequate to no staff support, development/training and zero accountability to anyone of consequence. So as a result, our experience must surely be one of way too many similar such occurrences where nobody says anything and nothing changes” powerful words and heart-breaking to say the least.

In closing I want to say, I write this letter openly and honestly in the hope that my message gets out there and also as an assurance to all whanau of all prison in mates that I will keep the fight up for them and my support will never waiver.