Dr Liz Gordon: Prison and the politics of kindness

All the good words about kotahitanga, we are all one together, make love not war (oh dear that is a reversion to my youth) and the politics of kindness is all for nothing when we contemplate our prison system.  Every prison is in effect a high security system, with masses of barbed wire around, masses of security and, frankly, little kindness at all.

The Minister has opened up the possibility for change, and there are good signs, but it is very slow when there are things that can be done now.  have just been reading about the Norwegian prison system, which has slashed re-offending by a series of reforms. Let me look briefly at 5 lessons we can learn here from this.

1. Treat prisoners well and give them opportunities and they will use them.  “If you treat people like animals then when they get out on the streets, they will act like animals”.  The first lessons for New Zealand is that we have to move away from double bunking, give prisoners their own space and provide opportunities for development.
2. Prisoners are people too.  Prisoners in Norway can vote, for example, something we have removed here and which undoubtedly breaches our Bill of Right Act, as the Supreme Court ruled.
3. Security is best maintained by prisoners and officers working together, exercising, learning together, doing work together. The levels of violence in our prisons are about the dehumanisation that takes place in them.  In Norway, the senior officer looks with disdain at the pile of stab-proof vests that sit in a storeroom – they don’t use them much. Here, they are used all the time. Prisons are places of fear and hatred, to a great extent.
4. Give prisoners a future life and things to hope for.  Good employment opportunities, educational qualifications, the occasional conjugal visit – a family weekend – all of these things build hope for a good life.  In Norway, we are told, the sentence is the punishment. Here, incarceration has to be seen to be harsh. Even though it just breeds worse people.
5. Reduce maximum sentences.  In Norway the maximum is 15 years except for preventive detention.  Our imprisonment rates have got longer and longer as we ape the American system. It seems to me that 15 years is quite long enough for the most serious criminals.

In a few weeks I am visiting a women’s open prison in the UK.  I am really interested to see what they do there. Most countries have open prisons and various forms of community prison.  We do not. For some reason, all our prisons got wrapped around in huge fences and became security-mad in the 1990s, and of course it is a self-fulfilling prophesy.  The worse we treat them, the worse the become.

For such a peace-loving country we do have a dreadful prison system – all brawn and no brains.  I like the regime of the Norwegian prisons, kept even in the highest security. Up at 7.30, off to work or school activities after breakfast, spend the day out, exercise, lead a disciplined timetable and back in your single cell at 8.30 pm. This is so much healthier than sixteen hours straight in a double bunked cell, or 23 hours in solitary confinement.

For such a peace-loving country, we are far from kind when it comes to prisoners.  We are highly punitive and seem to have no idea how to use the time of incarceration to make good citizens. There is little enlightenment in our prisons. There are some excellent officers and some very worrying ones. They are places of many rules, and I have noticed a tendency of some officers to make up rules on the spot, so that effects can be arbitrary depending on the mood of the custodian. I have experienced this just in my role as a volunteer, so how awful for the prisoners.

It is depressing to read how enlightened the Norwegian system is and how terrible we are, not to mention that we imprison at nearly three times the rate of their system. How did our system get so bad?  Is there really hope for a massive change? Can we bring Jacinda’s call for kindness into the justice system, to repair the injustices that happen there?

Dr Liz Gordon is a researcher and a barrister, with interests in destroying neo-liberalism in all its forms and moving towards a socially just society.  She usually blogs on justice, social welfare and education topics.