GUEST BLOG: Dr Liz Gordon – Christmas behind bars

At Christmas I play Santa at Christchurch men’s prison.  At Easter I am the Easter Bunny.  And in children of prisoner’s week I am a pretty handy face painter, this year tackling a horse, a tiger and various cats and dogs.

Through the year I volunteer at the Family Pathways Centre at the prison.  It is run by Pillars, a charity.  I am the President of the organisation, researcher for it and, as noted, volunteer extraordinaire!

Prison systems are designed to separate individuals from their families.  This separation is damaging to the whole whanau and the wider society.  It separates individuals, most of whom are young Māori men, from their communities.  It imposes the burden of parental incarceration onto children, who themselves become “collateral convicts”, as some have named it.  The European Children of Prisoners network has an annual campaign called “not my crime, still my sentence”.

I always find it extraordinary when people say – and say it they do – that children should not visit their loved parent in prison.  Can any of us imagine having our parent carted off, sometimes arrested in early morning raids in front of us, and not to be seen for months or years?  Research makes it clear that this is a trauma that many children do not recover from.

However, in recent years the campaign for ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ prisons has made the prison environment less welcoming to children.  Fortunately, due largely to the work of Pillars, this is now being turned around.  The goal is to make prisons “family friendly” through a range of initiatives.  The Department of Corrections has adopted the ‘Children of Prisoners Bill of Rights’, which includes statements such as “I have the right to speak with, see and touch my parent”.  But, in granting that right, the prisons surely have a responsibility to ensure that this occurs in a supportive environment?

There is some excellent research evidence on the effects of family friendly systems in prisons. Initiatives include homework clubs, family visiting centres, social support inside the prison for families, visiting areas that promote good parenting and good relationships, family days (one of my favourites was a Welsh prison where the city Fire Brigade came into the prison and spent the day driving prisoners and children around, having water games, giving demonstrations of equipment and the like) and the celebration of important days.

The research says that family initiatives within prisons improve the environment in prison, improve the behaviour and outlook of imprisoned parents, improve whanau relationships, offer more supportive environments when a person leaves prison and reduce recidivism.  The children who visit their parents regularly benefit hugely from this.  It is a win-win situation, but of course opposed by those who think that prisons should punish by banishment, even when this makes things worse.

The truth is, we do not have a clear and agreed opinion in our society about the role of prison. Those that challenge my view that prisons should be family friendly, often spout pious little sayings such as “well if he hadn’t done the crime, he wouldn’t have to do the time” and so on. Can I say how very unhelpful such comments are in this complex carceral environment?  For our population New Zealand has a very high imprisonment rate but low crime, and I think that Labour’s determination to reduce the rate by 30% as a start is excellent.  In the meantime, surely it is our responsibility to mitigate the harm to whanau and tamariki?

Back to Christmas.  Each year, a range of community organisations, churches, schools and individuals donate Christmas presents to Pillars in both Christchurch and Auckland. The presents distributed to clients and in the prisons are all brand new, high quality toys, games and equipment.  The year we had a large number of new scooters, a couple of bikes, headphones, Lego (especially the Star Wars sets), beautiful wooden pull-along toys, balls, board games and the like. They are the same presents that Santa will be putting under the tree of the children of advantaged families.

Over Saturday and Sunday, the Elf and I (the Elf being my English sister, out here for Christmas) gave out these presents with pride to all the children visiting the prison over the weekend.  We gave out well over 100 gifts.  We brought a tree, tinsel, flashing lights and boxes of presents into the gatehouse of the prison, and everybody smiled at us. We brought joy to the children.

Shine light into the darkness in everything you do this Christmas!

Dr Liz Gordon began her working life as a university lecturer at Massey and the Canterbury universities. She spent six years as an Alliance MP, before starting her own research company, Pukeko Research.  Her work is in the fields of justice, law, education and sociology (poverty and inequality). She is the president of Pillars, a charity that works for the children of prisoners, a prison volunteer, and is on the board of several other organisations. Her mission is to see New Zealand freed from the shackles of neo-liberalism before she dies (hopefully well before!).