Suicide rates for prisoners should shame us, it won’t, but it should
Fourteen suspected suicides of former prisoners since 2023 should force a national reckoning. Instead, New Zealand’s prison system continues to release broken people into the world with inadequate support — and no real accountability when they die.
More than a dozen released from prison dead by suspected suicide since 2023 – coroners
The coroner’s office says 14 people died in suspected suicides, after their release from prison over the past three years.
Parolees have described being thrown into the outside world without support and say more psychological support is needed.
The Corrections Department told RNZ it did not record the number of suicides. Parolees say Corrections doesn’t record the data, because it would only make it look bad.
Those who spoke to RNZ painted a grim picture of life on the outside after leaving prison.
RNZ
Released from prison, abandoned by the system
We refuse to collect the suicide stats of former prisoners because the shock wave would demand action when we don’t want to deal with the reality of the punitive prison industrial industry we have built.
An empire of misery and suffering under the guise of punishment when the punishment is the loss of liberty.
We like it to be more in NZ than just the loss of liberty, we glisten with anticipation at the suffering we get to put these damaged men under.
They go in broken, they come out more broken.
We refuse to point-blank refuse to properly fund rehabilitation in our system, preferring to grind them down so that they explode once released.
We punish beyond the sentence
The cynic in me says we may as well stop pretending rehabilitation is the goal and admit this system exists to break people.
This is what we are nowThis is what we is now, this is who we have become. A forever slathering herd demanding brutality to numb our own pain and sense of disconnection, finding unity only in the bloodlust of the Lynch mob.
Only rich people can afford to heal and buy justice.
