Waatea News Column: Our damaged, racist Prison Industry is the legacy of hate and spite as social policy
32 years after the Roper Report told us that our Prison system wasn’t working by jailing and punishing too many, we get another Justice Advisory report once again highlighting our debased prison system as deeply damaging, deeply racist and deeply counter productive.
That over 50% of the prison population are Māori when they only make up 15% is the statistic, but that number hides the enormous damage that causes Māori communities.
If white males were imprisoned in NZ at the same rate as Māori are incarcerated, we would have found the political will for reform.
We have been so blind to the impact of colonisation and the get tough on crime mentality that it has made us as compassionate as a lynch mob. This warped focus on suffering over healing is what happens when spite is injected into social policy.
Those who have manufactured fear & manipulated it into tough on crime rhetoric should be ashamed.
Non-violent and non-sexual crimes make up for 42% of our prison population and 51% of those in prison are deemed low to low-medium classification.
We have been led by our anger on what prisons should do and be. That anger has borne us a terrible bitter harvest which sates no ones justice while poisoning mercy.
We are better than this.
First published on Waatea News.
prison system is damaged and so is our justice system the courts they are nasty spiteful and vindictive
New Zealand has always had a punitive justice system and is basically not interested in educating and reforming it’s prison population.
how do i know the above i have experienced it first hand myself and with my whanau members. I have seen the racism in the court by both the people that work there, the police and the judges i have also been a victim of a very serious crime and i have seen the good the bad and the ugly of our justice system and those that work within it and its not nice.
how do i know the above i have experienced it first hand myself and with my whanau members. I have seen the racism in the court by both the people that work there, the police and the judges i have also been a victim of a very serious crime and i have seen the good the bad and the ugly of our justice system and those that work within it and its not nice.
The whole state sector could be described as racist and all the above
The prison industry is also a legacy of Rogernomics …and the annihilation of jobs and hope and the destruction of families
The prison industry is also a legacy of homelessness …and the selling off of New Zealand housing to overseas buyers and the destruction of State Owned Houses for rent
The prison industry is also the privatising of prisons…where it is profitable to imprison