Recent Ombudsmen’s reports have revealed that prisoners are not even treated adequately, let alone well. They have found that the drinking water in some New Zealand prisons is discoloured, and that some prisoners are not even provided with drinking cups. Prisoners usually have their final meal of the day at 4pm, meaning that it is common for them to go 16 hours without any food.
The Ombudsmen have also discovered that many prisoners are put in double-bunked cells far too small to accommodate two people; many do not get daily exercise or fresh air; many prisoners have to eat their meals next to an uncovered toilet; and many prisoners do not have regular access to clean clothing and sheets.
The reports have uncovered that prison staff are able to watch some prisoners, even in their most intimate moments – getting dressed, using the toilet, and washing themselves. This is supposedly done in the name of safety, but instead makes prisoners feel degraded.
Every prisoner is also required by law to be strip searched when they enter and leave the prison, as well as on many other occasions. During a strip search, officers have full authority to invade the prisoner’s body, including “lifting and raising” their “fat, genitalia, and breasts.” Despite how invasive this is, nothing is found in 99.59% of strip searches. Strip searches amount to senseless sexual assault and nothing else.
Although strip searches are supposed to prevent harm, the Ombudsmen have nonetheless found an extremely high level of unreported prisoner-on-prisoner assaults. Many prisoners feel unsafe going about their everyday lives in prison. Referring to both other prisoners and prison staff, many prisoners describe the culture of the prison as one of “victimisation and intimidation.”
Those who are most at risk of this violence are often placed in conditions akin to solitary confinement, where they may be stuck in their cell for up to 23 hours a day and cut off from contact with others.
These conditions have been defined as a form of degrading treatment according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. This reveals that not only are prisoners not treated “too well,” but that they are barely treated like people at all.
In light of these inhumane conditions, we must ask: how does exposing people to fear, assault and isolation make them better people? Does this really teach people who have hurt others how to change? And if Corrections believes the way to keep the most vulnerable prisoners safe is to lock them in solitary, effectively exposing them to yet another form of torture, are prisons not just punishing people for the sake of punishing them?
The statistics speak for themselves: half of people who leave prisons are back again within 5 years. When people do find rehabilitative services in prison useful, their personal development isn’t because of imprisonment but in spite of it. None of the services provided to prisoners require them to be imprisoned in order for them to be successful. People come out of prison scarred, not healed.
Prisons target specific communities much more than others. Those who are imprisoned are more likely to be poor, Māori, mentally unwell, and intellectually disabled. Māori experience discrimination at every stage of the criminal “justice” system, and are more likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Māori make up only 15% of the total New Zealand population but over 50% of the prison population.
In what way are these communities being kept safe when parents, children, whānaunga, lovers, friends, caretakers and wage-earners are being locked in a cage away from their communities and tortured?
In fact, prisons actively endanger these communities. It has been found that those who leave prison often come out more violent than before. People who go to prison for non-violent offences are much more likely to commit violent offences when they leave. The culture of “victimisation and intimidation” within the prison forces many people to be violent in order to survive, teaching them to use violence to solve problems. When they leave the prison, that violence makes its way into our communities.
Former prisoners are also much more likely to be homeless and unemployed. As a result, people who have been in prison and their whānau are left with not only emotional and physical damage, but also an increased likelihood of being poor. Families that have or have had a member in prison face a vicious cycle of poor health, poor education, inadequate housing, and mental illness, which leads to more members of their community being imprisoned!
These families are caught in a cycle of misery that prisons help to reproduce over and over. Prisons not only fail to keep communities safe, but actively contribute to making communities unsafe by creating widespread fear, violence, homelessness and impoverishment.
1,680 people in New Zealand prisons are on remand without conviction. This means that they are being held in prison before they have even been found guilty of anything. The recent “tough on crime” reforms, such as the Bail Amendment Act 2013, have made this even worse. Between September 2013, when the bill was introduced, and September 2016, 77.49% of the increase in the prison population was due to a rise in the number of people being held on remand.
This increase in the prison population, now at 10,000, has created an overcrowding crisis. This crisis has been used to justify housing multiple people in tiny cells and denying them access to fresh air. Right now, it is being used to justify the building of a new facility at Waikeria Prison, which will house 1,500 more prisoners. Since this bill came into effect, the remand population alone has increased by more than 1,000 people!
The current overcrowding crisis is the result of a cruel piece of government policy. While the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act states that a person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, 1,680 prisoners are being punished as though they had been found guilty anyway. The government now wants to justify degrading and torturing 1,500 more prisoners with this blatant breach of human rights! This is unacceptable. We demand the repealment of the Bail Amendment Act.
In 2017, the New Zealand government has budgeted $1 billion for the running of prisons, as well an additional $1 billion for prison construction and expansion over the next few years. What could this money do for impoverished communities across Aotearoa? For the 23,000 children with a parent in prison? For education? For housing?
While the government eagerly increases its spending every year on an unjustifiably cruel system, it ignores the widespread poverty in New Zealand that drives people into criminalised activity. The prison population could be drastically reduced by dealing with fundamental problems in society, such as inequality and racism. Instead of using its resources to attack poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, and mental illness, the New Zealand government chooses to hide these issues with a $1 billion band-aid.
Prisons fail to provide a real solution to our social problems – they address misery and hardship by creating even more misery and hardship.
People don’t exist on their own. When one person is put in prison, they are immediately removed from their friends, whānau, loved ones, and communities. Many are sent to prisons far away from their homes, making it nearly impossible to see the people who provide them with love and support.
The harm done by prisons has two parts. When we consider the number of people hurt by prisons, we can’t just talk about the physical, mental and emotional damage to the prisoner. We must also consider the families and communities which incarceration leaves behind.
There may be 10,000 people in prison, but what of the 23,000 children who have a parent in prison right now? What of the people who have lost a lover, a friend, a neighbour, a family member, a person in their community to imprisonment? Can we really say that 10,000 “isn’t that many” when each new person put in prison destroys the lives of dozens of people?
The widespread, long-term suffering that occurs when even one person is sentenced to prison is immeasurable. That we have reached 10,000 makes it an epidemic in New Zealand.
The New Zealand government has put $1 billion into expanding our prison system in the next few years. Much of that money hasn’t been spent yet, with the construction of new facilities like the one at Waikeria only being scheduled to start in 2018. That’s $1 billion that could be saved if we make it perfectly clear that enough is enough and we will not put up with pouring any more money into this broken system. More importantly, that’s over 1,500 people who might escape the horrors of imprisonment.
2017 is an election year, and no matter what happens, it will be a year of political shake-ups and new leadership. Now is the time to act and make clear that the enormous human and financial waste that is our prison system is unconscionable and cannot continue.
Our demands are:
We invite you to march with us on Queen Street, on February 11, 2017 at 12pm. Help us to make it known that we will not accept the government's reckless disregard for people’s lives. With the prison population at a record high of 10,000, and the government planning further expansion, we must make our voices heard now. Urgent action is required to stop all the injustices of mass incarceration.
How many are suffering unnecessarily? 10,000 too many!
How many more will we leave to this fate? Not one more!