Mike Williams: A step back and a move in another direction

Mike Williams. Photo / NZME

Readers of this column over a decade will have heard too much about the Howard League which I have headed up since 2011.

Relief is at hand for both of my loyal followers as two months ago I told the board of the League of my intention retire as CEO of the charity.

As well as my own advancing years, it is a propitious time to pass the baton with up to five years of government funding assured for the league's offenders' driver's licence programme, two talented, experienced, and capable successors and the programmes aimed at reducing NZ's bloated incarceration rate well established and demonstrating measurable success.

The league's volunteers have taught hundreds of prisoners a range of skills, focusing on literacy but extending into learner licensing, numeracy, beekeeping, and an eclectic range of other lessons.

Our licensing staff have achieved more than 15,000 licences for offenders and set a majority of these clients on the road to employment and a life with no more jail time.

I will stay on the board of the league and undertake the fundraising needed to finance advanced licences (trucks, forklifts, etc) not covered by the Corrections grant - these guarantee employment - and the relaunch of the in-jail programmes which have been on ice for two years courtesy of Covid-19.

I will also remain as the Howard League spokesperson at least during election year 2023 where prisons and prisoners are likely to again become an election issue.

We have many far-sighted politicians to thank for acknowledging the value of the league's programmes and supporting them - from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis, and including former deputy PM Winston Peters, Minister Shane Jones and Sir Bill English whose Impact Lab evaluation of the licensing programme showed that it returns $3.26 for every $1 invested by the Crown.

The closing of the country's jails is a destructive result of the pandemic. Corrections made the right decision by ordering this unprecedented measure, but it has meant two or more years of no visitors and no Howard League volunteers teaching the prisoners.

Professional services provided by the prisons like the excellent work Te Wananga O Aotearoa does on the Corrections sites has also been in abeyance.

It is likely that the excellent progress this Government has made in getting prisoner numbers down to a less internationally embarrassing level will not be helped by the pandemic.

Statistics' July report has New Zealand's prisoner numbers at 7500, and this is down from a peak of 10,500 in February 2000.

Readers who need to put a cash value on a 3000 reduction of prisoner numbers should just multiply that number by $146,000 – roughly the current annual cost of keeping one prisoner in jail.

To lock in the gains of the past five years we, as a country, will need to pay even closer attention to prisoners' post-release journey.

There has been good progress in this area.

When former Howard League president Tony Gibbs and I approached several banks looking for the banking service we all take for granted for released prisoners, it was deemed mission impossible. However, now we have that service as released prisoners are now able to get bank accounts due to former Westpac CEO David McLean's very valuable initiative.

The Corrections Department has put more resource into post release services. Five years ago, Corrections manager Steve Cunningham began training and deploying Education and Training Consultants (ETCs). These people help prisoners at the end of their sentences to find employment and educational opportunities.

With unemployment figures at historically low levels and many employers desperate for workers, Steve Cunningham's initiative is now coming to rich fruition and in part explains why re-offending is tracking downwards. Steve has now moved on to MPI and, in my view, is a loss to Corrections.

I'd like to see more initiatives aimed at investing in potential offenders before a jail sentence occurs. Assisting unlicensed driving offenders to get their driver's licences at their first offence would be a major step in the right direction.

With the time I now have available I intend to closely examine the phenomenon of gross over-representation of first nations people in the prison systems of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

We know that Māori make up 14 per cent of the population of Aotearoa but 52 per cent of the jail population so it was not too surprising to discover the same pattern in Australia.

In that country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make up just over 2 per cent of the population but 27 per cent of the jailed population.

Canada is no different with their first peoples making up just under 5 per cent of their population but 31 per cent of Canadian prisoners.

Blaming colonisation and dispossession, as do the academic papers, may identify the root causes but is unhelpful with answers.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president