Fuelled by high levels of reoffending, our incarceration rate is shameful, but inmates' lives can be permanently changed if they get help with literacy and acquiring a driver licence. By Mike Williams.
The link between
poor literacy and ending up in jail is well established and should be of peak concern for those seeking to reduce this country's shameful incarceration rate.
In 2010, while pondering an invitation to head a revived New Zealand Howard League for Penal Reform, I tried to understand why an otherwise civilised country had a rate of incarceration of 200 per 100,000 of population when similar countries – Ireland, France, Germany and Austria – had rates of half of that number and Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and Norway did even better, with a quarter or less of our per capita prison population.
We do not have longer sentences than these countries, nor do we have more offences that attract a prison sentence – the difference comes from our sky-high rate of reoffending.
Some features of our prison muster were immediately obvious.
More than half of the prisoners identified as Māori, a majority are functionally illiterate, few had driver licences and a driving offence featured in most Māori inmates' first prison sentences.
Of these attributes, the inability to read and write is a key determinant of incarceration. British author Neil Gaiman writes, "Once in New York I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in the US. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10- and 11-year-olds couldn't read."
In 2012, tests of prisoners established that more than 70 per cent scored at step three or below on the Tertiary Education Commission's LNAAT (adult literacy) scale and 31 per cent at step two or below on the same scale.
In practical terms, this means nearly three-quarters of prisoners were not sufficiently literate to understand an employment contract or a tenancy agreement and of those, nearly half would have extreme difficulty with reading, writing and comprehension.
Literacy focus
The Howard League opted to target literacy and driver licences, and in 2011 began recruiting and training volunteer tutors to offer one-on-one teaching aimed at imparting literacy to the most profoundly challenged inmates and offering learner licensing for pre- and post-release prisoners.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.We found it was not difficult to build a large group of volunteers, with retired teachers the core of our workforce.
These people seldom needed much more than the Ministry of Justice authority to enter and start tutoring.
The league focuses on the most severely illiterate 30 per cent of prisoners and our kanohi ki te kanohi (one-on-one) programme is effective and affordable, thanks to the goodwill of more than 400 volunteers.
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/BFK2H7OZIPGQY6YNEQ443T7PAI.jpg)
Most of our students, both male and female, identify as Māori, reflecting the gross overrepresentation (52.9 per cent) of Māori in prisons.
A common theme is that a little personal attention can identify long-term problems.
One tutor noted that her pupil, "David", leaned towards her repeatedly during lessons. She requested a test of his hearing, which revealed treatable deafness. It's little wonder that David left school at the age of 10, but within three months, he was reading fluently and corresponding with his daughter.
A female prisoner told a Howard League tutor she could not read because the "words jumped around the page". Our tutor recognised the symptoms of Irlen Syndrome, and so, with the aid of blue plastic overlays, her student became fully literate in 12 weeks.
Remarkable outcomes
Over the years, our programmes have expanded to include learner licensing, ESOL, budgeting, beekeeping, creative writing and te reo Māori.
The outcome can be remarkable.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.Anne, one of our most adventurous tutors, undertook a course of te reo with 10 prisoners, using Scotty Morrison's Māori Made Easy textbook and learning the language along with her pupils.
With a visit from Morrison to hear pronunciation, these men developed reasonable fluency over four months and the improvement in their self-image was dramatic and obvious.
In recent years, there has been progress, with functional illiteracy numbers falling by 10-15 per cent and profound illiteracy down by the same amount by 2019.
Much of this progress is attributable to an effective job the Wānanga O Aotearoa has been doing with the functionally illiterate through new in-jail programmes, and the Howard League volunteers have had a solid impact with the profoundly illiterate.
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/L4K6NKNQX35LZ56GZH64EARM2Y.jpg)
As a society, we can and must do a lot better. Lives are blighted and whānau torn apart by prison sentences and prisoners are by far the most expensive beneficiaries we support – each one costs $123,000 a year.
We must take better care of our kids, especially those in the care of Oranga Tamariki. These unlucky people are much more likely to have literacy problems and serve a prison sentence than the general population.
With Covid-19 at least under control, the jails should make much better use of the Howard League helpers on offer. At any given time, at least two-thirds of our volunteers are not deployed. Some jails welcome as many as 20 in a week, whereas others might use one a year.
A focus on driver-licence training in jails and when prisoners are released would pay huge dividends in reducing reoffending. Getting a job on release heavily reduces reoffending and a driver licence greatly improves employability.
Gaining skills
When I asked former Corrections Minister Judith Collins about this, she commissioned research that showed more than 80% of entry-level jobs – which released prisoners have a chance of securing – require at least a restricted licence.
The league launched a driver licence programme for released prisoners in Hawke's Bay in 2014. It was financed by our own fundraising and in its first year gained nearly 150 licences for recently released prisoners.
By 2021, this has grown to 18 programmes, funded by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and the Provincial Growth Fund, and more than 7500 licences have been earned.
Independent research shows that at least half these newly legal drivers will have found jobs within a year of getting their licence.
Incentives for prisoners to learn can work wonders. Both the National and Act parties have policies that would somewhat reduce sentences for prisoners who gain skills. Such a policy contributed to a 26 per cent reduction in prisoner numbers over nine years in New York State and should be implemented by the Labour Government.
The malign and expensive consequences of poor literacy can be alleviated; we just need the will and intelligence to do it.
