I had the privilege of having input into the Inspectorate’s investigation as part of an advisory team. A part of that included a two-day hui with young people who had all been incarcerated but had turned their lives around.
Over those two days, as we talked together, ate together, spent the night on a marae with one another and made friends, the advisory group learned from their journeys.
While the success stories of turning their lives around were reason for celebration, many elements of their young lives were heartbreaking – and this is a point I will return to.
The Inspectorate’s report does well to ground its findings in the science that human brains don’t fully develop impulse control and understanding consequence until they’re in their mid-20s. This has massive consequences, because any socialisation up until this point imprints future behaviour.
The influence of prison then is significant, and we can see the consequences of this in young people cycling through prison time and time again. Most often, we aren’t correcting them, we are socialising them.
The university of crooks.
The significant shortfalls in the Corrections system identified by the report are so numerous I can only touch on a small handful here. There are only two youth or young adult units in prisons – and exactly zero for young women. Of the 32 beds in total in youth units around the country, strangely many were under-occupied. That means that the vast majority of young adults are housed with seasoned offenders, often in high-security units.
The research found that many young people did not receive an induction, and therefore learned what to do in prison from other prisoners. A fine socialising process, indeed. It’s no surprise that gangs became a big part of their future.
The report found that many young people in prison were unaware of the process used to access healthcare services or were unwilling or unable to fill out the forms, because they were concerned about privacy or they could not read or write. Not read or write. I will come back to that, too.
Corrections is often very slow to turn its ship. Young people, for example, were not asked about their vaping status, which would seem an elementary health and social understanding. It’s hardly the most important finding of the report, but it does speak to bafflingly simple gaps.
In a well-known refrain, Māori were over-represented in young adults incarcerated; 57% of under-25s are tāne (male) and 67% are wāhine (women) Māori. Despite numerous reports over the year extolling the need for Corrections to better address that and a number of focused strategies and programmes targeting it, there is little to show for it.
Corrections has accepted the 26 recommendations and 29 areas for consideration made by the Inspectorate report. But can this behemoth ship find a way to better navigate these waters? Let’s hope so. A scathing Ombudsmen report from last year would not fill many with confidence.
But here’s the rub.
Are we demanding things of Corrections that it has little chance of achieving? The Inspectorate report does an outstanding job of showing where improvements can and must be made, but correcting young people who have been socialised their whole lives in one way is an extremely difficult task.
I have mentioned the terrible lives that so many young people experience on their path to prison. I have also mentioned an inability to read or write.
The failures of these kids are not in Corrections, but long before they arrive in its orbit.
If you’ve read a few of my columns in the past, you may think: “Oh, goodness, Jarrod’s banging this drum again.” I make no apology. Unless we get serious about addressing the drivers of crime, we are on a hiding to nothing. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep on saying it until we understand it.
The 10% of young people who have the highest number of vulnerabilities – read “bloody horrid lives” – commit 75% of all youth crime. We are talking about a sliver of the population from which most of the trouble derives.
We need to identify those families and surgically intervene to stop problems before they occur. The canaries in the mine need to be at neonatal clinics, preschools and schools, not prisons.
If we do that, we don’t just reduce the flow of the prison pipeline, we reduce the victims of crime who occur on the way. We also allow young kids to grow up and realise their potential, rather than existing in, and creating, misery.
If I say prevention is the best way fast enough, it sounds easy. Make no mistake, it’s not. But unless we – as a country – acknowledge that’s the way forward, we will continue to see reports just like the one the Inspectorate has produced.
Corrections is at fault, but it certainly isn’t to blame.
