Maori are being challenged to become "heroes " and work in New Zealand prisons as part of a strategy to try to reduce the high Maori imprisonment rate.
"We've got a responsibility to put this right ourselves," says the Department of Correction's director Maori Neil Campbell who is of Ngati Porou descent. "We can't say we are a whanau-based society if all we do is sit back and say this (Maori prisoner numbers) is not good."
His comments come as the department is seeking to encourage more Maori and other New Zealanders to apply for work as corrections officers and is running a number of rehabilitation programmes aimed at the needs of Maori. Although making up only 15 per cent of the population, half the people behind bars - which topped 10,000 for the first time last year - are Maori.
Campbell says part of the reason more Maori are not working in prisons is because of the perception attached to the job.
"New Zealand is a small country and Maori have a greater chance of family members or friends being entwined in the system where corrections officers are often regarded as the bad guys and don't have the hero status of other uniformed jobs such as the police, the fire service or army."
"We are not saying other people can't help Maori, but it is more likely Maori officers will build a better rapport with Maori inmates. Who knows it might get to the stage where they are seen as heroes," he says.
"Even though corrections is the largest employer of Maori outside of the armed services (20.7 per cent of its 8,000 staff), we still need more," he says. "A lot of people have opinions about how it could be done better but very few are willing to step up to the plate to work with New Zealand's most challenging citizens.
"So we are calling Maori to come and work in what is in itself a very challenging environment."
As part of the recruitment drive, the department has created a haka - Kua Takoto te Manuka (the challenge has been laid) - appealing to Maori interested in applying for work as corrections officers.
Watch the Department of Corrections haka working to appeal to Maori to apply for work as corrections officers.
"The haka is a challenge for New Zealanders to step up and accept a role as a change agent," says Campbell. "It also challenges offenders to be the role models our families and communities need them to be and not return to prison."
The issue has been headline news recently with Dr Jarrod Gilbert, a sociologist at the University of Canterbury, saying the impact Maori have on New Zealand's overall incarceration rate is "concerning".
"Fifty per cent of the prison population is Maori," he says in an opinion published in The New Zealand Herald. "Given they make up 15 per cent of the population, it's immediately clear that Maori incarceration is highly disproportionate.
"The Maori imprisonment ratio works out to 609 per 100,000, meaning Maori are nearly six times more likely to be imprisoned that non-Maori. If the entire population were to be imprisoned at the same rate, New Zealand's prison muster would skyrocket toward 30,000."
Riki Williams has been a corrections officer at the Auckland Region Women's Corrections Facility for eight years and believes the only way the high Maori prison rate can be changed is to have more positive Maori helping their own people.
"To me the haka lays down a challenge to anyone who carries mana on their sleeves, anyone who has an interest in helping our people in these places to come and join us and help us in our mission," he says.
Williams says his own life ought to serve as a role model for Maori prisoners - or clients as he refers to them.
"It would have been easy for me to fall off the rails," he says. "I had a lot of friends who fell into bad ways; I grew up in south Auckland and I've seen what it is like in these communities.
"I believe this experience gives me credibility in my job, that through me prisoners are given some hope because they see someone who is from the ghetto so-to-speak who made it out okay - and it is important they see this from a Maori."
Williams was self-employed running an import-export floral business before he applied for a job with corrections. "At the time," he says, "I was looking for a challenge, for something different but it was only when I actually started I realised what the real reason was: it was to help my people.
"This place has taught me the importance of family and unfortunately a lot of prisoners have lost their connection with their own families."
Another corrections officer at the women's facility Terri Peohoa believes it's not possible to change everyone. "But that one person you do get through to, that one person I won't see again, that's why I'm doing this job," she says.
Among corrections programmes aimed at Maori prisoners is Te Tirohanga, five 60-bed custodial units offering group-based therapies addressing offending and cultural needs, and Whare Oranga Ake which focuses on reintegrating prisoners.
The department is continuing to look for new officers to support the 3095 already employed in 17 prisons.
For more information on opportunities within NZ Corrections click here.
