23 May 2017 9.12am

Become a "hero" and work in NZ Prisons is a joke according to George Ngatai QSM

This is regarding the latest paid article in today's NZ Herald.

Mr Ngatai who receives a Queen Service Medal in WELLINGTON today believes that working in the system does not help Maori rehabilitation, the department needs to support more programmes on the outside.

Maori were 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.

Corrections Maori Director Neil Campbell said that these comments come as the department is seeking to encourage more Maori and other New Zealanders to apply for work as corrections officers.

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.

Maori imprisonment is high according to Mr Ngatai and says that this 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 than non-Maori. If the entire population were to be imprisoned at the same rate, New Zealand's prison muster would skyrocket toward 30,000."

Working within the Justice system does not work for us, in fact it teaches us how to assimilate in an area that does not support reintegration and reduction of prison participation from Maori.

I publicly support programmes such as MANUP that has spread throughout New Zealand and Australia and works in communities to assists men to take responsibility for their dysfunctions. The programme has only been running for less than 2 years and more than 400 men have voluntarily attended. This is the same programme which has been excluded from Serco however arms have not been welcoming from Corrections either.

Recent evidence shows that more than 80% of the participants of MANUP have been able to deal with their issues with drugs, alcohol, physical abuse on partners and others and that's just a small sample of questions I've seen. The programme is facilitated by trained men some who have come from the system themselves. For more information on MANUP can be located on their website www.manupnz.org.

Mr Ngatai said "Let's look at what works not keep employing more staff or building prisons"

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