People Against Prisons Aotearoa

The State of Incarceration in Aotearoa

*This is the second part of a two-part series of speeches delivered at No Pride in Prisons FUCK PRIDE rally on February 20, 2016.

The prison system in Aotearoa is a tool of the racist settler colonial state. This is demonstrated by the extremely disproportionate rates of incarceration of Māori. Māori are only 15% of the general population but approximately 51% of the prison population. For Māori women, this marginalisation is even starker. Māori women are 58% of the women’s prison population and I have heard, at least anecdotally, that sometimes in Christchurch women’s prison up to 90% of the prisoners are Māori.

A 2009 Ministry of Justice report found that Māori are more likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned than non-Māori for the same crimes. At every stage in the criminal injustice system, Māori are structurally discriminated against.

In terms of the rates of incarceration of trans women, international studies have shown that trans women, particularly trans women of colour, are similarly disproportionately criminalised. Although there are no comparable studies in Aotearoa, we can assume that there are similar rates of incarceration, given higher rates of homelessness, unemployment, victimisation and social marginalisation experienced by trans people here.

I am briefly going to outline three areas which either directly lead to violence or are violent in and of themselves. First, as you would have seen in the news, New Zealand recently hit a record for the number of people it locks away in cages. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, New Zealand prisons are at 106.1% of official capacity. This is a crisis and should very much concern you. Beyond the fact that New Zealand is choosing to criminalise more and more people, overcrowding for incarcerated people leads to increased rates of suicide, violent attacks, murder, physical and mental illnesses as well as disciplinary infractions. The most vulnerable subset of the prison population is also most likely to bear the brunt of this crisis.

One of the specific ways that Corrections has tried to address the overcrowding crisis is by introducing a policy of double-bunking. Whereas before 2009, prisoners were almost always housed in single cells overnight, a surge in the prison population in 2011 meant that prisoners, in many prisons, can now be kept overnight, two to a cell. Of course, prison officers are not constantly surveilling these cells overnight, providing potential for someone to assault a cellmate.

Last year, No Pride in Prisons got word of a trans woman who had been raped at Wiri prison, south of Auckland. The woman had been taken from protective segregation, against her will, and placed in the general population. Within minutes, she was severely assaulted and needed medical treatment. Instead of leaving her overnight in a hospital or medical bay, the officers decided to place her in a ‘double-bunked’ cell. She was then allegedly raped overnight by her cellmate. Instances like these are not possible without the overcrowding crisis in NZ prisons and the National Government’s policy of double-bunking. This government and the Department of Corrections is directly responsible for the rape of this woman.

Second, international studies have shown that transgender women are thirteen times more likely to be sexually assaulted in a men’s prison than the general population. However, I’m about to demonstrate that every single prisoner in the NZ prison system has been, by law, required to be sexually assaulted upon entering prison. This assault is in the form of a strip search.

As required by law, a strip search in NZ can include opening the mouth of the prisoner, lifting and “rubbing” their hair, forcing the person to spread their legs and squat naked. The officer also has full authority to “lift or raise”, or more accurately fondle, “fat, genitalia, and breasts”. By default, male guards conduct strip searches in men’s prisons, and women guards in women’s prisons. For trans women in men’s prisons, this means they are usually searched by male guards.

Under the Act, every prisoner undergoes a strip search when they enter and leave the prison. There are a wide set of other instances in which they can be searched too. Assuming that very few of these people would have given consent to have their body invaded by someone in a position of authority if they weren’t incarcerated, this is a clear instance of sexual assault, and something which needs to be ended immediately. Today. Because there are people in the Pride Parade who have sexually assaulted prisoners.

I’d just like to make one further comment before I conclude. Sexual and other violence occurs against criminalised populations at every stage of the criminal injustice system. We have received information that a Māori trans woman, was raped on two occasions in a police holding cells, once in Hamilton when she was a minor and later in Whangarei. There were cameras in the cells and the police could have intervened at any stage. After the first time in Hamilton, the woman said and I quote “I wanted to complain but they weren‘t interested”.

And so I say to all of you here today who defied the homonormative outcries of disgust that anyone would protest a Pride parade: Thank you. Thank you for you have sent a message to the queer community that this kind of violence is not acceptable. Your actions today will send a message that we as a community of marginalised peoples demand a new world, a world beyond the structures of racist imperialist cisheteropatriarchal capitalism and a world beyond prisons.

Written by T Lamusse