This is a part of No Pride in Prisons’ Abolitionist demands. These demands were originally published as a book. To see a pdf of the book, click here. To buy a copy, please email info@noprideinprisons.org.nz
The colonial government’s Department of Corrections runs a number of so-called ‘tikanga Māori’ programmes, with the nominal goal of rehabilitating incarcerated Māori people. While these programmes may do good for Māori in prisons in terms of fostering cultural knowledge they may not have had access to otherwise, any benefits of these programmes are in spite of, not because of, their situation within the prison system. Out of a prison capacity of 682, Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison has 15 places in its tikanga Māori programme.[1] If these proportions are representative, only approximately 5% of Māori people incarcerated at Hawke’s Bay would have access to tikanga Māori programmes. Even this level of access is contingent on an incarcerated person’s adherence to discipline. People are removed from rehabilitation programmes as punishment for refusing to adhere to prison rules.[2] These programmes simply fail to meaningfully intervene in the lives of Māori. The reality of mass incarceration is that thousands of Māori are being removed from their whānau, hapū and iwi. If cultural revitalisation is to be realised, it is these groups who must be proactively empowered to do that work – not the occupational New Zealand state, which is responsible for the present derogation of Māori.
The punitive removal of incarcerated people from tikanga Māori programmes for breaches of discipline also acts to ensure that Māori cultural knowledge is available only at the New Zealand government’s discretion. Rather than working towards the realisation of tino rangatiratanga as a principle of tikanga Māori, these programmes are administered at the will of the settler state and its sovereignty, and incarcerated people will be removed from them if they challenge that sovereignty.[3]
Even more importantly, it is essential to recognise that tikanga Māori are fundamentally incompatible with the system of mass incarceration. Ani Mikaere records utu as a fundamental principle of all tikanga Māori.[4] In the wake of an instance of social harm, the restoration of balance on an interpersonal and community scale is of the utmost importance.[5] Mass incarceration – the wholesale removal of human beings from their communities and their warehousing in prisons – destroys this balance. Within tikanga Māori, when harm is done, the relationship between perpetrator, victim, and their communities must be restored so that the damage done to the community can be healed. By tearing perpetrators out of their communities, removing all possibility of utu, the prison not only fails to restore these relationships, but ends them.[6] Rather than addressing social harm, prisons in fact perpetuate it. For the institution of tikanga Māori, prisons must be abolished.[7]
[1] Department of Corrections, “Corrections Department NZ – Corrections Works December 2014 (special Maori Services Edition),” Department of Corrections, 1 December 2014. http://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/newsletters_and_brochures/corrections_works/2014/December_2014.html.
[2] This critique of prison programmes in general as instruments of control was raised in Olive McRae, “Prison Reform on the Path to Prison Abolition,” International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa/New Zealand, 15 September 2014. https://iso.org.nz/2014/09/15/prison-reform-on-the-path-to-prison-abolition/.
[3] Ibid.
[4]