People Against Prisons Aotearoa

6 posts tagged NZ POlitics

Why New Zealand prisons are in crisis and what you can do about it

New Zealand’s prisons are in crisis. Plain and simple. There have never been more people in prison at any point and it is only expected to get worse. Late last year, for the first time, the prison population hit a whopping 10,000 and is expected to remain above 10,000 for the foreseeable future.

This means that the government is planning to spend billions of dollars on imprisoning thousands more people than it did even four years ago. It is planning a $1 billion spending spree to pay for a new prison at Waikeria and massive expansions elsewhere. Meanwhile, it is housing more prisoners in double-bunked cells, where there are two or more people in a cell overnight. Data released to No Pride in Prisons shows that a quarter of all cells are now double-bunked. Many of those cells were never built for two people and the prisons cannot cope with the huge increase in prisoner numbers.

This overcrowding crisis has had a very serious impact on people in prison. Internationally, double-bunking has been consistently shown to increase rates of misconduct, self-harm, suicide, and violence, including sexual violence. Prisoners who have contacted No Pride in Prisons confirm this. They have told us how in double-bunked cells all of your privacy disappears. You often have to eat, sleep, and defecate in the same room as another person and you are rarely, if ever, allowed moments just to yourself.

To make matters even worse, two prisoners have contacted No Pride in Prisons saying that their cell-mates raped them. Double-bunked cells put people at incredible risk of intimidation, exploitation, and violence at the hands of their cellmates. Instead of making plans to reduce and eventually end the practice of double-bunking, the Department of Corrections every couple of months increases the number of double-bunked cells in response to the booming prison population.

The overcrowding crisis is one of the core drivers of worsening conditions in New Zealand prisons. Prisoners have reported that levels of violence are increasing. In a recent survey, 46% of prisoners at Manawatu Prison told the Ombudsmen they had been assaulted while in prison. Prisoners have also reported extremely poor healthcare. Across the board, prisoners have said that they experience long waiting times to see doctors and dentists, and that the care they receive is often poor. One prisoner told No Pride in Prisons that she has waited months in pain to see a doctor. She asked to see a doctor in August 2016 and as of February 2017, she has still not seen one!

Because of the overcrowding crisis, prisoners are spending more and more time in their cells. Many prisoners are kept in their cells for upwards of 20 hours per day, and a large number spend 22-23 hours per day in their cells. Many prisoners do not get access to fresh air every day. Corrections justifies this mistreatment, in part, by saying that the extremely high prison population makes it practically impossible for all prisoners to get a decent amount of time out of their cells and time in the fresh air.

These problems did not come out of nowhere. In September 2013, the Bail Amendment Act came into effect. The Act made it much harder for many people to get bail. As a result, the remand prison population, or that part of the prison population which has either not been convicted or sentenced for any crime, has skyrocketed. Prisoners on remand made up approximately 72% of the total increase in the prison population since the Act came into effect, and the remand population alone has risen by more than 1200 people.

Given its current trajectory, we can expect that this problem is only going to get worse. If something doesn’t change now, there will be thousands more people in prison. There will be thousands more people who will have to go through the violence and mistreatment that the overcrowding crisis has produced. Urgent action is needed undo the worst of this crisis. This is a crisis caused by government policy – by the Bail Amendment Act. With enough public pressure, policy can be changed.

We must do everything in our power to get the Bail Amendment Act repealed. We need to make our voices as loud as possible. We need a huge mass of people to show that we won’t stand for the government’s policy of mass incarceration anymore. Tough on crime means tough on people and this government has locked away more people than ever before. If you believe that we need to end the overcrowding crisis as soon as possible, then join the movement calling for the end of the Bail Amendment Act. Turn up at noon on February 11 for the 10,000 Too Many hīkoi from Auckland’s Aotea Square to Mt Eden Prison. We need to urgently send the message that enough is enough and it is time to stop this injustice. 

By Ti Lamusse

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PRESS RELEASE: No Pride in Prisons Joins Resistance to State Housing Evictions

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Members of prison abolitionist organisation No Pride in Prisons will be joining the Tāmaki Housing Group today to resist the eviction state housing tenant of Ioela “Niki” Rauti.

Its spokesperson Emilie Rākete says, “No Pride in Prisons is proud to join our friends and whānau in protecting Niki’s right to a home. We will be joining dozens of others in occupying Niki’s land and refusing to move until she is guaranteed the right to stay in her home.”

Rauti was served with a 90-day eviction notice, which expired on the 18th of January. The police has warned that she will be physically moved on today from 9:30am. “We intend to put our bodies on the line to stop this eviction,” says Rākete.

No Pride in Prisons believes the eviction is unjust. “One of the most frustrating things about this whole process is that it never used to be like this. State housing tenants, including Niki, were told for decades that their houses were for life.”

“The government introduced reviewable tenancies just so it could kick out state housing tenants and make some money from their eviction.”

Rauti’s house is owned by the Tāmaki Regeneration Company (TRC), which was transferred ownership from Housing New Zealand as a part of the Tāmaki redevelopment. TRC wants to develop the land that her house sits on.

“While the government and the council say these evictions are necessary to keep house prices down, we’ve seen a huge increase in house prices in the area since the redevelopments began.”

“The government is effectively kicking out old and poor people and making room for the rich. Niki’s eviction is just one part of a broader plan to undermine state housing and transfer land to the wealthy,” says Rākete.

The organisation is worried about how the move might impact Niki’s health and well-being. “Niki is an elderly woman who has a heart condition. One of the saddest parts of the Tāmaki redevelopment has been the effect on the elderly. Often, following eviction from life-long homes, elderly tenants have passed away shortly after being relocated.”

No Pride in Prisons is also concerned about the police involvement in evicting Niki. According to Rākete, “The police will do everything it can to make sure that this blatantly unjust process continues. Niki is a respected kuia, but the police intend to remove her from her home by force.”

“We oppose both Niki’s eviction and the violence we expect to see from police in order to make it happen.”

“We believe that Niki and all other tenants deserve healthy, warm and affordable homes, and the stability of knowing they won’t be evicted every time the government wants to make a buck.”

“We support the Tāmaki Housing Group and all those resisting the sell-off of state houses and the eviction of state housing tenants. This injustice is part of a broader program by this and previous governments to undermine support for poor and working class people.”

“No Pride in Prisons stands in solidarity with those fighting for safe and secure housing for all.”

Cops Should Not Have Guns

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No Pride in Prisons is calling for the New Zealand Police to be disarmed following a surge in police violence.

“We were shocked to hear about the brutal murder of a Hamilton man by police this week,” says No Pride in Prisons spokesperson Kiran Foster.

The group says that public safety from police violence is a major concern. “The police have shown that they cannot be trusted with firearms. The shooting of a man in Rotorua so soon after the murder in Hamilton makes it clear that minimising violence is not their priority.”

“New Zealand Police are often too eager to use force against people. 2015 data shows that police use force against people almost once an hour.”

“To make matters worse, police are much more likely to use force against Māori than non-Māori. An independent researcher has reported that between 1995 and 2015, 56% of the situations where the New Zealand Police used lethal force were towards Māori.”

No Pride in Prisons is concerned that the growing use of guns by the New Zealand police is starting to mirror American police violence.

Data released to the group by University of Canterbury criminologist, Professor Greg Newbold, shows that there has been a substantial increase in the number of people being killed by police.

“Comparing the years 2006-2016 to the previous decade, there has been a 160% increase in the number of police killings. In fact, this decade has seen the most police killings on record.”

“Officers are too quick to assign blame, get angry, aggravate the situation and eventually use force.”

The group is calling for the immediate suspension of the use of firearms by police. “We have to keep our communities safe from police violence.”

“This is not the first time the New Zealand Police have used unnecessary lethal force. We demand that it be the last.”

No Pride in Prisons was formed following the 2015 Auckland Pride Parade to boycott the inclusion of violent and racist institutions – namely the police marching in uniform, and the corporatisation of Pride. This short documentary by Accompany collective discusses the formation, kaupapa, and actions held by NPIP.

Most of the documentary centres around the Fuck Pride Rally, organised in response to the Pride Board’s decision to include uniformed police and corrections officers in Auckland’s 2016 Parade, despite months of negotiation with NPIP.

(Source: youtube.com)

Which side are you on?

The queer community in Aotearoa is at a turning point. It is fundamentally divided. Some of us are happy with the status quo and some of us demand more. On the one side, there are those who are complacent with the astounding rates of incarceration of Māori, with the violence of police officers and with the rape of incarcerated trans women. On the other side, there are those who stand in solidarity with all the queer and trans people who have been left behind by a community more concerned with rainbow-coloured flags at Pride parades than the suffering of their people.

Pride started with a moment of rupture, where our predecessors stepped out of the shadows and rioted against police brutality. At its emergence, Pride was nothing if not political. Those proud rioters demanded an end to violently policed norms of gender and sexuality. They fought in the street against anyone who thought they had the right to tell them not to.

Shamefully, Pride has become something else. It has become a corporatised pinkwashed event where institutions like the police and corrections, which do untold violence to the most vulnerable members of the queer community, can show themselves off as so-called beacons of gay rights. Organisations like ANZ and the University of Auckland, both of which impose unfair pay and conditions on their workers, appropriate pride in a lolly scramble for pink dollars. Theirs is a hollow beacon of progress built from the co-option of our struggle.

There are some comfortable queers who say “things have really changed” and that police and prisons are better now, that the police is not the same institution that used to round up suspected homosexuals in nightclubs and throw them in jail. Unfortunately, the police and prisons are still racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic institutions. According to their own 2015 report, which is likely to under-report rates of violence, New Zealand Police used force against Māori at a rate nearly eight times that of Pākehā. The New Zealand Police also used tasers against Māori and Pasifika at a rate higher than it used tasers against Pākehā.

In the last four months alone, No Pride in Prisons has been in touch with two of our incarcerated trans sisters who have been raped in custody. Corrections hasn’t done a thing to end this sexual violence. It continues to place two people in a single cell overnight, putting those incarcerated people at extraordinary risk of sexual and other violence. In fact, it plans on exposing more prisoners to violence by expanding this practice of double-bunking. Why should we pretend that Corrections is anything but a racist and rape-facilitating arm of the state? We see through the pinkwashing, we acknowledge the suffering these institutions cause - do you?

Queers in Aotearoa have a legacy of insurgency. It is our responsibility to continue this struggle and perpetuate it - to destroy those things which are destroying the lives of the most marginalised members of our community. In Aotearoa, in 2016, the prison system is destructive. Police are destructive. We bear responsibilities, as those who carry on the work begun by those radical queers who came before us and who are with us still, not to be fooled. Violence wrapped in a rainbow flag is still violence. Racism covered in glitter is still racism.

Some say that Pride is just a celebration, that it’s supposed to celebrate how far ‘we’ have come. We ask, who is this ‘we’? When we celebrate, who are we leaving behind? When we invite these institutions to the party, we are siding with the forces who have wanted us in the closet, in a cell, or dead. How ever far we may have come, it has been in spite of police and prisons. These institutions always have been and always will be the enemies of queer liberation and universal liberation.

We look around and see soaring rates of homelessness and unemployment among young trans and queer people. We see daily acts of discrimination and violence against those who do not fit into a colonial gender model. We hear of rape and other violence done to incarcerated queer and non-queer people. This is not a time to celebrate. This is a time to demand action.

Our argument is simple: you can choose to side with corrections and the police or with the marginalised; with the oppressors or the oppressed; with the status quo or with change; with the institutions that hurt people or with the people they are hurting. The Auckland Pride Board has chosen its side, so what about you?


Written by T Lamusse, S Vella and E Rākete 

Gay Cops are Still Cops

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Over the past couple of weeks, No Pride in Prisons has placed increasing pressure on the Pride Board, and the Auckland queer community more generally, to ban uniformed police officers from the pride parade. As we now know, the Pride Board chose to disregard legitimate concerns with that institution being included. A common response to these concerns, from uncritical members of the community, has been: “What about the gay cops? Aren’t they a part of our community? Who are you to ban members of the community?”

To that, we ask: What is the queer community? The decision as to whether police can march in a pride parade is the kind of decision which determines what kind of community we are. Are we a community of marginalised peoples? Are we a community which cares about other marginalised peoples? Or, are we more concerned with consolidating the privileges of the most privileged within our ‘community’?

Cops have no place in any queer community made up of marginalised peoples. This is because it is the role of the police to uphold the privileges of the powerful, and maintain the marginalisation of the oppressed. How do they do this? As an institution, the New Zealand Police has admitted that it has an ‘unconscious bias’ against Māori. This is played out in the New Zealand Police apprehending and charging Māori at a rate that far surpasses that of Pākehā for the same crimes.

Police target and oppress other and overlapping marginalised peoples as well. You may have seen police harassing homeless people or people they suspect of being sex workers. No Pride in Prisons has received reports from trans women who have been violently assaulted by police and arrested for the supposed crime of “walking while trans”. The police’s targeting and criminalisation of certain groups is part of what makes and maintains their marginalisation. Community is required so that those on the margins can continue to survive. In other words, the police’s actions make the community necessary. As a result, cops are not and never will be part of a community of marginalised peoples.

You may be thinking: “not all cops are bad! I’m sure the vast majority of them aren’t racists!” We are sure that not all cops think that they are actively racist as individuals. All cops, however, work for an institution which has been proven time and time again to be racist and oppressive. Cops put on a uniform every day. That uniform is a symbol of the side that they have chosen, and that side engages in racist and oppressive violence on a mass scale. An individual cop may not think that their actions are discriminatory in any way (‘they are just doing their jobs!’), however, when you add up all the individual actions of individual cops, they amount to an institution that maintains racist colonial cisheteropatriarchal capitalism.

It is for this reason that it is offensive and complicitly oppressive to allow uniformed police to march in any pride parade. In doing so, the queer community becomes a group of historically marginalised peoples taking the side of an oppressive institution which targets marginalised peoples. Those ‘other’ marginalised peoples are also a part of our community: Māori queers, homeless queers, queer sex workers, only to name a few. In allowing the police to march with us, we are siding with an institution which oppresses our people.

“But you’re banning gay cops, who are part of the community!”. To this, we say: if banning representation of police and Corrections is to be understood as unfairly excluding members of our community, what of the queers suffering in custody right now? What of the trans women who have been beaten or raped by uniformed members of these organisations? What of the Māori who are targeted at every stage of the criminal justice system, which includes Māori queers? Is Pride not for them?

So, which side are you on? You can either stand with the marginalised, or with the oppressors; those subject to violence, or the violent. Gay cops, although they are gay, are still cops. If you stand with them, you’re standing with the oppressors.


Written by S Morgan, T Lamusse, and E Rākete

No Pride in Prisons is holding a “Fuck Pride” rally in protest to the inclusion of uniformed police and corrections officers in the 2016 pride parade. For more information, click here.