Kathy Dunstall was secretary of the Canterbury branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform for many years, and a major spokesperson for the League. Listen to an extract from a June 2010 radio interview about her work as an advocate for prisoners' rights. Dunstall highlights the overrepresentation of young Māori men in prison. She argues that less money should be spent on building prisons, and more on rehabilitation and on reducing the conditions that contribute to criminal activity.
Transcript
In fact, if we look at our imprisonment rate for young Māori men aged 15 to 29, we're looking at something like 600 per 100 thousand and our imprisonment rate is about 195 now 190 per 100 thousand. But for young Māori males they're going in at six times the rate. So this has been officially described as a social catastrophe for Māori and for New Zealand society.
Interviewer: What's the answer?
Well, you know, its certainly not banging people away in prison and we need to I think reduce our maximum, our sentences, so that we send less people to prison. The more money that goes into bricks and mortar there's less money for all those other effective programmes. But of course stepping even further back you've got to put the resources into the deprived communities.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Private collection
by Rosemary Du Plessis
Sound file courtesy of Women on Air, Community Access Radio – Plains FM 96.9
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