February 17, 2016
Corrections losing Maori inmates
Justice reform group Just Speak is accusing the Department of Corrections of fudging the proportion of Maori in its prison muster.
Strategic advisor Kim Workman says in recent years the department has taken to using its own year-end prison census, coming up with a claim that only 50 percent of all prisoners are Maori.
But Statistics New Zealand says based on the number of Maori sentenced to prison during the course of a year, the figure is 55.7 percent.
Mr Workman says the Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report calculates there are about 1000 more Maori in prison than a decade ago, with the rate rising sharply during 2014/15 to reach an average of 693 prisoners per 100,000 population.
That’s seven times the rate of non-Maori.
Mr Workman says the old adage ‘you have to face it to fix it’ applies and Corrections needs to come clean with its ethnicity data and not leave it up to the Salvation Army to provide good information about Maori in the criminal justice system.
Copyright © 2016, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com