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A Maori prison reformer says the Prime Minister fails to understand the specific issues around the Maori prison population.
John Key is rejecting the need for a Waitangi Tribunal investigation into the rates of Maori imprisonment and reoffending, because he says the government is already doing enough to change the solution.
Kim Workman, a former head of Corrections and now advisor to Just Speak, says Mr Key doesn’t appreciate there is a big gap between non-Maori and Maori reoffending that needs to be addressed.
He says the working prisons didn’t work to stop reoffending in the 1920s and won’t work now.
"His idea that everybody's working, well in fact what I know is the people that have been assigned to training and so forth are very low risk offenders who in most cases aren't going to reoffend when they leave prison anyway," he says.
Kim Workman says the Government and Corrections continue to resist the idea of focused interventions for Maori, but that’s what is needed.
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