May 17, 2017
Kaupapa prison a chance to produce better people
Mana’s Te Taitokerau candidate Hone Harawira is backing his Labour opponent Kelvin Davis’s call for a prison run on kaupapa Maori lines – but says trying to convert the Northland regional prison at Ngawha for the task is the wrong approach.
Mr Harawira says Ngawha was designed to bash people, not uplift them.
He says the $1billion the Government has tagged for a new prison should instead be re-purposed for a new corrections model, designed and run by Maori.
"The answer is something fresh, something new, where our brothers go in for all kinds of reasons, mostly dumb, petty reasons, but are uplifted while they are there and given the opportunity to come out of there as better people, and that is what we want to see with our brothers and sisters who go to prison, that they can come out as better people, and that is what we should be focusing on," Mr Harawira says.
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