What happens after the prison gates open? A new six-part podcast launching today is turning attention to an overlooked part of Aotearoa’s justice system — the health and wellbeing of Māori returning to their whānau and communities after imprisonment, and what a future without the harms created by prisons could look like.
The TIAKI podcast, launching on September 7, takes its name from the kupu meaning to care and brings together Kaupapa Māori research, lived experience, government data, whānau kōrero, international expertise, theatre, poetry and art.
Hosted by Associate Professor Paula Toko King from the University of Otago’s Faculty of Medicine – Wellington and Māori health expert Gabrielle Baker, the six-episode series emerges from the wider TIAKI Kaupapa Māori rangahau project.
The research was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand and undertaken by the TIAKI Rōpū Rangahau, which importantly includes researchers who themselves have lived experience of imprisonment.
The project was co-led by King alongside Cheryl Davies, manager of Tū Kotahi Māori Asthma and Research Trust, and Associate Professor Ruth Cunningham from the Faculty of Medicine – Wellington.
The sentence doesn’t end at the gate
TIAKI focuses on an aspect of imprisonment that receives comparatively little public attention — community re-entry.
The research follows the journey from the moment someone leaves prison through the days, weeks, months and years that follow.
King says Māori leaders, activists, practitioners and researchers have documented the damage caused by imprisonment for generations, but much less is understood about what happens to hauora once Māori return home.
That matters because the scale of Māori imprisonment inevitably creates another phenomenon: large numbers of Māori returning from prisons into whānau and communities.
TIAKI asks what that process actually looks like.
Where does someone live?
How do they access healthcare?
How do they reconnect with whānau?
Can they find employment?
What happens to their mental health?
And what support exists when the institutional structure of prison suddenly disappears?
Māori imprisonment remains massively disproportionate
The kaupapa sits against the longstanding overrepresentation of Māori throughout the criminal justice system.
Māori make up around 17 percent of the New Zealand population but approximately half of the prison population, making imprisonment and reintegration distinctly Māori issues as well as justice issues.
For wāhine Māori, the disparity has historically been even greater.
TIAKI approaches that reality not simply through the question of offending or recidivism, but through hauora.
The project asks what mass imprisonment means for the health of individuals, tamariki, partners, whānau and communities — and what happens when people return to environments already carrying the consequences of poverty, housing insecurity, trauma and unequal access to healthcare.
Nearly 40 lived-experience interviews
At the centre of the research are close to 40 interviews with individuals and whānau who have lived experience of prison.
That is important to the project’s methodology.
Rather than studying people who have experienced imprisonment purely as subjects, TIAKI uses a Kaupapa Māori approach in which lived experience informs the research itself.
Members of the research group with personal experience of imprisonment have contributed to determining how the kaupapa is investigated and how the findings are returned to communities.
The podcast will explore those experiences alongside analysis of data held by government agencies.
It means statistics about imprisonment and re-entry are placed alongside the experiences of the people represented by those numbers.
Six episodes — from evidence to action
Across six episodes, TIAKI will examine different parts of the research journey.
Listeners will hear about the Kaupapa Māori methodology underpinning the project and why Māori-led research matters when investigating systems that have disproportionately affected Māori.
The series then moves through government-held data and the lived experiences gathered through interviews with former prisoners and their whānau.
National and international experts also contribute to the kōrero.
The later episodes turn towards what can be done differently, culminating in recommendations for Government.
A TIAKI policy paper setting out those recommendations is expected to be released alongside the final episode.
Health does not exist separately from reintegration
The research challenges the tendency to separate justice policy from health policy.
Leaving prison does not automatically mean someone leaves behind the consequences of imprisonment.
Housing, income, employment, addiction treatment, mental health support, primary healthcare, medication, transport and relationships can all influence whether someone successfully reconnects with their community.
A failure in one area can quickly affect another.
Someone without secure accommodation may struggle to maintain healthcare appointments.
Someone without identification or transport can struggle to access services.
Someone unable to find employment can face financial hardship.
And whānau may suddenly become responsible for providing accommodation, transport, food, emotional support and healthcare navigation without adequate assistance.
TIAKI places those realities inside the conversation about hauora.
Whānau carry the consequences too
One of the important dimensions of the project is its focus beyond the individual leaving prison.
Imprisonment affects entire whānau.
Partners can lose income and support.
Tamariki can lose regular contact with parents.
Kaumātua and other relatives may assume additional caregiving responsibilities.
When someone eventually returns, whānau can again become the primary support system.
TIAKI therefore asks what successful reintegration looks like not only for the person released, but for the people welcoming them home.
That reframes re-entry as a collective wellbeing issue rather than simply an individual’s responsibility to stay out of trouble.
Research that refuses to stay on a shelf
TIAKI has also taken an unusual approach to communicating its findings.
Each podcast episode is accompanied by a downloadable booklet or zine, with formats ranging from detailed research material to poetry and art.
The kaupapa has already reached audiences through Out the Gate, a Theatre Marae production presented by Te Rākau Hua o Te Wao Tapu.
The production delivered more than 30 sold-out performances across the lower North Island in late 2025.
Using theatre, visual art and poetry alongside academic research reflects another principle behind the project — research about Māori communities should be returned to those communities in forms people can engage with.
It should not disappear into academic journals or government briefing papers.
What actually works?
One of TIAKI’s central aims is identifying the strategies most successful in supporting Māori leaving prison.
That moves the discussion from documenting failure towards finding solutions.
It also raises difficult questions for government.
If evidence demonstrates that secure housing improves reintegration, should accommodation be guaranteed before release?
If continuity of healthcare improves outcomes, should connections with primary care and mental health services be established before someone walks through the gate?
If Māori-led services produce stronger engagement, should those providers receive substantially greater investment?
And if whānau are carrying much of the reintegration burden, what resources should follow the person back into their community?
Those are ultimately decisions about what the country believes imprisonment is supposed to achieve.
Could Aotearoa imagine something beyond prisons?
TIAKI goes further than improving the existing system.
The podcast also asks audiences to consider what an Aotearoa without the harms of prisons could look like.
That does not remove difficult questions about offending, accountability, victims and community safety.
But it does challenge the assumption that the current prison system is the only imaginable response.
For Māori, that conversation inevitably intersects with colonisation, state power, Te Tiriti, whakapapa and the development of justice approaches grounded in Māori communities.
It also asks whether success should be measured by how many people the state imprisons — or by how effectively society prevents harm, supports victims, holds people accountable and creates conditions in which offending is less likely to happen again.
Accountability now turns towards government
King says TIAKI is intended to improve knowledge and public understanding, identify successful approaches for Māori leaving prisons and strengthen government accountability across the criminalising legal system.
That final objective could prove the most important.
For decades, Māori overrepresentation in prisons has been identified, measured and debated.
The numbers themselves are not new.
TIAKI asks policymakers to look beyond the prison muster and examine what the system leaves behind.
If thousands of people eventually return to communities carrying untreated health needs, trauma, housing insecurity and barriers to employment, then release cannot simply mark the point where government responsibility ends.
It becomes another point at which intervention can determine what happens next.
From punishment to care
The title of the project captures its challenge.
TIAKI means to care.
That word sits almost uncomfortably beside a prison system built around punishment, containment and control.
But that contrast is precisely what makes the kaupapa important.
If Aotearoa wants fewer people returning to prison, healthier whānau and safer communities, the period after release cannot remain an afterthought.
For Māori, who have experienced imprisonment on a vastly disproportionate scale, the stakes are particularly high.
TIAKI is asking Aotearoa to look beyond the prison gate — at the person returning home, the whānau waiting for them and the systems that will either support or obstruct what happens next.
Because opening the gate may end imprisonment, but it does not automatically begin healing.
The TIAKI podcast launches today, September 7, and is available through Apple Podcasts and the TIAKI website:
https://www.orangamokopuna.co.nz/orangamokopuna/tiaki-podcast
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