July 21, 2020
Lower prison muster human success story
Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says the portfolio has been a highlight of his first term in Cabinet.
The former Kaitaia Intermediate principal says he expected his Associate Education role would be where he had a chance to make a big difference for Māori, but he also had success in tackling some long-standing problems with the criminal justice system.
When he took on the role the prison muster was 10,400 and on trend to reach 12,800 by now.
Instead last week there were 9263 men and women behind bars.
"We’ve got 1700 fewer Māori in prison than would have been predicted has the National Party continued the way they were going. They saw these forecasts as targets and we saw them as warnings. We cannot afford to keep locking up people, not from a financial perspective and we just can’t from a human perspective," Minister Davis says.
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