As readers of this column will be aware, more than half of the prisoners in New Zealand's jails identify as Māori, although Māori presently comprise less than 15 per cent of the population.
What is less well known is that as many as two-thirds of Māori have a driving offence as part of their first jail sentence and that a young Māori's first brush with the law is almost certainly a driving offence.
It is thus very desirable to get these young Māori off the treadmill that leads to one offence after another, a jail term and reoffending on release.
Last year a Māori offender in Northland up for his umpteenth unlicensed driving charge appeared before an enlightened judge who was aware of the Howard League's driver's licence programme.
Instead of sentencing the offender to a jail sentence, the judge instructed him to contact the Howard League and return to the court in three months.
He came to us and was a most challenging client.
He was and remains totally illiterate. This young man's childhood consisted of moving around the North with his family to work on whatever crops needed attention.
It was a fulfilling family life, but schooling was obviously not a priority.
Those who are illiterate can get a driver's licence by obtaining permission to use a reader.
Our instructor is well practised in this method and after a few lessons, this client passed his learner licence, getting all 35 questions right at his first sitting.
As a side benefit, his partner – also an unlicensed driver – used our service to also get her licence. These folks became part of that instructor's 94 per cent success rate.
It is plain to me that over my lifetime, getting a driver's licence has become much harder and certainly more expensive.
At the age of 15, I made an appointment with the Hastings traffic cop, who got me to drive around the city and show how I could do a handbrake start on the hump over the railway line.
He then asked me a few questions about road rules, charged me 10 shillings and wrote out my licence.
Times have obviously changed in many ways but if we are to reduce the volume of young Māori women and men getting onto the wrong side of justice and fetching up in jail, we need to urgently address some of the barriers to getting a driver's licence.
We should ask ourselves why, with unemployment levels at a record low 3.2 per cent, do we still have still have large numbers on the Jobseeker benefit?
The answer may be in a statistic uncovered by National Party research a decade ago: the fact that 84 per cent of entry-level jobs -the kind a beneficiary can aspire to - require at least a restricted driver's licence.
The logic of this is plain - a prospective employer must know the employee can get to work.
This means that without a licence, it is very much harder to find a job for those on benefits. This is a very solid barrier.
Most jobless beneficiaries are paid around $300 a week, though some get as little as $234. Each of the three stages of licences cost an average of $113 and resits after a failure an average of $62.
There are testing sites with 40 per cent pass rates, including one in Hawke's Bay, and many licence candidates face repeated resits and are up for more than $500 in licensing costs.
For most beneficiaries, this is unaffordable.
The Ministry of Social Development has in Carmel Sepuloni one of the most able ministers in the second Jacinda Ardern Government. I'd strongly encourage her to focus her department on how the get driver's licences for beneficiaries.
Two years ago, the MSD in the Auckland region issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for suppliers of licensing services for beneficiaries.
This was simply mad.
The structure of the RFP rewarded suppliers for candidates sitting tests, not succeeding at getting a licence.
This would encourage suppliers to just get their clients to take the test ready or not. Not a formula for success!
• Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
