Lawyer: Put Maori in control

There's a sense that talking about the drivers of crime feels like revisiting old, old issues for lawyer Moana Jackson.

In 1988 he wrote a government report about Maori and the justice system - its defining proposal was that in light of institutional "discrimination" Maori should develop their own parallel justice system.

Check back through news clippings from that time and Jackson's message hasn't wavered. He was one of the first Maori lawyers to articulate - unpopularly - the impact of colonisation as a background to criminal activity.

That process, he argued, led to higher levels of poverty and poorer outcomes across every social indicator, including health and education.

It's a context some accept, but it riles others, mostly because of a critical and valid unease about where personal responsibility fits into this context.

His response: "Well, if they're going to say well, 'you Maori have to take responsibility,' then Pakeha have to take responsibility for screwing us and they didn't.

"The second thing is that in [Ngati] Kahungunu we have a [saying], kahore he tangata e tu mokemoke ai, that a person never stands alone. So you can't isolate someone from the circumstances that have shaped his or her life. In doing that you don't excuse the wrong, because some things are inexcusable, but you don't use the individual in isolation from everything that has shaped [them] or the people to whom they belong."

Jackson is ambivalent about the potential for government policy to take the throttle off any of the drivers of crime. He argues that societal attitudes make any attempts to address the context of crime more difficult.

"Part of the tragedy and the greatest change in the past 20 years is that society has become more vindictive towards offending."

Building more prisons, as well as having one of the highest incarceration rates in the OECD - at 168 prisoners per 100,000 people, higher than 27 of 35 other developed nations - is evidence of this, he says.

"That hasn't happened by accident: it's happened because of a marked move away from attempting to understand the context of crime and to deal with people who commit wrongs in a way that tries to ensure they don't do that again - to an ideology where punishment comes first and last.

"I mean, you don't get a policy like three strikes and you're out, in a society which tries to work through the reasons for an issue - you only get that in a society which is determined to punish."

Jackson is about to publish another report, based on two years of research and input from a major hui which drew together tribal leaders, police, judges, gangs and community workers.

It will set out solutions to address the circumstances which can lead to crime.

Much of it will focus on what Maori themselves can do. Tribes which had settled and had built their asset base should be looking at pumping the resources into development and "wellbeing", in sectors like education, health, job creation and whanau support.
"If you provide a more secure base you mitigate against circumstances that often predispose people to wrong doing."

It also proposes that Maori control Child, Youth and Family.

"What I am suggesting is we take it over with all the resources and when we have the people in place to do the mahi (work), we'll do a better job.

"Taking back from CYF the right to make decisions about the welfare of our kids requires a greater settlement than has been made available [to Maori]."

As to his earlier call for a separate justice system - over the past decade his own iwi has developed a body which hears problems before they escalate.

"Kahungunu are trying to find other ways of dealing with disputes when they arise or being able to create a situation where the potential for disputes and wrong doing is reduced.

"Give our people back faith in their own institutions, then they get more faith in themselves, more faith in understanding right and wrong and more faith in rebuilding a Maori society where infractions are less likely to occur."

PRISON MUSTER

Relative to their numbers in the general population, Maori are over-represented in the criminal justice process. Though forming just 12.5 per cent of the general population aged 15 and over, 42 per cent of all criminal apprehensions involve a person identifying as Maori, as do 50 per cent of prison inmates. For Maori women, the picture is more acute: they comprise around 60 per cent of the female prison population.

Source: Corrections