Green MP Tamatha Paul has been criticised over comments she made about prison food, the presence of police officers on the streets and why people are in prison. As a criminologist, I am more concerned about the latter.
Here’s what she said in a TikTok video on March 6: “The vast majority of people who are in prisons are there for non-violent offences – things that they have had to do as a response to poverty, such as stealing food or being dishonest, or they don’t have an address to get community sentencing or bail …” She added: “Most of the people that are in prison are there because they suffer from traumatic brain injuries, disabilities, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, undiagnosed autism, undiagnosed ADHD. They’re being punished for being disabled, they’re being punished for being poor, for being Māori, they’re being punished for our system that we have in this country.”
Paul was taken to task by Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell, who described her comments as “total nonsense” and “an insult” to New Zealanders who have been victimised by those in prison. Mitchell seems to have relied on Corrections Department statistics for December 2024 which state that out of 10,000 prison inmates, 8.4% have been convicted of homicide, 20.7% for sexual assault, and 20.5% for acts intended to cause injury. In other words, almost half (49.6%) of those in prison in December 2024, had committed sexual or violent offences.
The problem is that only 6000 of these prisoners are actually sentenced. The other 4000 are on remand, waiting for their cases to slowly work their way through the court system. Victoria University of Wellington lecturer and former president of the Wellington Howard League for Penal Reform Christine McCarthy says half of those remanded in custody do not receive a prison sentence so should not be included in statistics as violent offenders.
There’s an even bigger problem. The statistics Mitchell has relied on are a snapshot of prisoners in December 2024. Murderers, sexual and violent offenders tend to get long sentences, so made up the bulk of the 6000 sentenced prisoners at that time. However, the prison population is very fluid and altogether, about 20,000 people spend time in prison each year. Most are given a sentence of two years or less and released halfway through their sentence.
Potentially, this means about 14,000 Kiwis who spent time in prison during the year were not in prison on the day the snapshot was taken. They are in and out quickly, so their low-risk offending profiles do not appear in the prison statistics Mitchell relied on.
In 2022, Ian Lambie, chief science advisor for the justice sector to the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, published “What were they thinking? A discussion paper on brain and behaviour in relation to the justice system in New Zealand.”
The paper explains in detail that the vast majority of those in prison suffer from brain injuries, mental health disorders, addictions, neurodiversity, and other conditions such as undiagnosed foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism or ADHD. They make decisions to drink, take drugs, shoplift and steal, driven by poverty and systemic deprivation – that’s why they end up in prison.
So Paul was absolutely correct – the vast majority of those who end up in prison have not committed violent offences. Since she made this statement, Paul has been attacked by Mitchell, but he should be the one apologising – and I sent him an email telling him so.
Roger Brooking is a Wellington-based alcohol and drug counsellor with 95% of his clients from the justice sector. He has an honours degree in criminology.
