Te Hunga Whaitake

Te Hunga Whaitake, the Newsmakers is a weekly half-hour programme in English focusing on the newsmaker of the day from te ao Māori.

Hosted by Dale Husband, Te Hunga Whaitake includes one-on-one in-depth interviews with those people making headlines, their respective backgrounds and their views on the topic which have placed them in the media spotlight. 

Te Hunga Whaitake, the Newsmaker, live on Radio Waatea 603am, Wednesday mornings from 10.00-10.30am. Brought to you by NZ On Air. 

Inmates children being sentenced too

Wednesday 17 March 2010

A researcher into the effects of imprisonment on the children of inmates says the children are being sentenced as well.

Liz Gordon interviewed around 160 prisoners from three prisons as well as their families as part of a three year study for Christchurch charity Pillars.

"When it comes to sentencing, most cases don't take any heed of the needs of children."

During her research she found that arrest and imprisonment are traumatic for children, and lead to cycles of poor health, under-achievement, poverty, addiction and often youth crime.

One finding was that no agencies had any policies around children, which Ms Gordon says was incremental considering many children suffered from mental and emotional health problems.

"When we asked the Ministry of Health what was being done in the health policy area to get over the emotional grief issues of their parents in prison, we found they were doing badly in education, their feelings led to them bullying or being bullied, whakama. Stakeholders were able to give us nothing. They had no policies to overcome these issues."

"I don't see why we have such good services in New Zealand but why do these children have to suffer?"

However, in their second year of data collection, she says "agencies have been fabulous in listening to us. Asking questions, trying to get an understanding of issues. The bureaucrats are very interested in our findings."

Ms Gordon says prison musters need to come down.

" Only a small percentage of inmates actually need to go to prison."

She says the remainder would be better off with intervention programmes, which would also be more accommodating for those with children.

She says a small portion of money for prisons could be spent on the children, to help them with their health and education problems, thus minimising the risk of them becoming inmates when they're older.

"When we did consultation one kaumatua said "we're building prisons for our moko who aren't even born yet." And he's right."