At last count, more than half of all prisoners are Māori. Those figures are confronting, uncomfortable but let’s be honest - not really surprising. Instead of asking why violent offending, repeat offending and serious crime are so concentrated, Te Pāti Māori’s answer is to remove the very system that holds offenders accountable.
When Rawiri Waititi says “our tīpuna did not sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi for whānau to be incarcerated and continually traumatised”, he is not talking about victims. He is not talking about the people assaulted, babies murdered, robbed, gang raped or terrorised by repeat offenders. He’s just talking about the offenders.
Te Pāti Māori frames prison abolition as compassion. In reality, it is identity politics meeting electoral arithmetic. Sentenced prisoners cannot vote. Remove prisons and suddenly thousands of votes reappear. Add partners, parents and wider whānau who want loved ones out, and you have a tidy political constituency built on grievance, not responsibility.
What makes the policy even more insulting is the total lack of detail. Asked how abolishing prisons would actually work, Te Pāti Māori could not explain it before deadline. No plan. No safeguards. No answers for victims. Just chur-bro vibes and promises of “community-led solutions”.
That phrase does a lot of heavy lifting. “Community-led” sounds warm and inclusive, until you ask the obvious question. What happens when the offender does not want to engage? What happens when violence continues? What happens when someone is simply too dangerous?
Those questions are never answered, because answering them would expose the fantasy.
Even Labour, a party that literally handed millions of taxpayer dollars to gangs, want nothing to do with this. Hardly a bastion of law and order, Labour has still said prisons are “necessary”. Chris Hipkins admitted the obvious: “There will always, sadly, be a need for prisons.” He’s right.
The Greens, often accused of living in theory rather than practice, were also more grounded. Tamatha Paul warned that abolition without a solid plan to reduce harm was dangerous. When even the Greens are calling your justice policy dangerous, it should tell you something.
Te Pāti Māori claims it wants to “shift power from police and prisons to people and prevention”. That sounds noble until you realise who loses power in that equation. Victims. Law-abiding communities. People who do not want to live next door to repeat violent offenders being “restored” through endless hui.
The party also wants to reinstate voting rights for prisoners, increase release payments and repeal tougher sentencing laws. Every incentive is pointed in one direction, kindness towards criminals.
Some people cannot be safely managed in the community. That fact does not disappear because it is politically inconvenient. Abolishing prisons does not eliminate harm. It relocates it, usually into the poorest and most vulnerable communities, many of them Māori.
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced.
Te Pāti Māori frames prison abolition as compassion. In reality, it is identity politics meeting electoral arithmetic. Sentenced prisoners cannot vote. Remove prisons and suddenly thousands of votes reappear. Add partners, parents and wider whānau who want loved ones out, and you have a tidy political constituency built on grievance, not responsibility.
What makes the policy even more insulting is the total lack of detail. Asked how abolishing prisons would actually work, Te Pāti Māori could not explain it before deadline. No plan. No safeguards. No answers for victims. Just chur-bro vibes and promises of “community-led solutions”.
That phrase does a lot of heavy lifting. “Community-led” sounds warm and inclusive, until you ask the obvious question. What happens when the offender does not want to engage? What happens when violence continues? What happens when someone is simply too dangerous?
Those questions are never answered, because answering them would expose the fantasy.
Even Labour, a party that literally handed millions of taxpayer dollars to gangs, want nothing to do with this. Hardly a bastion of law and order, Labour has still said prisons are “necessary”. Chris Hipkins admitted the obvious: “There will always, sadly, be a need for prisons.” He’s right.
The Greens, often accused of living in theory rather than practice, were also more grounded. Tamatha Paul warned that abolition without a solid plan to reduce harm was dangerous. When even the Greens are calling your justice policy dangerous, it should tell you something.
Te Pāti Māori claims it wants to “shift power from police and prisons to people and prevention”. That sounds noble until you realise who loses power in that equation. Victims. Law-abiding communities. People who do not want to live next door to repeat violent offenders being “restored” through endless hui.
The party also wants to reinstate voting rights for prisoners, increase release payments and repeal tougher sentencing laws. Every incentive is pointed in one direction, kindness towards criminals.
Some people cannot be safely managed in the community. That fact does not disappear because it is politically inconvenient. Abolishing prisons does not eliminate harm. It relocates it, usually into the poorest and most vulnerable communities, many of them Māori.
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
There is very little difference between the Greens' policies on prisons and those of TPM, although Ms Paul is being a bit more circumspect about their public image.
I recall the Greens leading a protest about six months ago calling for prison abolition. The policies on their website call for the replacement of punitive sentences with community based rehabilitation. They want all youth detention abolished. They want life sentences and preventive detention abolished as well, and home detention available for all crimes. They also want the whole justice system to be subject to the Treaty and tino rangatiratanga, which suggests that the justice system will be run by Maori for Maori.
Labour may not intend to abolished prisons, but they will certainly clean them out. Add to that the appointment of DEI and liberal judges with very little street sense. Put all these policies together in a coalition deal, and we will have a lot more dangerous criminals out on the streets.
Blame the parents and grandparents.
And how many $million are we wasting to hear utter bs like this to be sounded off? Enough already!!!
Time the Maori seats were gone and that clown, Waititi along with them.
True story - a drug mule gets caught at the border and goes straight to jail.
Years later, on his release, he was absolutely astonished to find that NZ actually had a normal population.
Inside, the vast majority of the inmates were Maori and extremely violent.
Yeah right, good idea let's go along with Jacinda's mantra of hugs and kindness.
Or go back to pre European utu , and only Maori tikanga which usually meant summary execution.
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