EPISODE 5: TRANSFORMATION

This podcast is made by JustSpeak and Popsock Media with re-news. This story shared here represent individual opinions and experiences and some names have been changed. This episode contains references to racism and intergenerational trauma. There's also some strong language. If you choose to listen, please take care. Kia ora koutou, welcome back to True Justice. I'm Anaheia Scottney. And I'm Tommy Doran. This is episode five, transformation. So we've been pretty straight up from the outset about what this podcast is focusing on. And that's hearing from people with lived experience of our justice system, identifying the areas where things aren't working and then envisioning alternatives that might work better. We've heard so much compelling stuff. People still say lock them up, but they still agree that it's not working. So I don't really get that. You can't put negative into something and expect to get draw-saint positive out of that. John doesn't fix that, but it doesn't fix me. It made me worse off anything. Because I had a chance to be around some of the worst people in New Zealand. Every time I got locked up, I got worse. That's because there was nothing to help me change. It does not work for Māori, it does not work for Pacific Islanders it does not work for white people, it just does not work. It's easy to say the justice system is broken or abolished prisons, but it's not actually that helpful if people can't picture an alternative. We need to know what we're working towards. Yeah, definitely. And even though this stuff is scary and complicated and a bit nāli, we're talking about human beings at the centre of this. We're talking about tangata. If we've got the chance to make a real difference for all of these people, then isn't it our responsibility to be doing what we can? Luckily, there are a lot of people out there putting in the mahi to think up alternatives, including criminal justice academics, lawyers and other justice professionals overseas and here at home. Some of them are focused more on reform, so changing the current system to be more effective and supportive. But others are pro-abolition, like justice advocate Awatia Mita. We can't keep persisting in the current system that's built on settler colonialism. If we persist in that, we're going to persist in inequality and harms. We just need to close down prisons. And also Tila Moose from Papa and to Heading Awaka Victoria University of Wellington. I think the single most effective solution would be to stop using prisons as a form of justice, right, so to abolish prisons. For people who have only known in a world with prisons, the idea of getting rid of them can sound pretty scary. But it doesn't need to be. Here's the vision. What that means is not that they would be closed tomorrow, but instead that over a longer period of time, that we implement more alternatives and expand already existing alternatives, so that prisons are no longer necessary. And that we have a justice system that is focused instead on rehabilitation, and have a lot of attention, so providing people with the skills to actually survive and thrive, as well as justice for victims by ensuring that victims have their harms recognised. So we're not talking about closing prisons overnight, right? It's more about working super hard on the drivers pushing vulnerable people into prisons so that we don't need them anymore. Exactly. Like Awatea said, when she quoted the late legendary Māori lawyer and activist, Mātua Moana Jackson. We just need to be brave enough and imaginative enough to pursue those alternatives. Okay, Tommy. Let's spend some time talking bravely and courageously and imaginatively about the alternatives. Let's do it. We need to be taking money out of prisons and punishment and putting it back into supporting our communities. First up, we don't actually have to reinvent the wheel. There are already communities that thrive without police and prisons. Think about our wealthier suburbs. They have the least police and the greatest resources. This all ties in with a concept called justice reinvestment, which emerged from the US in the early 2000s. There was this realisation that there were particular housing blocks where the cost of sending people to prison from those housing blocks was costing a million dollars a year. That's Dr Elizabeth Stanley. She and Jo Potter wrote a report about justice reinvestment for just speak. So someone kind of said, "Well, why don't we spend that million dollars on the neighbourhood? Why don't we just take that money and reinvest it?" And this idea of realicating resources from criminal justice into social justice made its way from the US to a town in New South Wales, Australia, called Berk. There's a small town quite well known for having really high youth offending rates, pretty high rates of family violence, people not adhering to their bail provisions and things like this. So it was seen as a place where there was a lot of crime. So in the town of Berk, a trial began where instead of that whole locker-mute model, they switched focus. It's more about how do we build like a stronger community? How do we build a stronger community together? And their rates in terms of all the things I was talking about earlier have all gone down. And people are anecdotally talking about that they feel better and safer in their community. This year, it's estimated that more than $2 billion will be allocated to the Department of Corrections. Imagine if even a chunk of that could be re-allocated to community-based health and education initiatives. Yeah, it could make a huge difference. Aside from justice reinvestment, what are other examples of justice alternatives that we could look to for more ideas? Well, there are some good overseas models. The Norwegian prison system has a big rehabilitation focus. It's all about providing therapeutic environments so that people can take responsibility for and change their behaviour. And they have a really low recidivism rate. I imagine that a rehab-focused system might make a huge difference in New Zealand, given how many people end up in prison down the pathway of addiction. Absolutely. So I know that a lot of people are calling for us to start treating addiction as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice issue, like in Portugal, for example. It would involve us completely rethinking how we deal with drugs. Here's Tila Musigan, a health-based approach that reduces drug harm by controlling substances so that people with problematic use, which is a minority of users, can get access to help. But people who are using non-problematically can have access to safe supply. I think that would be a major change in our society that could help to reduce our whole heap of harm. And you know, when the personal position of all drugs was decriminalised in Portugal in 2001, the rates of drug use there didn't increase or get wildly out of control. In fact, they have remained consistently below the European average all that time. It's kind of hard to hear knowing how close we were to our reform on cannabis. Yeah, I know. So yeah, less money into aerial cannabis operations and meth rates and more into rehabs and support programs. And programs run by people who've actually been through this stuff. Like David at Red Door Recovery said, "The best people to lead those who are struggling out of the whole are those who've been in it." Yeah, exactly. And that means keeping calm when it comes to new alternatives, even if they may feel a little uncomfortable at first. Like when we all found out the government was giving money to the Mungra mob in Hawke's Bay to run their own rehab programs. Yeah, and everyone was like, "We can't give money to the gangs. I definitely remember that." Yeah, I get it's a bit confronting, but you know, that program went through trial stages and it got more funding based on the success of those trials. It's also closely monitored by the Ministry of Health and local EWI. And they report to the Ministry of Justice. We're not just giving money to gangs and hoping for the best. As well as addiction, we've heard how prevalent mental health disorders are in our prison population. I'd like to see more investment in responders to people experiencing mental health issues rather than having police turn up. You know, I've thought about this Tommy having been in situations where someone in my life is obviously really struggling and potentially a danger to themselves, but the only option is to call the cops. Like Blaine's dad David had to do when Blaine was suicidal. Remember the cops turned up and the ambulance. But it was only way later that the mental health team turned up. So imagine being able to call a dedicated mental health team who can be there straight away and are well equipped to deal with emergencies like that. Yes, so this has actually already happened in other places. One example is called Kahoot's. Excellent name. Yeah, so it stands for crisis assistance helping out on the streets. It's a service in Oregon and basically for the past 30 years when you call 9-9-1-1 for something that's more like a mental distress issue rather than anything criminal. They send out some of their unarmed outreach workers and medics trained in crisis intervention and de-escalation to help. And it's really successful. It's since been expanded to other states. Let's go back to Dr Elizabeth Stanley again. She paints a pretty accurate picture of what things are like here in Altairor. We scrapped out a lot of funding around mental health and we placed it into the justice system. And now of course we continually have this flow through of people into prisons for mental health difficulties or for their offending while they were in mental health distress. It's like why is it that we're responding to health problems with the criminal justice response? So unless you've been living under a rock which would be fear given the state of everything at the moment, you've probably heard a bit about ram raids recently. So these are robberies where a shop window was rammed with a car and looted. A lot of these ram raids are being done by kids and teenagers. One in Tamaki involved a 10-year-old. 10 years old, that is so young. Yeah, it really is. And the police plus some others are linking the increase in youth crime to an increase in truancy. So we have an under-resourced education sector, a pandemic that's crippling teacher in student attendance numbers. We already had kids leaving school to get jobs to provide for their far know. Given what we know about the link between exclusion from school and future imprisonment, this is all pretty concerning. It absolutely is and that leads well into Professor Kylie Kwan's next point. Poverty is probably the number one factor and that is about, you know, the haves and the have-not so that's one thing that needs to be accounted for in the criminal justice system. There are so many ways in which poverty is criminalised in old Darwa today. We've heard how not having a suitable address can make you more likely to be remanded in custody. If you're asking people on the street for money and you block foot traffic and don't stop after a warning, you can be arrested. One New Zealand study found that 10 times more people were prosecuted for welfare for than for tax evasion. Even though tax evasion cost the economy 33 times more. And people can be set on this path really early. We know that childhood poverty, negatively influences, adult employment, education, income, health and cognitive outcomes. I'm often asked what how well a New Zealand children doing. This is the former Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Beekroft. 70% of our children are in positions of relative economic advantage. They generally thrive and flourish something to a world-leading extent. That's terrific. We can be glad about that. 20% are in conditions of significant disadvantage and are in and out of some quite pronounced adversity and life is tough for them. And 10% are in chronic, permanent, intergenerational, disadvantage and hardship. And life is really tough for them. And these stats hit certain populations harder than others. One in four pacifika children and one in five Maori children are meeting the criteria for material hardship. This is how they measure that hardship. Stats New Zealand does a door knock, a little door knock of families in New Zealand and asks, does your family have for your children 17 things, two pairs of shoes, a raincoat, a male of meatfish, poultry at least three times a week, a warm, dry, well-heated, home, could you pay an emergency bill for $500 straight off? Now if a family is without seven of those 17 things, consistently for a year the family said to be a material hardship. That's 125,000 children in New Zealand currently. That's in and part filled twice over with spectators. We now have a New Zealand that is I think stratified, there's significant marginalisation and pronounced disadvantage and I think that's an indictment on New Zealand. You know when you hear that 125,000 kids in old Darwa are at a permanent intergenerational disadvantage, I think it can be hard to compute is just such a massive number. Yeah and I think Judge Beekroft actually knows that too, which is why he shared this story. My last day in the youth court was stayed with me, I came to sentence a boy, charged with what on the face of it looked like moderate offending, dangerous driving and car conversion. But actually he'd been stealing cars and driving the wrong way later at night up the motorway and playing literal human dodgings with cars coming the other way. The boy came from a really rough background, he grew up with family violence and had been hit significantly as a child by his father and there was an allegation of sexual abuse upon him by a senior male member of the family. Not surprisingly in his early days in primary school he was seen as being problematic, disruptive, violent, he was removed from his family together with the brother and sister. They were separated, he said I wish we could have been kept together, he'd actually been in 31 different placements. He began to use cannabis at age 10 which is a very common start date for young people. Had some ability actually, excellent sportsman, natural leader, quite a compelling talker, very articulate. Judge Beekroft knew he was going to have to send this boy to a youth justice attention centre and that the chances of him not ending up in prison were really slim. When I came to sentencing he said something that no other young person had ever said to me in the youth court, he said can we have a prayer, Your Honor? He said I've done the crime, I've got to do the time but I remember him saying I hope I get the help, I hope I get the help. As children's commissioner I went to visit him in the youth justice residence, he actually had a tough time, was in secure care, separated for a day, been some violence but he'd otherwise been doing well, he was playing chess, I've finished the game with chess with him, had a good time, good talk and at the end of the day I said you know I still need the help. Judge Beekroft understands the cause for reforming the adult justice system. You know we talk about adult bail laws, double-bunking, better prisons, better criminal justice system. But for him the real solution has to start earlier. For me, youth justice ideally looks like a community committed to eradicating inequality and disadvantage, a community committed to ensuring that every child in New Zealand in the first thousand days gets what they need to flourish and to thrive. That is what would really change the youth justice system and in turn the adult justice system. Let's go back to Kylie Quince for a second. Criminal justice liability and culpability in our system is about the individual person, it's about did you do that thing on that day? Not what were the circumstances of your upbringing, what was your educational experience, what was the educational experience and resource capability and cultural capability of your parents, grandparents, two-pruneer, my don't know, that's not the question. Adressing criminal justice problems is really nothing to do with criminal justice at all. It's just about equity, which is just about politics of social justice and making sure that everybody has equal access to resources and equality about opportunity. Once you have that, then you can maybe start to talk about individual choice and behaviour. Okay, so if we want to imagine a world without prisons, what we've got to do is just casually tackle poverty, racism, mental health, health and education inequalities, I mean it's a lot, eh? Yeah, absolutely it is. I just can't get my head around it to be honest. And Takim Workman, who we first met back in episode two, he struggles to imagine a future without prisons entirely too. And what I realise is that I'm probably getting too old and I need to adapt more readily to change because I know that there are some well-regarded criminologists and others who talk about that in very positive and achievable terms. But it doesn't actually need to be either abolition or reform. Are you about to tell me that there is a way we could do both? Well, that's basically what Kylie quince said. On the one hand, there's a sort of a philosophy that to sort of, you know, move mountains starts with moving stones, one man moving stones. So you could believe in that or at the other end you have, on that spectrum, that really the only big change is going to come from dismantling the whole thing. You know, just burn that down. No, I have a lot of sympathy for that, you know? But is that to say that on the spectrum that you can't make incremental change? I do think we need to have immediate change, but they're not mutually exclusive. Okay, so let's go with that. I'm going to keep abolition in the back of my mind because I still want to believe in a future where we don't need prisons, but let's look at reform stuff a little bit closer, right? Let's look at what changes are happening right now and what else could happen and quickly. Okay, so let's rewind to 2017. The Labour Party has just been elected to power and the Justice Minister Andrew Little has come out swinging. And said that the criminal justice system was broken and that we're going to fix it and that the system was also racist and elegant to look at that as well. That's Takim Wirtman again talking about the straight up acknowledgement from our government about everything we've been hearing. And then we had three years of amazing activity and a whole plethora of reports that came out. And these reports and the strategies that came out were overwhelmingly geared towards reducing the inequities in our systems which see Māori so disproportionately affected. There was Tehu Dunga Ote Tai, a refreshed strategy for the police aimed at building better relationships between police and the communities they patrol, especially for Māori. I think the largest change across the criminal justice system has been with the police. Remember Takim Wirtman has worked as a police officer and in and around the justice sector for most of his life. He's actually leading an independent panel researching and making recommendations around police bias at the moment. He knows this stuff through and through. So when he says he's seeing actual change within the police, that's really promising. And it's not without risk, you know, the commissioner's been extremely courageous in there. He means police commissioner Andrew Costa, but he's not the only one. Takim recently went to a retirement ceremony for the eastern Bay of Plenty Superintendent Andy McGregor. He talked about how futile it was to put young people into the criminal justice system and how imprisonment or incarceration was about the worst thing he could possibly do. During his time as superintendent, McGregor introduced a bunch of systems he hoped would help facilitate real change. So that when they were called to a family harm incident or something of that kind, they had a group of people who are not only able to look at the incident, but look at the drivers behind the incident and help families with methamphetamine addiction, with mental health issues, with alcohol problems and dysfunction. And bring in a multi-task pain that would work with them. And part of that pain were gang members who had reforms and who had that sort of inside acceptance within gangs. Now that would have been unheard of ten years ago. And we're starting to see examples of that come true in the way the police are doing their business, not necessarily with the support of all the politicians. Another strategy from around that time was Wahine, Eredeana Ke Tepeho. Remember that was corrections first ever strategy for dealing with women in prison. But if all the strategies and plans unveiled following that speech from Andrew Little, the biggest deal was Hawkeye Dungie. It had to be one of the most exciting moments in criminal justice history. The Hawkeye Dungie strategy looked to be a major overhaul for the Department of Corrections, with the focus on tackling the overrepresentation of Maori in prisons. Through Hawkeye Dungie, a new system was imagined, one which upholds the manner of everyone in the care of corrections, creating more access to rehab programs, supporting connection between people on the inside and their support networks, and a bunch of other things which basically add up to treating the person, not just their crime, however. It was still waiting. You know, and I know that there is a lot of work being done across the justice sector. We are seeing some innovative stuff happening there, but it's more pockets of excellence. I would put it rather than a widespread cultural change. We reached out to corrections to see what they have to say about this. This is Chief custodial officer Neil Beals. When we launched Hawkeye Dungie in 2019, you know, within months we were in lockdown. So a lot of the things that we're not supposed to be doing over the last two and a bit years have been severely hampered by the lockdown. And we're only now beginning to kind of come out of that. Corrections say they have so far substantially delivered on 27 of the 37 short term actions identified in Hawkeye Dungie with significant progress on a further 7. They said that they have around 10,000 staff who do an exceptional job at ensuring the safe and secure operation of prisons in sometimes difficult circumstances. And that the Chief Ombudsman makes hundreds of recommendations to them every year, which have led to many changes, but that some of those are more challenging, spanning multiple years where work remains ongoing. Three years into a long term project. I think if we try and do this thing too quickly, it'll be superficial. It won't be enduring. There are significant changes to be made under Hawkeye Dungie. Not only the cultural shift that the department needs to make in terms of the way we've always done things. When you think that we're trying to change a system that has pretty much operated, you know, 180 years under the same kind of laws, you know, legislation, operational systems by and large. But while corrections says many of the Ombudsman's recommendations have led to changes, Chief Ombudsman Peter Bocher said the following in May 2021, "There when it comes to recommendations for improvements that corrections have received from oversight entities. It does not appear that the concerns raised have been effectively acted on by the department in a way that has demonstrated significant and sustained improvement to prisoner, welfare and rehabilitation." The Chief Ombudsman has commenced a self-initiated investigation into the Department of Corrections. We have this repeat of strategies continually, like every few years, we've got another strategy and another strategy. In each time it looks great, but nothing changes. This is Dr Stanley again. The system that we have can no longer stand. You know, if we're thinking really about having a system that responds to offenses, that responds to harm in ways that are attentive to the treaty, attentive to Maori culture, then it cannot happen in this system that we have at the moment. We need something radically different. Mwanajekson talks about in the Westminster adversarial system, it's what law has been broken. This is our Te Amita again. Let me just try and briefly explain what she's talking about. The first legal system to arrive in Old Derroi was Māori Law or Te Kanga, bought here by the great Māori ancestor Gupe. So Te Kanga was built around kinship, around Faka Papa and it was flexible. It was law for small communities where making peace was as important as making principle. The second legal system introduced here was English Law or the Westminster system, but the British conception of laws totally different. It focuses on the individual and is economically, contractually and procedurally driven. In the Westminster adversarial system, it's what law has been broken. As a Māori perspective would be, what is the harm? You know, let's identify what harm has occurred and then who's been impacted by this harm? And then what can we collectively do to address that harm? So I think that's a big difference. Yeah, it's easy to see where those two systems might not operate easily together, but there are examples of practices in the current system which take the Māori worldview into account. Like restorative justice, which is like an informal facilitated meeting between a victim and a fenda and it takes place before someone is sentenced in court. The judge then considers any agreements made during the mediation, though that doesn't necessarily mean someone will receive a less assentance. And then there's Te Pai Oranga. These are ewig community panels which replace the traditional court moving the process to the Māori. So someone who's been convicted of a crime will be put in front of local community leaders with heaps of knowledge and experience, who support them in putting things right. And if they work hard, sometimes they can avoid jail time altogether. New Zealand was a site of innovation when it came to restorative justice. This is Owateo Mita again. But it's been so constrained by policies that we've stagnated. Like I'm hearing, oh you know, Te Pai Oranga, it's on the Marai, it's got out as community members, it's much better way. I mean it is better. I think we we can do more than that. When you're not moving forward, you're actually moving backwards because the world keeps moving. I would tell Reckons that because restorative justice in De Paioranga are still housed within the Westminster adversarial system. The changes they affect can only go so deep. I've been in the restorative justice sector for the last five years. My honest opinion is that I find it very colonized. It does have some good outcomes for individuals. But ultimately it perpetuates the same outcomes that we see across the criminal justice system in the same inequities. Dr Lizzie Stanley said something about this too. I think the potential of restorative justice can get changed and shifted and it becomes like another tick along the way rather than perhaps what it could offer. You know when we bring in alternatives to the system, are they true alternatives or do they become addons to the system? Tommy Brigh, I feel like we've kind of come full circle. We're back to the Ebullition point. Maybe it's time to address the elephant in the room. If we're going to work towards a future without prisons, what do we do with our most violent offenders? Like what do we do with the white supremacist murderer who attacked the Muslim community in Christchurch? What do we do with the rapists and pedophiles? Basically, I mean it's such a heavy question, I know for lots of us that is what makes it hard to take that leap, you know, to really let ourselves truly imagine that we can live in a world without police and prisons. Exactly and this stuff isn't going to be easy to figure out but that doesn't mean we can't try. So first up it's important to acknowledge that 57% of people in our prisons are low or minimum security. They're in there because they're addicts because they're poor and they're doing time for dishonesty or vehicular charges. If we released all these people today and set them up in homes with enough money to get by and the right support, these people would most likely be rehabilitated and go on to live their lives. And then for the percentage that do pose a threat, what's the story there? We can still manage that risk in a way that doesn't involve prisons. Tila Mous has ideas so using things like community detention, not collecting up our most damaged and people who are in the need of most help, not collecting them all up together and letting them go out of it but instead saying well this person needs individualised support so that they can change and managing them in a secure way. I think that's possible without using prisons. So violent offenders who haven't done the work to better themselves aren't going to be walking around. They're going to be 24/7 intensely monitored and supported so that there's zero chance of them hurting anyone else. The big difference between doing this in prison and doing this in a more therapeutic setting is that the letter is at least going to give them some chance to actually take responsibility for the harm they've caused and work towards making it a means. Okay, I think I can get like 99% of the way there. Like I'm definitely with you but then bro I do come back to the terrorist attack that happened in Christchurch and there is a block that comes up for me when it comes to something that intends you know. Yeah and I get it. Even if we do so much work on social factors that prisons become redundant, some people will need to be contained to keep the wider population safe. But even in the worst cases that containment can be enacted humanely. And people like Tila Moose actually reckon this is really important. There is a prison within a prison in Auckland prison that was created specifically to house and punish the Christchurch terrorist in order to hold him in indefinite solitary confinement. The problem is that when we treat people like him in a torturous way, we then justify that practice and it's use on others. If you want to make sure that your brother or your son or your dad, if they ever get in trouble, aren't treated the same way. It's absolutely crucial that human rights are applied universally, even when it's very difficult to do so. The thing about the Christchurch terrorist question is it's actually a false dilemma. Yes, of course, if we were to get rid of prisons, we'd need to figure out how we keep our community safe from people who are completely remorseless for the harm they've caused. But should we be making decisions about the entire justice system based on the actions of a few? My primary focato is that yeah, justice looks like equality of resourcing inequality of opportunity. We're back with Kylie Quince, Dean of the AUT School of Law. But it also looks like justness, which is to be fair, to be ticker, to allow people to be who they meant to be, which is not the same as everyone else, but to have their own aspirations. And that really is at the heart of tittity. All roads lead back to tittity a hua. I think I knew this was where we'd end up and that this would be what it would all boil down to, decolonisation and degenerity, Tienoranga Tira Tanga and the right to sovereignty for Māori, which was never seded. Here's our Te Amita again. One of the problems I think is because the decision-making level, we're still being excluded, Māori are still being excluded from how laws are formulated in this land. And as much as we can look to places like Norway and Portugal for alternatives, I would say that a lot of the answers are right in front of us. After all, 182 years ago, there were no prisons in Old Dauroa. I think that we have examples here in Old Dauro in New Zealand. We have indigenous ways of being and dealing with harm. I don't feel like I need to really look overseas for answers. I do think that as indigenous people, we can, as we have been though, continue to lift one another up and inspire one another towards solutions that aren't amounting to the destruction of our people in culture. Yes, we have a racist and broken criminal justice system, but racist justice systems are just a reflection of a racist society. It's as simple as that. So once you change that society to be less racist, then that should be reflected in criminal justice. That's what justice looks like. Justice looks like a just community, where people have the opportunity to live healthy, functional, flourishing lives. And while a real treaty-led approach will mean solutions by Māori for Māori, we actually need everyone on board to make it work. I know there's been a crisis of conscience for Parkour around the Treaty of Waithangi, and I think that opened them up to understand some of these colonisation harms, and we need Parkour support to carry these things over the line. We don't have the numbers to stop these harms from happening, so we need their support. And I think part of that is being decolonial, which is laying a platform for us to indigenous. There will be some people thinking that the colonial system hasn't worked for everyone, so why would a decolonised system work for everyone? But we have to remember that in Old Dildo, or currently, Māori are hugely disadvantaged in so many ways. Building a new system which specifically supports those most in need can't help but have positive repercussions for every one of us. To me, justice looks like a society that deals with the sources of harm at its core. Here's Te Lō Musa again, and that prevents harm before it's happening, by addressing issues like housing and poverty, education and healthcare. Justice looks like a society where everyone, regardless of their backgrounds, can survive and thrive. What a difference it would have made if I'd gone into a place that was like healing and welcoming and homely. After prison, Jess went to uni and got a BA in criminology. These days, she does justice advocacy work, volunteers at rehab services, in rights, cultural reports for the courts. I think something that's not dehumanising and is not punitive is going to be far more beneficial than punishment. I just don't think punishment works at all. You know, like with social creatures, we belong in communities. Jamie finished electronic monitoring bail six months ago, and she's doing a diploma in equine studies. We long for connection, like that's just how we're made up, and I think that taking that away from people that need help is the most damaging thing to do to the community. To me, justice looks like inclusive, diverse, accepting, employment and upscaling. Olivia works full-time as a cleaning business on the side and has just been accepted into Taitaki Taki Diploma in Applied Addictions counselling. She also plays indoor netball. She loves it and is known to make it rain with two-pointer goals. Rangi Bekaz Partner, who is now in prison for a couple of decades, he's a zone boss these days. "When my water streams were talking about, to have our own people go through our own system, to take care of our own people. That's what I'd like if our people were able to be dealt with through our own." Blaine's working as a personal trainer at the moment and still staying clean. "I believe we should follow a more of a rehabilitative approach. I'm a big believer in work, trying to help people get out to a job, rather than just leaving them to fend for themselves and go back to what they know." Bekaz is studying and already has certificates in mental health, addiction, peer support work and suicide prevention. "I make the most of every opportunity I can get, and it's a good, healthy life." And as we mentioned in the last episode, Paul's landed on his feet working for a private rehab. "I reckon if there was rehabilitation for everything, then the justice system would be one that helps." "People being heard, people being offered pathways to healing, people being acknowledged as being experts in their own experiences. And seven years after her release from prison, Awa Te Ameta received first-class honours, a flash scholarship, and as now a teaching fellow at the same university, she nearly left on day one of her studies." "It means giving support to people so that they can live their best lives." "It's that simple. True justice is ensuring people are connected and nourished, healthy and happy." "That mental health needs a met with help and support, and everyone can access addiction services, affordable housing and education and public transport, regardless of income." "We all have access to labourers, space outside, trees, community gardens, potlucks at each other's flats. Where someone who makes a mistake can make amends, and then go on to build a life of value with the support of their whanau and their loved ones around them." "Yeah, I was so lucky to have a family that supported me. Let's finish with Awa Te Ameta." "I've got a little nephew who's like, 'Auntie, aren't you like, I mean I arrived?' "Auntie, aren't you? Start dragging out a mattress and isn't making a bed? Who's going to sleep by me, Auntie?' "Don't forget to sleep by me, just having the love of children who aren't consumed with my past or that I was in prison or that I was a met addict." "They just have a pure joy in love and I feel like being the best that I can be is what I can do to kind of honour that unconditional love." "When I talk about supporting my nieces and nephews into a better future, this actually just comes back to this idea of survival. I can't never give up on the stream that we can thrive, you know, and flourish." "It's a beautiful vision and I want us all to bask in it, to keep it at the top of our thoughts when we're agitating for justice transformation together. Why would we settle for anything less for our muhopuna?" "That their place in the world is going to be a place where they can be proud, where they can enjoy good lives, where their environment is protected. Where their experiences aren't going to be clouded by the same issues that I experienced, where their lives are going to be untouched by criminal justice, where they're not going to be exposed to the criminal justice system at a young age. And hopefully some of them might live down here with me and go to uni. I have this absolute belief that one day that's going to be a reality for them. That's my biggest wish is that that could be their lived experience." So that's us out. This was the final episode of True Justice. "We really just wanted to take a moment to say a mahi to you, our listeners. Thank you for tuning in for listening, for sticking with us through this series, a heavy but important copapa." "Thank you to everyone who shared their stories. We are so grateful to you." "If you want to help, visit JustSpeaks website to donate, subscribe to our action newsletter, or if you are looking for how you can contribute to changing the criminal justice system. Visit the JustSpeak, take Action website page, where you'll find a range of service providers that you can connect with to help out or even find support. JustSpeak actively seeks to take on volunteers, so if you're interested, then please get in touch." "That's us signing off." "True Justice was hosted by me, Tommy Doran." "And me, Anarchaia Scotney. It was produced by JustSpeak, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for transformational change in the criminal justice system. Where the aspiration is to see therapeutic, rehabilitative and restorative justice approaches taken instead of police, courts and prisons." Writing and research was a team effort by staff at JustSpeak and PopSock Media, as well as former JustSpeak advocacy lead, Emily Rosenthal. "Editing in Sounder Zone was by PopSock Media with music from Blue Dot Sessions, and the theme music, what you can hear now by Corte Doe, that's me with Thomas Aber. You can find our song "All the Little Birds on Bandcamp." "Interviews and recordings with our storytellers and experts were done by Emily Rosenthal, Chantal Afina, myself and our amazing JustSpeak volunteers. Maggie Henderson, Susie Olson, William Cosgrove, Laurel Lee Batista, Maisie Thursfield and Hannah Riley." "Noration recording and mixing was by Phil Brownlee at Victoria University's Miramar Creative Centre. Our journalistic and legal checks and balances came from Francis Morton, Anna Harquardt and the legal team at TVNZ's Youth News Platform, RE, who supported this project." "Our heartfelt thanks to all the people who shared their stories, experiences and for Carter with us, and we hope that their corridor has enlighten you to what is really happening in the criminal justice system and what true justice really looks like." "You can stop saying you're fine with me, you can be not alright, you can stop saying you're fine."