MYTH: “PRISONS KEEP OUR COMMUNITIES SAFE” Prisons target specific communities mu

MYTH: “PRISONS KEEP OUR COMMUNITIES SAFE”

Prisons target specific communities much more than others. Those who are imprisoned are more likely to be poor, Māori, mentally unwell, and intellectually disabled. Māori experience discrimination at every stage of the criminal “justice” system, and are more likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Māori make up only 15% of the total New Zealand population but over 50% of the prison population.

In what way are these communities being kept safe when parents, children, whānaunga, lovers, friends, caretakers and wage-earners are being locked in a cage away from their communities and tortured?

In fact, prisons actively endanger these communities. It has been found that those who leave prison often come out more violent than before. People who go to prison for non-violent offences are much more likely to commit violent offences when they leave. The culture of “victimisation and intimidation” within the prison forces many people to be violent in order to survive, teaching them to use violence to solve problems. When they leave the prison, that violence makes its way into our communities.

Former prisoners are also much more likely to be homeless and unemployed. As a result, people who have been in prison and their whānau are left with not only emotional and physical damage, but also an increased likelihood of being poor. Families that have or have had a member in prison face a vicious cycle of poor health, poor education, inadequate housing, and mental illness, which leads to more members of their community being imprisoned!

These families are caught in a cycle of misery that prisons help to reproduce over and over. Prisons not only fail to keep communities safe, but actively contribute to making communities unsafe by creating widespread fear, violence, homelessness and impoverishment. http://ift.tt/2ks01iB