Green MP, Tamatha Paul, has been criticized recently 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 Tik Tok video on 6 March): “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 Maori, they’re being punished for our system that we have in this country.”
Paul was taken to task by Police and 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% of 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 6,000 of these prisoners are actually sentenced. The other 4,000 are on remand, waiting for their cases to slowly work their way through the court system. According to VUW lecturer, Christine McCarthy, half those 4,000 defendants will not end up with a prison sentence – because their offending was not serious enough. So they should not be included in Corrections statistics as violent offenders.
Its just a snapshot
There’s an even bigger problem. The statistics that Mark Mitchell has relied on are a snapshot of prisoners in December 2024. Murderers, sexual and violent offenders tend to get long sentences, so they make up the bulk of the 6,000 sentenced prisoners on that day.
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 are automatically released halfway through their sentence. Potentially, this means around 14,000 Kiwis who spent time in prison during the year are 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 that Mark Mitchell relies on.
What were they thinking?
In 2022, Ian Lambie, the Chief Science Advisor to the Office of Prime Minister published ‘What were they thinking? A discussion paper on brain and behaviour in relation to the justice system in New Zealand.’ Lambie explains in detail that the vast majority of those in prison suffer from brain injuries, mental health disorders, addictions, neurodiversity, and other conditions like undiagnosed foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism or ADHD. They make decisions to drink, take drugs, shoplift and steal, driven by poverty and systemic deprivation – and that’s why they end up in prison.
So Tamatha Paul was absolutely correct – the vast majority of those who end up in prison have not committed violent offences. Since she made this statement, Ms Paul has been attacked by Mark Mitchell, after which the NZ Herald said she expressed ‘regret’ about making this claim. Clearly, she was bullied by Mr Mitchell – and by the media. He should be the one apologizing – and I sent him an email telling him so.
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