Besides prisons being the least inspirational, least aspirational, least innovative, least ambitious, most destructive institution Maori could ever hope to be involved with, here’s further food for thought as to why it’s just a plain dumb idea that iwi own prisons.

Iwi should instead be focused on preventing Maori getting to prison in the first place by identifying at risk Maori students in schools now and mentoring them through to university.

Trouble is, there’s less money and too much work involved in anything so proactive, progressive and preventative.

A 2003 report prepared for the Ministery of Education by John Church of the University of Canterbury named, “The Definition, Diagnosis and Treatment of Children and Youth with Severe Behaviour Difficulties: A Review of Research”, made a rough assessment of the costs of intervening with antisocial children at ages five, ten and fifteen years. It says:

The cost of normalising the development of one antisocial child at age five is $4000, with a success rate of 80%. The cost for a child of ten years is $8000 with a success rate of 50% and the cost for a child of fifteen years is $12,000 with a success rate of 20%.

Extrapolating those figures, this must mean ‘normalising’ or rehabilitating a person aged twenty will cost about $16,000 with an expected success rate of just 10%. The cost of rehabilitation of a twenty-five year old will be $20,000 with an expected success rate of just 5%.

The cost of housing a prisoner for just one year is on average about $70k.

So let’s do the sums – Iwi take their 10% profit – Willie Jackson asked on Marae yesterday morning – What’s wrong with Maori making a profit? So they need their cut. This leaves $63k in the kitty. Then a twenty-five year old turns up in prison for a year. It costs at least $20k to rehabilitate him (more if we expect better than a 5% success rate) – $43k left in the kitty.

That doesn’t leave a heck of a lot for running the show does it? Looking at this research, if iwi run prisons expect to have rehabilitation success rates of say 70- 80% they are going to have to spend anywhere from $30-50k per prisoner, possible more.

Where will savings be made? Employing under qualified guards who will work for less. Employing foreign guards who will work for less, but can’t relate to Maori. Cutting guard numbers. Double bunking. Reduction in rehabilitation programmes.

This is going to make life very dangerous for both guards and prisoners.

These iwi leaders haven’t thought this through.

So a private prison is going to be built at Wiri.

I see some iwi are rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of being able to get rich by locking their own up.

It goes to show how high the aspirations of some of our Maori leaders are. We now aspire to bung the bros in the hinaki and watch the dollars roll in. The longer and more often we can put them away, the sooner we will be able to afford to expand the prison and lock even more away.

With the soaring crime rate and high Maori unemployment everything is coming together nicely for iwi to become extremely wealthy. The last thing these iwi will want is for the country to emerge from the recession or for our kids to do well at school. Every Maori child born is a potential source of income – not as a leader, businessman or entrepreneur but as a Beagle Boy.

What the heck, if profits start to dip or costs need to be cut, these iwi can just pay the other rellies who guard the bros a little less, or sack a couple of them – purely in the best interests of the iwi of course. Better still they could just buy a couple of hundred bucks worth of piss, give it to some of the younger bros and when they get locked up for drink driving, smacking the missus over or putting a knife into someone we can rest assured in the knowledge the iwi will utimately benefit.

Making money by locking the bros up is culturally abhorrent and if this is one of the Treaty rights that we’re after, they can stick it. I’d rather have my integrity.

By all means infuse kaupapa Maori throughout the prison system – surely Pita Sharples can wield his considerable influence as Associate Minister of Corrections to make this happen? Just don’t ever pretend it is okay for iwi to lock the whanau up and make money from it.

Personally I’d prefer iwi put their energies into supporting their local schools and building universities, but maybe I’m just old fashioned. That would take a bit of effort and why would iwi bother going down that old path when there’s a quick buck to be made by locking the bros up? Besides, preventing Maori from getting to prison in the first place will cut into profits.