Another review won’t help our kids in prison

There’s a point at which reviewing our youth prison system stops being about transparency, and instead delays accountability for improving care of young offenders.

We’re at that point now, writes Aaron Hendry.

 

At the end of December last year, a group of tamariki climbed onto the roof of the building they were imprisoned in. This was the second “rooftop protest” in as many months.

The children’s minister, Karen Chhour, came out swinging, slamming the children for their “disruptive behaviour” and ridiculing the idea that the children’s actions should be viewed as a protest against their conditions. She backed Oranga Tamariki, she backed the youth prison these kids were in, and she backed the government’s decision to get tough on the children in their care.

After the rooftop protest in October, just two months before, the government promised a review to investigate how the children had been able to get on the roof of the prison, and to explore what should be done to prevent a similar situation.

Much like the December event, the voices of the children were largely silenced. Some journalists reported that the tamariki had told them that denial of food and fresh air was the trigger behind their rooftop action, but those comments were ridiculed by the well-paid adults who fronted the media.

The commentary was dominated by high-ranking public servants and the Minister for Children, who repeated shared talking points and congratulated themselves on how swiftly they’d managed to get the children off the roof, how decisive their action had been, and how tough the consequences were for the children concerned.

It’s important to note that this particular facility had already been recently reviewed by Mana Mokopuna, the Children and Young Peoples Commission. That review, released earlier last year, found significant concerns for the health and safety of the children living in this institution, largely resulting from poor practice from kaimahi, a lack of resourcing and adequate training, and a lack of oversight and access to independent advocates and social workers.

But, that was just the latest review. There have been a string of others, all documenting similar, if not the same, challenges over and over again (including the Mike Bush review released in 2023).

Consistently, these reports document poor practice, lack of resourcing, and conditions that don’t align with the goal of healing tamariki and empowering them to thrive.

It’s easy to call for a review. And, generally, reviews can be a good thing. They can create accountability, show us what’s going wrong, give us clear actions to move towards improvement.

And yet, there comes a point when a review stops being about transparency, and starts acting as a tool to delay accountability.

We are at that point.

This most recent review will likely (if it hasn’t already) find the same problems that are reported year after year.

Oranga Tamariki will acknowledge the findings, commit to doing better, and the minister responsible for this system will write a strongly worded letter to the chief executive, express their disappointment, demand better, and assure the public that the government has committed to fixing the problem.

What is unlikely to happen is an acknowledgment from government that it is they who hold ultimate responsibility for the care and protection of these children. And it is they who set the parameters for what is possible within Oranga Tamariki.

The government decides how much money they’re willing to pay to ensure the health and safety of the children in their care. The government sets the political parameters for what services can be developed, and what institutions stay in place.

The coalition government’s current obsession with boot camps and developing military-style prisons for children, alongside their decision to pull funding from frontline community services, while also reducing Oranga Tamariki’s funding, is just the latest example of a government choosing ideology over effective, evidence-based solutions for our children.

This is not a partisan issue, nor one that allows any government, past or present to hold any sense of moral superiority.

Successive governments hold responsibility for underfunding and under-resourcing Oranga Tamariki, restricting what is possible, and preventing best practice in service design, resourcing and development.

Without side-stepping the responsibility of those who have power within Oranga Tamariki, it’s important to acknowledge that these children are in the care of the state, meaning the ultimate parental responsibility sits with the prime minister of the day.

Yesterday, it was Chris Hipkins. Today, it’s Chris Luxon. Tomorrow, who knows?

The point is that we can spend the next few generations debating how to fix Oranga Tamariki, but at some point we have to acknowledge that if our government will not pay to care for our kids in the way they need to be cared for, and if our political leaders choose ideology over evidence, then what our public servants can achieve for our children is limited to the parameters set for them by these very political leaders.

During the never-ending conversation about “youth crime”, there’s been a lot of talk about personal responsibility, consequences and accountability by people whose positions give them the power to influence children’s lives.

And yet, what is often being ignored is an acknowledgment of the responsibility held by the government and our wider community for the welfare of these children and the conditions many of these kids have grown up in.

Many of these tamariki are in the justice system because of our collective failure to support them and their whānau. Right and wrong is clear-cut, simple, for the privileged and the comfortable. It’s easy to condemn these children when you’re sitting in Wellington with your three-figure salary, after a safe night’s sleep and a full meal. But when you take a moment to step down and acknowledge the reality of these kids’ situations, things are far less black and white.

The children in these prisons have often suffered the indignity of poverty, experienced homelessness, suffered neglect and abuse. Some will be children with disabilities and will be struggling with complex trauma, depression, anxiety and other mental illness.

At Kick Back, the youth homelessness service I lead, we see firsthand how the context of “youth offending” is so often a tragic story of a child in need of love, care and safety.

Some will argue that these children “shouldn’t be the government’s responsibility”, and like to ask, “What about the parents?” But what we need to acknowledge is that these children are the product of the poverty and inequality that successive governments have allowed to persist within Aotearoa.

The kids are canaries in the mine.

These children are not the problem. Their actions are simply warning us that something is wrong within our society. They are highlighting for us the generational consequences of poverty and inequality. They are directing our attention to our collective failure to address the atrocities that result from colonisation, including those that are well documented in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

And yet, if we put all the arguments about personal culpability aside, what is patently true is this. If a child is in a youth justice residence (which is just a sanitised way of saying “youth prison”), they are in the care of the state. This means that our government, and by extension, all of us, have a parental responsibility to these children.

If their needs are not being met, if they are not safe, cared for, loved, and provided with the support they need to heal and thrive, then that responsibility sits with all of us.

It’s easy to throw stones at children trapped in cages. But, the harsh reality is that these children are in these institutions because our society has failed to care for, love and support them.

It’s time for our government to acknowledge the evidence and begin living up to the parental responsibility it has taken upon itself to care for these children.

It’s been heartbreaking to hear people in positions of such power speak of our kids with such disregard. After the October rooftop protest, the prime minister dismissively quipped that they won’t be “coming down for KFC.”

As I’ve listened to such statements, I’ve thought of the children I know, and the trauma and suffering that paved their way into these systems. I thought of all the ways they’d been failed. I thought of the stories these kids would tell, if their voices hadn’t been drowned out by powerful adults congratulating themselves on their intention to punish traumatised children.

I thought of the kids I spoke to living on the street just this week. Of the absurd reality that we would rather allow our children to sleep on our streets, funnelling them into prison, than love and care for them, or house them.

There is no pathway forward for a society that chooses to exact violence and revenge against our most vulnerable.

But, this is us, New Zealand. The heartlessness. The cruelty. The disregard for the suffering and pain of children. This has so often been us.

But it doesn’t have to be.

 

Aaron Hendry (tangata Tiriti) is a youth development worker and rangatahi advocate. He  co-founded and leads Kick Back with his wife Summer and whānau, an organisation responding to youth homelessness. 

E-Tangata, 2025