By Dr Antje Deckert
Over the last five years,
US criminologists have popularised the catch-phrase ‘the school to prison
pipeline’ arguing that the US public school system tends to neglect and expel
students who are in need of extra educational and social support. Since
miseducation is linked to increased chances of incarceration, systemic neglect
creates a vicious cycle or a pipeline effect. In the US, the pipeline disproportionately
affects children of African American and Hispanic descent. It is argued that,
in New Zealand, we are witnessing ‘the school to prison pipeline’ and ‘the
social services to prison pipeline’; both of which disproportionately affect
Māori children.
In New Zealand’s child abuse
statistics, Māori make up 49% of physically and 38% of sexually abused
children, while Pakeha make up 29% of physically and 50% of sexually abused
children. Compared to Pakeha kids, Child Youth and Families (CYF) considered
twice as many Māori children to have been neglected or emotionally abused,
which leads to a total abuse statistics of 49% for Māori children, compared to
29% for Pakeha children.
In 2013, CYF placed 3,844
children in out-of-home care, of these 2,113 were Māori children and 1,324
Pakeha kids. It is reasonable to assume that most of these children must have
suffered some form of violent abuse in order to justify a separation from their
families. Considering the total numbers of sexually and physically abused
children, Māori represent 42% and Pakeha 33% of violent abuse victims. However,
of all children placed into CYF out-of-home care, 55% were Māori and 35% were Pakeha,
which means that CYF places Māori children excessively in out-of-home care. In
fact, there is an 11 percent point difference between Pakeha and Māori kids. It
is estimated that of the total 3,844 children, around 200 Pakeha and 600 Māori
children were placed into out-of-home care to protect them from non-violent parental
abuse.
That means that Māori
children make up roughly 70% of all children who are placed into out-of-home
care because of neglect or emotional abuse. These figures indicate that racial
bias influences CYF decisions about placing children into out-of-home care, at
least in cases of non-violent abuse. That racial bias affects New Zealand media
reporting on child abuse cases has been confirmed by research undertaken at
Massey University in 2010. The study found that, compared to actual statistics,
New Zealand mainstream newspapers tend to over-report the abuse of Māori
children. Moreover, ethnicity is not mentioned in newspaper articles when the
abused child is not of Māori or Pacific Island descent.
The future of children who
are placed in CYF care, looks generally bleak. It is a future that entails a high
risk of further abuse while in CYF care (see blog entry from 20th October
2015), educational underachievement, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse. Children
in CYF care are also more likely to offend and be incarcerated. The Children’s
Commissioner explains in his 2015 report:
In 2014, 328 young people aged 14-16 [and in CYF care]
committed an offence resulting in a court-directed family group conference.
This accounts for about 13 percent of all court-directed referrals to youth
justice during this period. This means about 30 percent of children in care
between the ages of 14 and 16 are being charged with offences, compared to
about 1 percent of children this age cohort in the general population.
Evidently, CYF produces
consistently poor social and educational outcomes for children who are in its
care. CYF’s racially biased placement practices guarantee that it is
predominantly Māori children who are being fed through ‘the social services to
prison pipeline’.
And as if the situation
wasn’t disturbing enough, neo-liberal forces may make matters worse in the near
future. In 2015, the Modernising CYF Expert
Panel was tasked to provide authoritative advice on CYF’s future operating
model. In its interim report from 31st July, the panel recommends
that “we will need to engage with the non-government and private sectors in
creative and non-traditional ways. Legislation may be required to realise some
of these potential opportunities.” A month later, Prime Minister John Key
confirmed that at least some CYF services may be privatised.
In September, SERCO case
managers were found visiting several CYF facilities in Auckland. SERCO is the international
corporation that currently runs two private prisons in the Auckland area; the remand
prison Mt Eden and the Wiri men’s prison. On 24th September 2015,
Social Development Minister Anne Tolley claimed that these site visits were
unrelated to any CYF privatisation plans but rather revolved around the
transition of young people from CYF care into SERCO ‘care’:
There are occasionally young people on indictable
charges, and it’s obvious they will be transferred from youth justice to the
prison system. There needs to be a well-managed transition.
When 30% of children in CYF
care are being prosecuted compared to 1% of children in the general population,
saying “OCCASSIONALLY young people will be transferred” is not just a wrong
choice of words. It is, in fact, a conscious and deliberate distortion of
reality.
If CYF services were to be
(partly) privatised, SERCO’s profit interest would have to determine how it
delivers its support services to young people and their families. Since CYF has
established a tradition of providing prisons with a steady stream of inmates,
SERCO’s profit interest would be best served by continuing this legacy. It
would be even more profitable for SERCO to increase the number of children who
are fed through ‘the social services to prison pipeline’. However, it wouldn’t
even matter if SERCO or another private business takes over CYF services
because the pipeline serves profit interests at both ends. In either case, CYF
privatisation would offer SERCO an opportunity to control (or at least
stimulate) the influx of CYF ‘clients’ and thus increase its profit margin in
the prison system; because what would constitute a ‘kickback’ in governmental
operation of CYF, would merely be considered profit-sharing between two private
businesses. Since CYF has already established a tradition of placing Māori
children excessively into out-of-home care, there is no doubt that after CYF service
privatisation most children in CYF care (and later inmates) would be of
Māori descent as well. It demonstrates once again that colonisation isn’t just
a historic event of the past. Colonisation continues its repressive operations
in social, political, economic and cultural processes.
References
Brook, K. (2015). Restorative justice practices needed in
classrooms. Available from
http://www.comsdev.canterbury.ac.nz/rss/news/?articleId=1601
Children’s
Commissioner. (2015). State of Care: What
we learnt from monitoring Child Youth and Family. Retrieved from http://www.occ.org.nz/assets/Publications/OCC-State-of-Care-2015.pdf
Cunneen, C.
and Rowe, S. (2014). Changing narratives: Colonised peoples, criminology, and
social work. International Journal for
Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 3, 49-67.
Kim, C., Losen, D., and Hewitt, D.
(2010). The School-to-Prison Pipeline:
Structuring Legal Reform. New York: NYU Press.
Merchant, R.
(2010). Who are abusing our children? An
exploratory study on reflections on child abuse by media comments [MA
thesis]. Massey University: New Zealand. Available from http://mro.massey.ac.nz
Ministry of
Social Development (2015). Modernising
Child Youth and Family: Expert panel interim report. Retrieved from
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/cyf-modernisation/interim-report-expert-panel.pdf
Radio New
Zealand (August, 31, 2015) Key: More CYF
private sector involvement possible. Available from
http://www.radionz.co.nz
Statistics New
Zealand (2013). Quick Stats on Māori.
Available from www.stats.govt.nz
Three News
(September 24, 2015). CYF sites visited
by Serco - Tolley. Available from http://www.3news.co.nz
Wynd, D.
(2013). Child abuse: An analysis of Child
Youth and Family data. Auckland: Child Poverty Action Group.