Children in state care more likely to end up in prison, royal commission report confirms
Wednesday, 24 August 2022
Survivors of abuse in care who were set on a pathway to incarceration have been vindicated following the release of a royal commission report.
The commission’s Care to Custody: Incarceration Rates Research Report shows unequivocally that the state set them on a path from state care to state prisoners.
Released on Wednesday during the examination of Oranga Tamariki at the inquiry’s state institutional response public hearing, the report is the first of its kind to analyse the interagency records of more than 30,000 children and young people between 1950 and 1999.
One-third of children and youth in state care served a prison sentence later on in life, the report said.
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Other findings in the report show that Māori children and young people were even more likely to end up in prison, with 42% serving custodial sentences as adults.
This shows a significant disparity between those in residential care and the general population for whom less than one in 10 ended up in prison.
However, with missing gaps in historical data collection and reporting, there is no way to accurately depict the full scale of the connection between care and incarceration.
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Survivor Hohepa Taiaroa (Ngāti Kahungungu, Tūwharetoa) shared his story at the royal commission’s Māori hearing in June, recounting how he spent his youth in and out of state care being abused before serving time in Mt Crawford.
He said the boys he knew at borstal who then became his cellmates knew they had been wronged but to see it written in the official report was like washing the dirt from your skin after a hard day’s work.
“The report is bang on. It has answered a lot of questions for me.
“To see that it has come to fruition now and that people can understand that it wasn't just us, bro, there was a dark hand behind us, leading us all the way.”
Taiaroa said he hoped the Crown would recognise its failings, now that the empirical evidence had been presented, and create true, long-lasting change for the tamariki who would be under its care in the future.
“If they don’t get it now, they are never going to get it. Reports like this that remind us all the time, this is what we needed. Every time I see these reports it is a mamae [pain] but it is a healing.
“We have got to work together, not just as Māori, but as Māori and the Government. We can’t just do it individually.”
Taiaroa and fellow survivor Arthur Taylor said they wanted an apology from the Crown for the futures that were taken from them, their families, and the thousands like them who were set on the same pathway.
Taylor was sent to Epuni Boys’ Home as a child after wagging school.
He was top of the class, he said, but once he was in care there was no academic education, only criminal.
“They have cost me a lot, they have cost my family a lot, and they have cost a lot of people. It is really sad. You can’t even convey the significance of this.
“The relevant agencies resist all this sort of stuff. They resist this strongly and unless you have got the hard data to hit them with, they ask you: where is your evidence? Well, we have got this now.”
This is the final week of the royal commission’s institutional state response hearing; the faith-based response hearing is scheduled for October.
The Abuse in Care Royal Commission is expected to release a final report with recommendations to the Government in June 2023.