Kim Workman as a young policeman in the late 1950s. (Photo supplied)
Tā Kim Workman spent 67 years working in the police and criminal justice system. Over that time, he says, too little has changed in approaches to criminality and social harm. In fact, he says many of the attitudes and ideas that were prevalent when he joined the police force in 1958 remain entrenched today.
Here he is, reflecting on a lifetime of trying to shift how we think about crime and punishment.
In 1957, I was of serious concern to my parents and the local police officer. I’d sat School Certificate twice, and got lower marks the second year than the first. I’d also acquired a liking for alcohol, got hooked on jazz, and was headed for a life of dissolution.
Without my knowledge, they applied on my behalf to be accepted as a police cadet. The application was initially declined, but when a successful applicant failed to turn up, I was recruited as a substitute, arriving 10 days late at the police training school.
I graduated in September 1959, knowing what was expected of me. My job was to fight crime. The most obvious measure of that was a high arrest and conviction rate.
A “lock ‘em up” culture was pervasive. Police sergeants ramped up constables to make arrests, and we competed with each other to see how many we could make over an eight-hour shift. Cars of young people would be routinely stopped — and pedestrians, too. Stopped, questioned and searched. Any protest or resistance led to trumped-up charges: obstructing the police, obscene language, or resisting arrest.
At that time, the urban face of Aotearoa was changing fast. We were seeing the most rapid urbanisation of an Indigenous population anywhere in the world. In 1945, just 26 percent of Māori lived in urban areas, but by 1966, that had increased to 62 percent.
If hassling young people on the street was standard practice, then it was increasingly aimed at young Māori. New to the urban environment, they were more likely to be stopped than Pākehā.
In the space of just four years — between 1954 and 1958 — reported Māori youth offending rose by 50 percent. This increase was not related to how Māori behaved in this strange urban world, but how they were viewed by non-Māori. Māori urban migrants were perceived and treated as a potentially dangerous underclass.
Being a Māori in the police was equally challenging. In 1958, there were 2,600 sworn police officers, and only 26 of us were Māori.
I started to take Pākehā colleagues home to events at our marae. The hospitality, abundance of food, and absence of alcohol were not what they expected. Our elders fussed over them constantly, and my female cousins, ever on the lookout for suitable husbands, sometimes made their stay rather special.
Systemic bias in the police, however, was ingrained. In that same year, Commissioner Les Spencer publicly declared that Chinese, “Hindus” (Indians) and Pacific Islanders were unsuited to policing and would not be recruited. Apart from Māori, in his opinion, policing should only be done by the “white races”.
Three years later, the 1961 Hunn Report confirmed that Māori were more likely than non-Māori to be imprisoned, sent to borstal, or placed on probation. They were less likely to have their court cases dismissed and more likely to be committed to the Supreme Court for trial. Most Māori came to court with no idea how to plead or defend themselves. About 80 percent of Māori were represented by counsel, compared to 60 percent of Europeans, and so most Māori, up to 85 percent, would end up entering a guilty plea.
The Walter Nash Cadet Wing graduation in 1958. (Photo supplied)
A punitive society
Aotearoa was a punitive society. In 1954, the Department of Justice noted that, per head of population, we had 50 percent more people in our prisons than they did in England and Wales.
Punitive attitudes toward young offenders dominated. The pervading idea was that a good boot up the bum, a good thrashing, or military training would solve everything.
In 1961, corrective detention was introduced. Young offenders aged 16 to 21 were sentenced to detention centres for a three-month boot camp experience, intended as a short, sharp shock to straighten them out.
About 60 per cent of those who went through the detention centres were reconvicted within one year, and 70 per cent within three years.
The next iteration of corrective “training” that replaced the boot camps in 1981 was no better. A 1983 Department of Justice study found that 71 percent of corrective trainees were reconvicted within a year of release. Nonetheless, that sentence was not abolished until 2002. Then boot camps were reintroduced eight years later.
In 1972, as a police youth aid officer, I began visiting Kohitere in Levin, which was an institution for boys aged 14 to 15. There were 110 boys in residence there.
On my first visit, the impact of what we were doing to our young people hit me. I was met with a sea of brown faces — of the 110 boys in the institution, 90 percent were Māori.
The place was a hellhole. Research since has confirmed that these children and young people endured physical, sexual and psychological violence, as well as secure cells, knock-out sedatives, and electro-convulsive therapy.
My first response to going inside Kohitere was one of anger. Anger and disbelief.
Anger that the state could allow such conditions — conditions so inhumane they were almost guaranteed to turn vulnerable children and youth into scarred, distrusting, and sometimes dangerous adults. Anger that senior public servants and policy advisers could have allowed these conditions to continue for so long, knowing that they were parties to the creation of criminals. Anger that no one understood that the offenders of today were almost always the victims of yesterday. But the moment they were old enough to be held accountable for a criminal act, their history of victimisation and neglect became of no account.
It was almost as though the state, having neglected the welfare and needs of children in its care in the first 12 years of their life, was able — once the child inevitably progressed to committing a criminal act — to breathe a collective sigh of relief, reclassify the child as a young offender, and quickly transfer any accountability away from themselves. Instead, the problem with youth offending was framed as one of personal responsibility, which belonged to the individual.
Those visits to Kohitere were a career-defining moment. Until then, I had believed that the attitudes to Māori in the police force were mostly attributable to personal racism or ignorance. But now I realised that systemic bias existed across the criminal justice system.
The lack of Māori and Pacific police officers and social workers, the lack of networks with Indigenous communities, the resistance to anything other than Pākehā values and beliefs, all added up to deep bias across the system. Research has since established that in 1972, 9 percent of all Māori males aged between 17 and 19 years spent time in prison.
Forty-seven years later, in October 2019, I gave evidence at a public hearing of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. When I walked into the anteroom, I was greeted and hugged by two survivors. I had met both of them at Kohitere in 1972, and then again 18 years later, when I was the head of prisons. I stayed to hear their evidence, and my thoughts lingered on how their lives might have turned out had we done things differently.
From 1996 onwards, the police proactively developed a strategy to increase responsiveness to Māori. But the outcomes for Māori have not greatly changed.
It is time to face an inconvenient truth: improved Māori-police relationships and culturally appropriate programmes and services (in whatever guise) may make a positive contribution to the police culture, but they do not, on their own, address the underlying presence of racism and systemic bias.
Kohitere Boy’s Training Centre in Levin was one of the main institutions subject to complaints about abuse in state care. Photo: RNZ / Aaron Smale
Prisons
In 1989, I was appointed Assistant Secretary, Penal Institutions, in the Department of Justice. The facilities in many institutions were run-down, inadequate or non-existent, and too little was done to provide prisoners with constructive activity.
A ministerial report, Te Ara Hou (The New Way), came out shortly after my appointment. It found that the traditional prison system was largely failing to rehabilitate or deter offenders, because of an “irreconcilable conflict” between the two fundamental objectives of prison: secure containment and reform.
The report recommended establishing separate Habilitation Centres to focus on rehabilitation. The Department of Justice was not in favour, and the idea was eventually abandoned.
While I was in that job, we came up with an alternative, which we called He Ara Hou (A New Way). We engaged prisoners in constructive activity — things like literacy and numeracy, educational advancement, employment skills, cultural activities, and programmes addressing criminogenic needs.
We took advantage of the existing prison structure, which mostly comprised 60-bed units. We decided that each unit would be expected to function as a whānau, with the unit manager directly responsible for a budget to cover gardening, arts, music, carving, creative writing, and so on.
Most units had their own kitchen, and the prisoners prepared meals under supervision. Some units were allocated a weekly food budget. In the initial stages, it was a challenge. One unit manager ran out of money, with three days still left in the week. He was sent a booklet on the virtues of fasting. Prisoners were also expected to help organise sporting events, and held whānau days where families gathered to take part in social activities.
As confidence grew, staff introduced initiatives of their own. Prisoner councils were formed, and some prison units were desegregated. Outside volunteers became part of the prison community.
Prisoners had traditionally been regarded as a liability within prisons, rather than as a potential asset. He Ara Hou challenged that thinking, engaging prisoners in the formation of policy and processes at a local and national level.
Overall, the staff response was predictable. About 5 to 10 percent were actively opposed, about 15 percent were enthusiastic and provided critical leadership in embracing “a new way”, and the rest were passively accepting.
Then, in 1993, an incident occurred at the newly-established Mangaroa Prison. A prisoner stabbed an officer with a chisel. Three other prisoners saw him do it and failed to alert the prison staff. The offender was transferred to another prison to ensure his safety. The witnesses, however, who were all Mongrel Mob members, remained at Mangaroa.
I contacted the prison, concerned, and was assured they would be safe. But over the next few days, I became increasingly worried. Four days later, I instructed a prison inspector to visit the prison. He phoned with bad news. The prisoners who’d witnessed the attack had been held for three days naked in an outside exercise yard and repeatedly beaten by prison officers. Their injuries included extensive bruising, and one had a fractured skull.
Now I had a problem. Mongrel Mob members did not make statements to the police. Instead, they waited for an opportunity to exact retribution. Nor was I convinced that the local police would do a thorough investigation.
I decided on a different approach. I contacted a former Mob leader who retained significant mana in the gang. He visited the prisoners and persuaded them to make statements. With the consent of the Secretary of Justice, I also hired a private investigator to conduct an inquiry. Nineteen prison officers were initially suspended, and 12 were eventually dismissed.
When the dismissals became news, I expected support from my colleagues. I was mistaken. The phone didn’t ring, and my normally busy office was bereft of visitors. I was on the outer. In Parliament, two opposition MPs called for my resignation.
That evening, the phone rang. It was a Mongrel Mob leader. We talked for some time, and he thanked me for drawing a line in the sand. His words had a considerable impact. This was the first support I’d received for my actions, and it meant a great deal.
I resigned from the Prison Service at the end of 1993. There were three key performance indicators for those in my position at the time: prison escape rates, suicide rates, and the incidence of violence. The rate of prison escapes declined steadily between 1989 and 1993. By 1993, the suicide rate had dropped to 0.01 percent, one suicide, compared to 0.16 percent, or eight suicides, in 1989.
In 1992, there was a total of 40 assaults by prisoners on staff, most of which were minor and didn’t involve injury. The number of prisoners completing educational coursework had increased by a third.
Since then, the literature has confirmed that prison social climate has an influence on prisoner wellbeing and behaviour, and correlates with incidents of violence and disorder within prison. A more positive social climate is associated with lower behavioural disturbance, higher levels of motivation, more positive therapeutic relationships, lower rates of violence, and more positive treatment outcomes.
But in 1994, after my resignation, the department abandoned He Ara Hou and established a strict regime emphasising security and control. There was a dramatic reduction in escapes, but suicides increased from one in 1993 to 10 in 1994.
I found the whole experience both uplifting and debilitating. Before my resignation, I’d been diagnosed with severe clinical depression. Recovery took three years. I emerged more or less intact, and with two major insights.
The first was to abandon ambition. When you’re overly ambitious, you tend not to speak the truth. You say what you think people want to hear.
The second was to rejoice in failure. If your ideas have any value, others will eventually carry them forward.
The impact of neoliberalism
In 1995, the Department of Corrections was established, and its chief executive, Mark Byers, ushered in a drive to increase efficiency by minimising cost and maximising security. Corrections were looking for competent service providers that could meet the demands of the market economy.
In 2003, when I was National Director of Prison Fellowship, the department accepted a proposal to establish a faith-based prison unit at Rimutaka Prison.
While there was very little research available at the time about the effectiveness of faith-based units, later research confirmed my suspicion that the connection between involvement in conventional religious activity and offending was not that well supported empirically.
A stronger influence on subsequent behaviour is the social attachments that people form within a church and similar social structures. In other words, individuals with strong pro-social attachments are less likely to commit crime.
So, within the construct of a faith-based unit, I felt there was an opportunity to try out new ideas.
There was no problem identifying suitable volunteers to teach the literacy, numeracy, budgeting and other skills prisoners needed to survive on release. There was a strong emphasis on creative and recreational activity — arts, carving, music, and creative writing.
The 60 prisoners were divided into four groups of 15 prisoners each, known as Living Unit Groups (LUGs). Each LUG gathered for study and met four nights a week with a facilitator to discuss their day and issues of a personal nature.
The group served as a surrogate whānau where members could experience love, concern, trust and commitment — things they might not have known in their biological families. They learned to accept responsibility for their choices and actions, and to support those who were going through difficult times. Potential troublemakers were usually outed by other prisoners, and there was positive peer pressure to behave in accordance with the unit’s values.
There were three defining differences in our approach. We flooded the unit with volunteers. We emphasised the importance of “giving back” — prisoners who were eligible for work release were formed into work groups and went into the community daily. They chopped firewood, mowed lawns, and painted buildings. Finally, restorative justice was not considered an “intervention” but a way of life.
On one occasion, food brought into the prison by volunteers for an event went missing. Enquiries revealed that two prison officers were responsible. When confronted, the officers owned up and were asked to replace what they’d taken. They came back with food for the event, and all was forgiven.
The changing criminal justice system
The restructuring of the public sector in the 1980s and ‘90s facilitated a more conservative political regime. There had been growing public opposition to policies that appeared to benefit the “undeserving poor”, increased cynicism about welfare, and growing support for more aggressive controls over an underclass perceived to be disorderly, drug-prone, violent and dangerous.
Politically, there was more emphasis on responding to this public clamour than relying on the expertise of criminal justice professionals and empirical research.
Crime wasn’t viewed as an indicator of deprivation and need — it signalled ill-discipline and inadequate controls.
From the 1990s, New Zealand and similar western nations experienced a steady decline in the crime rate. Despite that, the imprisonment rate continued to rise. Between 2004 and 2005 alone, the prison muster grew by 10 percent. The prison system was in trouble.
Kim Workman on the job. (Photo supplied)
Public criminology
In 2006, I was part of a group that ran a conference called Beyond Retribution, aimed at giving prison volunteers and the public a broader understanding of criminal and social justice issues.
We debated current criminal justice policy and its effectiveness in reducing the prison population, explored alternatives to existing practices and policies, and identified ways of meeting the needs of victims and their families. We invited parliamentarians, judges, gang members, ex-prisoners, academics, crime victims, and prison volunteers.
Regardless of political or ideological persuasion, all 180 people who came seemed to be of one mind: Reform of the criminal justice and penal system was necessary. There was a healthy scepticism about the value of imprisonment, and an acceptance that the nation needed alternatives. We offered a stellar line-up of presenters, and by the end of the first day, the venue was humming with animated discussion.
But at the time, there was very little well-informed wider public debate. The news media was dominated by the Sensible Sentencing Trust and its “tough on crime” agenda. Criminologists and criminal justice experts were notable by their absence. We needed to do more.
In 2007, with the support of Prison Fellowship, we agreed to launch a project called Rethinking Crime and Punishment. It was conceived as an independent policy think-tank on justice and social harm issues. I resigned from Prison Fellowship shortly afterwards, to focus on this new challenge.
I set about trying to understand how attitudes toward crime and punishment were formed, and whether it was possible to change them. It seemed to boil down to three things.
The starting point was moral intuition, the spontaneous perceptions that all humans have about other people and the things they do. Moral intuitions arise long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and these intuitions tend to drive out later reasoning.
Second, we accept information that confirms our identity and values, and reject ideas that conflict with those.
And third, our values are shaped by our social environment. When politics change what is considered normal and acceptable, our values change along with our circumstances.
There was a time in New Zealand history, for example, when we believed that anyone who needed health treatment should receive it without payment, that tertiary education should be free, that it was normal to care for those who were less fortunate than ourselves, and wrong and abnormal to neglect them.
Such values have steadily changed. More people believe that the state has less responsibility to support the poor and weak, especially if they’re seen as being primarily responsible for their own situation.
Privatisation, a focus on the market economy, a belief in austerity for the poor, and acceptance of inequality all served to shift the common values baseline and generate a culture of insecurity and uncertainty.
The Rethinking project aimed to provide the public with better information about crime and justice issues, promote evidence-based policies, rebut policies or draft legislation that were unsupported by research, encourage criminologists, academics, and criminal justice professionals to actively engage in public conversations, and provide a “replacement discourse” — an alternative discussion that focuses on relevant goals such as securing community safety.
We began a weekly blog, held regular public panel discussions, and issued media releases. We appeared before select committees whenever relevant legislation was introduced. We presented evidence to demonstrate what the unintended consequences might be and proposed alternative approaches.
By 2010, we had made very little impact, and I wondered whether we should continue. I shared that view with a senior member of the judiciary. Within a week, I received a number of phone calls and emails from people of significance, urging us to persist.
I was pleased that we did. In 2011, the deputy prime minister, Bill English, publicly referred to prisons as a “moral and fiscal failure”. As the Otago Daily Times reported:
“Opening a Families Commissions 50 Key Thinkers forum on May 11, Mr English referred to prisons as a ‘moral and fiscal failure’. In so doing he burst the hot-air cloud of rhetoric and emotion that so often envelops discussions of crime and punishment in this country — and which runs contrary to what much evidence and research reveals about it.”
That same year, I realised that most of the people actively engaged in justice reform were 40-plus years old. We decided to call a meeting of young people, expecting 10 to 15 people to attend. Instead, 44 turned up — law and criminology students, community workers and young public servants, all of different ethnicities. Their enthusiasm was palpable. Within two weeks, they had formed a committee, appointed co-chairpersons, and named themselves JustSpeak.
They held monthly forums regularly attracting audiences of over 200. In 2012, they made submissions to select committees on 10 pieces of legislation, and produced two significant publications, one on Māori and the criminal justice system, and another on reducing the prison population. Over the next six years, more than 200 young people became involved. MPs attended, listened, and took part in panel discussions. One steadfast supporter was a young politician by the name of Jacinda Ardern.
JustSpeak has been through some difficult times, but it has stayed the course. In the last two months, it held a function at Parliament Buildings, launching the Aotearoa chapter of Global Freedom Scholars Aotearoa, a transnational network advocating for an increase in support for prisoners to access higher education. It also released a report that explored the sentencing of wāhine Māori in the criminal courts.
JustSpeak was not a sub-committee of Rethinking Crime and Punishment — it was a social movement. We had been gifted with a bunch of young warriors who were able to do all the things that were beyond me, and more. They were articulate, feisty, and respectful. They understood how to advocate and write solid policy.
Meanwhile, I found increasing satisfaction in writing, and in 2014, I moved away from advocacy to reading, writing, study and reflection.
Kim with members of JustSpeak in 2017. (Photo supplied)
There was one issue, however, that continued to niggle: the treatment of Māori in the criminal justice system.
In 2019, the public became concerned at the behaviour of the Police Armed Response Teams that had been set up to attend armed incidents following the mosque killings in Christchurch. They were out of control, wearing paramilitary regalia, armed to the hilt, and randomly stopping and terrifying youth and children, mostly Māori. In March 2020, together with Julia Whaipooti from JustSpeak, we lodged a claim about this behaviour with the Waitangi Tribunal.
On the same day, I visited the incoming police commissioner, Andrew Coster, to explain what we had done and why. I persuaded him to appear with me on national TV, where we discussed the concept of “policing by consent”. That was the start of a continuing conversation with the commissioner about the problematic police relationship with Māori and Pasifika communities. The Armed Response Teams were subsequently abandoned, and our conversations continued.
Within the next few months, the Black Lives Matter movement and the George Floyd killing contributed to an international crisis of confidence in policing.
In late 2020, Commissioner Coster decided to establish a three-year research project, “Understanding Policing Delivery”, to look into fairness and equity within the police. I was invited to chair an independent panel to oversee and monitor the project. I accepted the position, and together we selected a panel of 15 members.
We did research with the police, not just about them. The police established an Operational Advisory Group of 30 frontline officers from across Aotearoa. Panel members met regularly with the frontline police, whose perspective was critical to the research. Within two hours of our first meeting, police officers themselves identified situations where bias existed.
By the end of 2024, we had published three major reports and 10 case studies, which demonstrated systemic bias across the police in a range of areas, including data collection, police training, de-escalation, who “deserves” fair and equitable treatment, and disability awareness. We also identified exampes of police innovation and positive policing. The research covered Māori, Pacific, Rainbow and disabled communities.
The research has been described as world-leading. For me, it has been the highlight of a very long career. Its completion was a sign that I could now, at the age of 85, safely retire.
The research is now in the hands of the police executive, and its key recommendations wait to be actioned. We may not get what we want, but that in no way detracts from its mana.
This is not an inert piece of academic work, headed for antiquity. Its truth speaks out now, and will continue to speak out for generations to come. It may gain more initial prominence internationally than it does domestically, but I believe eventually its truth will speak to the nation.
Kim Workman, after his investiture as KNZM for services to prisoner welfare and the justice sector, with the governor-general Dame Patsy Reddy on 30 April 2019.
We must keep trying to point the way
When it comes to crime and punishment, the tendency of public commentators has been to argue against the current political positioning, rather than promote viable alternatives.
That, I think, is where criminologists must come into their own. Are we doing enough to understand the changing economic, social and cultural conditions that affect how crime is publicly understood and acted on in our society?
I don’t think we are. If criminology isn’t prepared to work harder to sit at the table, it’s going to end up on the menu.
Recently, writer and social activist Denis O’Reilly commented on the state of the criminal justice system in Aotearoa:
“. . . our prison population has soared to 11,000 inmates. The muster is disproportionately Māori (53.4 percent) and trending upward. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has declared the increase in the prison muster to be a ‘good thing’, characterising it as the price of ‘restoring law and order.’”
Members of parliament were saying the same thing 64 years ago. It was not true then, and it is not true now.
Higher prison populations do not reduce crime. A few weeks ago, the US Sentencing Project released a new study showing the opposite. It noted:
“States that reduced their incarceration rate witnessed greater declines in crime rates. From 1999-2023, New York cut its prison population by over 50% — and during that same period, violent crime dropped by 34%, outpacing the national decline of 28%.”
We still have a police and political culture that is more comfortable focusing on individual wrongdoers or procedural failings than on systemic bias. Yet the Auckland University of Technology recently released a report showing that Māori faced harsher sentences than Pākehā for similar drink-driving offences — with lasting consequences. It reminded us that when all other factors are held constant, Māori are still 11 percent more likely to be prosecuted than Pākehā.
So, we need to continue to speak truth to power.
The price of having a vision, and the determination to pursue that vision, includes humiliation, loneliness, and abuse. The reward is that if you persist for long enough, you have the potential to transform the way we think about justice.
We may never see a justice system that favours restoring humanity over punishment. But we must keep trying to point the way.
Imagine a nation that measures itself by how it treats the least, the lost, and the lonely. Where strength is not defined by the capacity to engage in political and civil conflict, but by a determination to forge peace and come together in a spirit of unity.
This different, better place beckons us. We will find it not across distant hills or within some hidden valley, but within our own hearts.
Tā Kim Workman. (Photo supplied)
This is an edited version of an address given by Tā Kim to the Australia and New Zealand Society of Criminology.
Kim Workman KNZM QSO (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Rangitaane o Wairarapa) had an extensive career in the public service, followed by 30 years of involvement in criminal justice reform. Over the last 10 years, Kim has increasingly contributed to the academic literature on criminal justice policy, Treaty and Māori development issues, racism and inequality, and culture and identity.
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