EPISODE 3: SURVIVAL

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This podcast is made by JustSpeak and Popsock Media with Re News. The stories shared here represent individual opinions and experiences, and some names have been changed. This episode contains references to drug addiction, transphobia, racism, suicide, and violence. There's also some strong language. If you choose to listen, please take care.

**Tommy Doran** (0:24)
Tēnā koutou e te whānau. Welcome back to True Justice, a podcast advocating for a more just justice system in Aotearoa. I'm Tommy Doran.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (0:33)
I'm Ana Chaya Scotney.

**Tommy Doran** (0:34)
This is episode three, Survival.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:37)
I don't know if my baby was alive, or where my baby was.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:40)
There were warning signs of him not being okay.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:44)
She's naked from the waist down, she's drugged up, she's attached to her IV, like she's not going anywhere.

**Tommy Doran** (1:02)
In 2018, the Aotearoa prison population rate was one of the highest in the developed world, with 214 of every 100,000 New Zealanders in prison.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (1:11)
That year, the Labour Party pledged to do something about it, setting a target of reducing prison numbers here by 30% over 15 years.

**Tommy Doran** (1:19)
It was a really ambitious target, but four years later, the prison population in Aotearoa has already dropped by 25% from nearly 10.5,000 to just over 7.5,000. This is a huge reduction, and the exact reasons for it aren't clear just yet. Even the 2021 report from the Ministry of Justice said more work is needed to understand how it's been pulled off.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (1:41)
But despite this incredible drop, one thing has remained constant. Māori still represent 53% of all prisoners, even though we only make up 16.5% of the national population. And Māori women remain one of the most incarcerated populations in the world at 63% of the total female prison population.

**Awatea Mita** (2:06)
Like a lot of Māori family, it's always been a feature of my life. Like my earliest memories involve interactions with the police. I can't remember a time when they weren't a part of my life basically.

**Tommy Doran** (2:18)
This is the incredible Awatea Mita.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (2:20)
Awatea is such a legend, eh? Yeah, she's amazing. I know her mum's mahi, of course, because she's also a legend. She's the filmmaker and pioneer of indigenous cinema, Mere Tamita.

**Tommy Doran** (2:31)
Yeah, that's her.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (2:33)
So this is her daughter, Awatea, who hails from Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Rangi. Awatea is a criminology teaching fellow at Te Hiringa Waka and an activist and advocate for transformational change in the criminal justice system for Māori and especially wāhine Māori.

**Awatea Mita** (2:50)
There's just so many stories, like even in the duration of this podcast, I could never cover the whole terrain of the heartbreak and the terrible conditions and the way that that impacts on our wāhine and on their whānau.

**Tommy Doran** (3:11)
Awatea's kōrero on the justice system is really personal and real, because like me, she's actually been through it.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (3:17)
So her childhood was full of community, activism, strong adults and tight whānau. But then, when she was in her late thirties, Awatea went through a really tough period. Both of her parents passed away, she lost her job and her relationship, all in quick succession. And she turned to drugs to help herself cope. Then, in 2013, Awatea was arrested for a non-violent drug crime and sent to prison for nearly two years.

**Awatea Mita** (3:44)
I heard the statistics before I went to prison, about how many Māori women were filling up the prisons. But when I got there and saw it, like it was heartbreaking and it was shocking, and I wondered, how did we get here? How did this happen?

**Tommy Doran** (4:10)
When Awatea went to prison, she sent her teenage son to live with her brother, but then 11 months into her sentence, Awatea's boy died in a drowning accident.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (4:19)
I honestly can't even imagine what losing someone so precious would be like and not being able to be there with them.

**Tommy Doran** (4:25)
Yeah, I know, right? It's pretty devastating, right? So Awatea applied to attend her son's tangi. As a minimum security prisoner, she was eligible for three days leave, but the prison bungled their paperwork, so she only ended up getting about 12 hours.

**Ana Chaya Scotney** (4:40)
And after travel, she only ended up spending 10 minutes with her boy before they buried him. Awatea had some kai with her whanau, and then she went back to prison.

**Awatea Mita** (4:52)
It's not an isolated incident. You know, the women were losing their children on the outside, and it's still happening, and there's limitations on whether or not they can attend tangi.