95bFM Prisoner voting ban is ‘not going to help rehabilitate perpetrators of crime’
6 May 2025
Interview by Faith Ward, adapted by Sanat Singh
People Against Prisons Aotearoa's Dr Emma Rakete says that the Government’s move to reinstate a ban on prisoner voting rights is not going to reduce crime and instead will have negative effects on Māori equity.
The Government has recently announced reinstating a complete ban on prisoners voting in general elections.
This reverses a ruling by the previous Labour government in 2020, allowing those with a sentence of less than three years the ability to vote. This was in response to a High Court that found the ban was inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA).
Minister of Justice, Paul Goldsmith, says being a member of society means that you have certain responsibilities and that those who do not uphold these responsibilities, such as committing a crime, will have their rights taken away.
Spokesperson for People Against Prisons Aotearoa and Criminology Lecturer at the University of Auckland, Dr Emmy Rākete, told 95bFM’s The Wire that this ban does not tackle reoffending but instead worsens inequalities for Māori.
“It's going to mean that the prison population is disenfranchised. This is something that we've had before in this country.”
“Every legal institution in the country, from the Auckland High Court to the Supreme Court to the Waitangi Tribunal, were unanimous in concluding that this was an illegal ban which violated the Bill of Rights.”
As of November 2024, there are almost 10,000 people in prisons across New Zealand.
According to Rākete, this is unlikely to change the results of an election. However, she is concerned about the implications of denying prisoners the right to vote.
“This is a population of people who are very easy to demonise and by taking this random swipe at incarcerated people, what this government is trying to do is to find a folk devil who they can pass legislation against and publicly humiliate with the goal of trying to unify their base behind them.”
Although the Government says this is part of their ‘tough on crime’ approach, Rākete says it does very little to prevent crime.
“If I get caught, and if I get sent to prison, then I'd lose my right to vote, and that's the thing that's going to make me not commit this burglary? I mean, it's a fantastical, bizarre, completely fictional understanding of how people make decisions.”
In the study of criminology, Rākete says crime tends to be committed after a person weighs up costs and benefits so policies aiming for general deterrence of crime do not tend to have an effect.
She also argues this is not going to rehabilitate perpetrators of crime either.
Despite the Government arguing that certain rights should be taken away if citizens can not uphold their responsibilities, Rākete says this is not a sufficient argument to justify that this specific policy will make New Zealand a safer place.
Instead, she says New Zealanders should be concerned that the Prime Minister seems to be displaying a disregard for the law.
“I think that we should be concerned that the Prime Minister is willing to go on the news and speak to journalists who are running out what he says and say ‘I don't care that I am breaking the law.’”
Even though the High Court ruling states that this ban is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, New Zealand’s Parliament is supreme.
This means that Parliament can pass laws even if the courts state that the law is unconstitutional in some way. Rākete believes the blanket ban on prisoner voting; even though it is inconsistent with the BORA, further disadvantages Māori.
She says Māori are overrepresented in the prison system, making up 52% of the prison population despite only making up 15% of Aotearoa’s total population.
She finds the ban frustrating as the Government has dismantled other initiatives that aimed to improve Māori outcomes, such as the Māori Health Authority — as the Government argues these initiatives give special rights to Māori.
“This government has constantly taken actions which harm Māori and then justified those actions on the basis that they comply with the principle of absolute equality before the law, that we are all equal and have to be treated equally, even if it harms Māori.”
“It's just an unfortunate coincidence that all these actions hurt Māori, the government has claimed. But now, when they have the opportunity to take an action which will harm [a] primarily Māori population, they've thrown out the principle of absolute equality.”
