Commentary: People leaving prison die at more than three times the rate of the general population, about a quarter of Māori leaving prison aren’t enrolled with a GP, and the Steps to Freedom grant hasn’t changed since 1991, say Associate Professor Paula Toko King from Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare, University of Otago (Wellington) and independent Māori health policy consultant Gabrielle Baker.
It costs the Government $3864 a week to keep someone in prison. When that person is released, the most the Ministry of Social Development Steps to Freedom grant will give them is a one-off sum of $350, and not everyone is eligible.
That $350 is meant to cover bond, rent, bedding, power, food and clothing. It was $350 in 1991 and it is $350 today. Had it kept pace with inflation it would be $781. Through TIAKI, our research project on the health and wellbeing of Māori leaving prison, we costed what the first week after release takes: between $1170 and $1800. Without sounding too obvious, any grant below the cost of a week in prison is a potential saving to the Government.
Māori have been imprisoned on a mass scale in New Zealand, a legacy of colonisation, coloniality, white supremacy, racism, and discrimination. The prison population is at an all-time high, and recent law changes, including the reinstatement of Three Strikes, are expected to push it higher. The Ministry of Justice projects a further 35 percent rise over the next decade, to 15,200 people by 2036, and the number held on remand is projected to grow faster still, by 48 percent.
Mass imprisonment inevitably leads to mass community re-entry. How government agencies support people on their release, and the days, weeks, months and years after it, directly affects health and wellbeing outcomes, especially for Māori. Government data analysed by TIAKI shows people released from prison die at more than three times the rate of the general population, with the risk highest in the first month out. About a quarter of Māori released from prison aren’t enrolled with a GP in the year that follows. So, the time when people are most likely to die is also the same time when many have no GP.
Part of the reason is a Health NZ rule. Primary Health Organisations must unenroll anyone in prison (sentenced or on remand), however long they’re inside for (even if just for a few weeks). Health NZ told us it has done no policy work on why this rule exists in the first place.
Māori released from prison told us the basics are often missing – housing, kai, transport, and employment. And there is little to no support inside prison to keep relationships with whānau, hapū, Iwi, and communities going. Some described being thrown in at the deep end, by a system seemingly set up to send them straight back to prison. Corrections itself has said it doesn’t know how many people leave with nowhere to go.
We fundamentally do not accept the inevitability of prisons. But while there are prisons, and while they cause harm to Māori and other communities, the Government has obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi to do better, and it needs to do better right now.
Our policy paper sets out how. These are the commitments we should all expect from any party hoping to form the next government.
Health NZ should immediately review clause 3.3 of the PHO enrolment requirements. Corrections, the Ministry of Health and Health NZ should develop a new model of health care in partnership with people with lived experience, so that people in prison get the same level of health care as everyone else (actual law under the Corrections Act 2004), with continuity of care inside and outside of prisons.
Māori providers need to be properly funded. Māori released from prison told us again and again they preferred working with Māori providers, and when people could reach those providers, they changed everything. Yet the “Delivering hauora Māori services” appropriation fell by $11 million in the 2026/27 Budget, and Corrections’ Employment Services holds no contracts with Māori-owned and Māori-governed providers. The new primary care funding formula leaves out ethnicity and, on the face of it, is highly unlikely to meet the health needs we found.
The Steps to Freedom grant should be lifted to reflect the real costs of coming home. MSD, Corrections, and housing agencies should work with community housing suppliers, including iwi, hapū and Māori providers, to procure safe, secure, high-quality housing for people leaving prison. Whānau of people in prison, including children of parents in prison, need coordinated support too.
The Move-on orders legislation Parliament passed in September should be immediately repealed. Answering a shortage of housing and social support with Move-on orders just criminalises poverty and being unhoused.
Accountability depends on counting people properly. Our analysis found Māori were undercounted in prison data by about 6 percent; about 405 more Māori in prison than Corrections reports. The cause appears to be that Corrections’ ethnicity data doesn’t follow the Government’s own statistical standards. All justice agencies should standardise how they collect ethnicity data and put Māori Data Sovereignty approaches into practice. That work should be designed in partnership with Māori, so Māori can exercise self-determination and hold the Government to account.
Whoever forms the next government will inherit a prison population on track to keep growing within a phenomenally expensive system of fully funded failure that causes intergenerational harm to individuals, their whānau and communities.
Much of what we are asking for is the Government to follow its own rules. None of this needs to wait.
This article was first published on Newsroom 3 November, 2026