The Experiences of Māori Prison Officers in Aotearoa New Zealand's Prison System

This thesis contributes to scholarship documenting the social harms of Māori hyperincarceration by drawing attention to the impact on an often-overlooked group: Māori employed in frontline roles in prison settings. Based on semi-structured interviews with eight Māori former prison officers, including my own father, the project found frontline staff experiencing feelings of isolation and constraints, cultural violence, and exposure to traumatic events – with adversities having ripple effects on officers’ whānau. Despite attempts from consecutive governments to biculturalise the prison system, Māori prison officers experienced these changes as largely tokenistic, and their well-being continues to be undermined by the unique position of being Indigenous within settler-colonial institutions engaged in the hyperincarceration of Māori whānau. At the same time, the study found Māori prison officers using this location to foster new solidarities, evoking notions of shared whakapapa with incarcerated Māori that supersede the institutionalised divisions once thought to characterise the prison environment. Drawing on the kōrero of Māori prison officers, this project sheds new light on the complex relationships formed between incarcerated and employed Māori inside prisons, and contributes to wider debates over hyperincarceration and biculturalisation in the criminal justice system.