Children of Prisoners: in their own words

Many of those sentenced to prison leave children on the other side serving their own invisible sentence of hardship and shame. The support to receive care, explanations, and sometimes basic safety isn't always there in a system that doesn't see them. Indira Stewart talks to three children of prisoners who’ve struggled, not just to make sense of their situation, but for the necessities of life. Three teens who've stood up and are advocating for change.

"We're more than a statistic. We want people to see us."

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Watching her Dad walk into the visitor's room, like a tall mountain, is the earliest memory Juliann, 18, has of seeing him in prison. She was in primary school when he first got locked away and she didn’t understand why. “I just knew that he was a bad guy, because jail was a bad place for bad people.”

Life was tough for her mum Allanah, raising five kids on her own. For a brief period, the family lived in their car, regularly parking up at Manukau Valedrome park in South Auckland “camping”. With no gas left in the tank they couldn’t go anywhere else and at night the Valedrome was a place to sleep.

Despite sleeping rough, the family say they have happy memories of that time because they were together. By day, the kids saw the park as a place for adventures.

With their dad behind bars, Juliann and her brothers roamed free, chasing each other through the playground and exploring the surrounding area. Staff from the Greyhound Racing Club would give them glasses of water from the bar when they asked.

For Rose-Marie, 18, the memories of growing up without her father are bittersweet. “My dad used to be one of my superheroes, up until he got found guilty, and then he went to prison. I feel like I’m going to cry when I say it, but in my ideal world, I picture having my family before my dad was in prison.”

With her dad out of the picture, the family was more vulnerable. “We’ve always had to ask for help.”

“I got sick and tired of it. I'd often blame my Mum but it was never anyone's fault, besides my father's, for being in prison.”

Tayshon, 18, has also spent most of her life with a parent in prison. At one point, both her mum and dad were behind bars. She was later adopted by her Aunty Carley and is now head girl at her South Auckland high school. She's seen the harm of intergenerational imprisonment and trauma in her own life and is determined to change her story.

“They think that because you're a child of a prisoner, that you're just going to turn out like them, that it runs in the blood.”

“But my parents have been the biggest reason, my ‘why’ – in a bad way – to turn good, if that makes sense. They’ve been my biggest barrier to overcome. Because in order for me to succeed, I have to not be like them.”

Invisible and unsupported

According to New Zealand Treasury data, between 17,000 to 20,000 children in New Zealand have a parent in prison. If you count children with a parent serving a community sentence or home detention, that number more than doubles to include about 17 percent of all children in Aotearoa – that’s almost one in five kids.

That same data shows children of prisoners are 10 times more likely to end up in prison themselves. And perhaps the most confronting finding from research and reviews both here and globally, is that the needs of children of prisoners are not prioritised when a parent goes to prison.

“They are invisible in both policy and practice, and their needs are rarely a priority,” wrote social analyst and researcher Dr Liz Gordon in 2009 when the first ever study on children of prisoners in Aotearoa was conducted.”

When five-year-old Malachi Subecz was murdered by his caregiver in 2022 while his mum was behind bars, Dame Karen Poutasi, a long-standing government official in the area of health, wrote in her subsequent system review: Malachi was “unseen at key moments when he needed to be visible".

“I find it unacceptable that I need to once again make similar findings about how the system is – or is not – interacting. The majority of my recommendations are not new,” Poutasi wrote.

The review highlighted that courts don’t have the provisions to make or oversee decisions around who takes care of kids like Malachi when they’re affected by a prison sentence. It made 14 recommendations including vetting and supporting carers when a sole parent is taken into custody and doing regular follow-up checks. Work is now being done across multiple agencies to address the recommendations.

Teens advocating for change

But Juliann, Tayshon and Rose-Marie want the changes to go even further. Alongside other children of prisoners, they’re calling for a whānau navigator role to be established at district courts across the country. The role would work directly with families and children of prisoners to support their needs and help them navigate the court process.

Tayshon, Juliann and Rose-Marie

Tayshon, Juliann and Rose-Marie

The group has drafted their own Bill of Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents and have plans to petition parliament to legislate a support plan for children of prisoners. They want the document to help inform policy decisions made about kids like themselves.

“We’re so invisible, it’s heartbreaking,” Juliann says. “We want this to not just impact our community but our leaders. We need them to hear it. That’s why we’re sharing our stories now.”

Juliann says the support they’re calling for would have been life-changing for her as a child. “I probably wouldn’t have experienced living in a car and I think it would’ve helped us navigate the prison system better.”

All three teenagers have been supported by organisation Pillars Ka Pou Whakahou, a New Zealand charity supporting the children and whānau of people in prison.

‘I remind Dad that I still love him’

“Having to be in prison for so long and sometimes not being able to be in contact with me and my siblings, [Dad] found it hard to know who he is in our life. I’m always reminding him that I still love him and I still want him,” says Juliann.

“The last time I visited him in prison I didn’t recognise him. Before, he was this tall, Cook Island guy with muscles and tattoos and then when I saw him, he wasn’t as tall anymore. He just felt small.

“I didn’t know what to say so I just kind of blurted out stuff about my education, my dreams, my future. And then when we had five minutes left, I started talking about the small stuff like my favourite colour, how many days until my birthday, my favourite subjects. Like, those small things that I think he should know.”

‘It’s about preventing future harm’

“They deserve to not see themselves as New Zealand’s future prisoners. They deserve to see themselves as children of promise and potential,” says Corrina Thompson, Pillars head of research and youth advocacy.

“Most New Zealanders want the same things from our justice system. We want a safe and effective system, we want thriving communities. But we’re sort of on other sides of the shoreline arguing about how we get there.”

“The changes these tamariki are calling for is about preventing harm to children and it’s also, in turn, about preventing future harm out in the world. We know that intergenerational harm is a driver of intergenerational offending.” 

In response to Juliann, Tayshon and Rose-Marie’s calls for change, Oranga Tamariki says it welcomes and values the feedback and ideas from rangatahi whose parents are taken into custody.

However, because a specific support plan for children isn’t part of the recommendations in Dame Karen Poutasi’s review, it is not a focus of their current work.

The Ministry of Justice gave the same reason for not progressing the support plan or instigating a children’s whānau navigator role: that those actions hadn't been recommended in Poutasi’s report.

According to spokespeople from the Department of Corrections, NZ Police and the Ministry of Justice each of these organisations have improved their processes to capture and consider the needs of dependent children of people in prison.

But perhaps the best recommendations come from the children of prisoners themselves.

The rangatahi and Pillars Ka Pou Whakahou team

The rangatahi and Pillars Ka Pou Whakahou team

“I became a part of helping to make this Bill of Rights document and call for these changes because I was thinking about how I wished my life had gone and how much support I wish I had had,” says Rose-Marie.

“I made it with the hope that maybe other children of prisoners will feel loved not only by their families and their friends, but by the people that work to make their lives better - our politicians and our government, because it's so important.”

“You’re in a situation that you can’t get yourself out of,” says Tayshon. “But it doesn’t define who you are, you’re not a label, you’re not a statistic and you’re not invisible.”

Credits

Words
Indira Stewart

Photography
Rewi Heke and Will Green

Design
Vania Chandrawidjaja

Commissioning Longform Editor
Emily Simpson