The Celia Lashlie Trust is incredibly saddened and angered by Ara Poutama Department of Corrections’ decision to move around 40 women from Arohata prison (near Wellington) to Christchurch Women’s Prison or the Auckland Region Women’s Corrections Facility, due to staff shortages.

Trustee and the late Celia Lashlie’s daughter Beks Henderson says this is even more heartbreaking given the women haven’t been able to see their whānau and friends, and most importantly, their children, for the past year due to COVID restrictions.

“The department’s move will only increase the women’s isolation, just as in-person visits become possible again,” Beks says.

“Celia Lashlie’s passion – what she called her ‘soul work’ – was to advocate for women in prison. She felt strongly that women should be managed separately from men and have resources ringfenced to account for the (well documented) differences between male and female inmates.

“Celia felt that women in prison were a hidden group in society. But she firmly believed that the effective and targeted management of our incarcerated women could help reduce both our prison population and the rate of violent deaths among our children[1].”

Beks points to Ara Poutama Department of Corrections’ own words, in its Women’s strategy ‘Wāhine – E rere ana ki te pae hou – Women rising above a new horizon’, in which it:

“...recognises the importance of children and whānau in the rehabilitation and reintegration journeys of women, and that treatment and support needs to be personalised, trauma informed, and culturally responsive”, and says:

“..we have started a long-term programme to improve our physical prison environments and introduce new operating approaches that are focused on tailored pathways, greater family connectedness, and wellbeing”.

“Sounds good, but it appears now that it is purely rhetoric. With resources short, it seems women are no longer a priority”, Beks says.

“These women have already been separated and isolated from their loved ones for the past year, which must have severely compromised their wellbeing. Moving these women across the country will have long-term effects on their rehabilitation and reintegration, as well as on their children and families.”

In Celia Lashlie’s own words:

“Women in prison must come to understand that the decisions they make matter – they must come to truly believe that the environment takes account of who they are and the life journey they have been on.

To impose a way of behaving that reflects the male prison environment is to simply reiterate the reality they have known all their lives – that the ‘male’ way is the right way, that their place in the world is as secondary citizens and that their choices don’t matter.

Nothing is more likely to return a woman to the path that led her to prison than the reinforcement of her inbuilt sense that she has no control and that ultimately her decisions don’t matter”.

The Celia Lashlie Trust joins with other organisations such as Just Speak, Amnesty International, Pillars and People Against Prisons Aotearoa in their condemnation of this move by Corrections.

[1] Lashlie, Celia The Power of Mothers, Releasing our Children, page 145

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