One-third of children placed in state care have ended up serving a prison sentence, according to research tabled before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care today.
A third of children in state care end up in prison later in life, new research shows. Photo: 123RF
Throughout its two years of hearings, the Royal Commission has heard often about a pipeline from state care to the justice system.
Witnesses have detailed boys' homes that were criminal training grounds, teens who were recruited into gangs from care homes, and foster children forced to steal to survive. It has heard about they all ended up in the justice system.
It is the experience of Dr Rawiri Waretini-Karena, a researcher who in the 1980s served 10 years in prison for murder.
"You go out into the yard for the first time and you actually know about 80 percent of the people there," he said.
"The reason why I knew them is because I spent 11 years in family homes, foster homes, social welfare homes and boys homes."
Today, research commissioned by the inquiry was tabled, which gave numbers to those anecdotes.
The researchers, Synergia, sifted through the documents of more than 30,000 children who were in state care between 1950 and 1999 to see just how many ended up in prison.
It found that one in three children placed in residential care by the state ended up in prison later in life. That number rose to 42 percent for Māori.
Counsel assisting the Royal Commission Anne Toohey asked the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, Chappie Te Kani, whether he agreed that the findings reflected a trajectory from the state residential care system into prison.
"Yes I do," Te Kani replied.
But the report also warned its figures could also be a significant undercount.
The state has already conceded that its record keeping was so poor it does not know how many people went through the state care system, let alone were abused.
Dr Waretini-Karena said those numbers are probably higher still for Māori, and the Royal Commission process was fast showing the stolen generations of Aotearoa.
The report said half of those who were in state care were Māori, despite being 13 percent of the population.
"What [state care] did was it changed the status of tamariki Māori from taonga to chattels. They beat and abused children for speaking their native language, and then in the next ripple it's led to generations of abuse and violence for tamariki mokopuna.
"Originally it wasn't about the health and safety of tamariki. It was about assimilation."
Responding to the report today, Oranga Tamariki chief social worker Peter Whitcombe said it did not have to be an inevitability.
"How we drive, firstly, to enable tamariki to be with their families safely and have the supports there. How we drive towards not enabling them to come into a residential care facility.
"We know that is not the best place for them. We sometimes refer to it as a fully funded failure model."
Today was the last day of Oranga Tamariki's cross-examination.
Thursday will see the Department of Corrections and the Office of the Children's Commissioner front the Royal Commission.
Friday, the final day of the state agency hearings, will see the Ombudsman, Te Puni Kokiri, the Ministry for Pacific Peoples and the Public Service Commission.