Volume 30 Issue 4 2015

Journal of the Sociological Association of Aotearoa/New Zealand

Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Editors: Charles Crothers (School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, AUT) Robert Webb (School of Social Sciences, University of Auckland)

Objective: To foster a refereed journal to disseminate and promote research and thought that has, as its objective, the clarification and development of theoretically informed research in sociology and related disciplines, with a predominant, though not exclusive, concern with New Zealand.

Contributors: For information on the contribution of articles, see Instructions for Contributors on the Journal website. For further information about the Journal go to https://sites.google.com/site/nzsociology/journal

Books for review to: Book Review Editor, New Zealand Sociology, c/- School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, AUT University PO Box 92006, Auckland 1142. [email protected] ISSN 1173-1036 (Online) © 2015 The Editors, New Zealand Sociology Opinions expressed in the Journal are those of the individual contributors and no responsibility is accepted for them by the Editors or SAANZ. The Journal is abstracted in the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and Sociological Abstracts, and full text is carried by Socindex and the Australia and New Zealand reference centre, and the RMIT Press’ Informit.

New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015

Contents Editorial: 4 The Sociological Potential Longitudinal Surveys in New Zealand: editorial comments Charles Crothers Articles 15 Reducing Recidivism: An Evaluation of The Pathway Total Reintegration Programme Jarrod Gilbert and Benjamin Elley 38 Gaining acceptance: Discourses on training and qualifications in peer support Anne Scott 58 The new kava user: Diasporic identity formation in reverse. S. 'Apo' Aporosa 78 The Impact of Police Culture on Organisational Change: the case of DNA Catherine Gardner 100 The declining state of New Zealand democracy: Community and voluntary sector perceptions of public debate under two governments Sandra Grey, Charles Sedgwick, and Jared Commerer 126 Who wants to change the flag? Results of a national representative survey Barry J. Milne 154 Lifestyle migration from Europe to New Zealand: Immigrant dreams and their realizations Irmengard Wohlfart Student Prize Essay 176 Dividing a generation? New Zealand university students’ perspectives on debt Sylvia Nissen Comments & Notes 190 "Intersectionality revisited: Moving beyond the contours of race, class, gender" – Notes on an Intersectionality Symposium Camille Nakhid, Anna Majavu, Lisa Bowleg, Shelagh Mooney, Irene Ryan, David Mayeda, Mengzhu Fu, Huhana Hickey, Karanina Sumeo, Shakeisha Wilson, Charles Crothers, Alwin Aguirre and Di Halstead 199 Culturally safe spaces for Pacific education journeys from the periphery to the centre Tagaloatele Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop 210 New Zealanders’ experiences of organ donation and transplantation Rhonda M. Shaw

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229

Marrying’ demographic and genetic measures: an exploration of opportunities Paul Callister, Geoff Chambers and Robert Didham

Obituary 234 Obituary: Harvey Franklin (1928-2015) Charles Crothers and David Pearson Reviews 238 Margaret Wilson (2015) The Struggle for Sovereignty: New Zealand and Twenty-First Century Statehood. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books. Reviewed by Warwick Tie 241 Tolich, M. & Smith, B. (2015) The Politicisation of Ethics Review in New Zealand. Auckland: Dunmore.. Reviewed by Andrew Chrystall 244 Frank Trovato and Anatole Romaniuk (eds) (2014) Aboriginal populations: social, demographic and epidemiological perspectives. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Reviewed by Robert Didham 251 Annabel Taylor and Marie Connolly (eds.) (2013) Understanding Violence: Context and Practice in the Human Services Canterbury University Press Reviewed by Charles Crothers 253 August, Hannah (2015) No Country for Old Maids? Talking about the ‘Man Drought’ Wellington: BWB Books Reviewed by Amber Chambers 257 Maureen Molloy and Wendy Larner,(2013) Fashioning Globalisation: New Zealand Design, Working Women and the Cultural Economy Wiley-Blackwell Reviewed by Catherine Lane West-Newman 261 Judy McGregor, Sylvia Bell and Margaret Wilson (2015) Fault Lines: Human Rights in New Zealand. AUT. Reviewed by Heather Devere 264 Jane Kelsey (2015)The FIRE Economy: New Zealand’s Reckoning Bridget Williams Books Reviewed by Shanti Daellenbach 265 Kingfisher, Catherine (2013) A Policy Travelogue: Tracing Welfare Reform in Aotrearoa/New Zealand and Canada. New York: Berghahn Books Reviewed by: Celia Winkler

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276

280 289

Suaalii-Sauni, M.; M. A. Wendt, V. Mo’a, N. Fuamatu, U. L. Va’ai, R. Whaitiri and S L Filipo (eds.)(2014) Whispers and Vanities: Samoan Indigenous Knowledge and Religion. Wellington: Huia Publishers. Reviewed by Laumua Tunufa’i Recent (2015) Sociology-Relevant Books about New Zealand Charles Crothers AUT’s Policy Observatory

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The Sociological Potential Longitudinal Surveys in New Zealand: editorial comments Charles Crothers While experimental studies are seen by some as the ‘golden standard’ for social research methodology these often lack a linkage to the real-world and their findings lack generalisability as a result. Instead, longitudinal studies capture most of the advantages of experiments while capturing real-world material and are a combination of cross-sectional and time-series. New Zealand is host to at least two long standing longitudinal studies of international importance, while the recent decade has seen a major set of developments of new projects. This editorial brings attention to the importance of these in general, and especially for New Zealand sociology. That potential has yet to be immediately garnered if publications in New Zealand Sociology are any gauge. Although several updates of the FWWP panel project have been published (eg. von Randow & Crothers, 2014) the only article directly using longitudinal data is a commissioned one appearing in a special issue on Social Class. New Zealand sociologists seldom even refer to the data produced. However David Fergusson from the Christchurch project publishes regularly in sociology journals and hence is undoubtedly New Zealand’s most well published sociologist, and other longitudinal projects have also published directly sociology-relevant articles. Pearson & Thorns (1984) claim their historical time series study is longitudinal but I think they’re using the term in a different sense. Beyond longitudinal and panel studies there are other combinations and mixes. Cohort studies may add in fresh waves of recruits while remaining largely cohort studies whereas others may retain a cohort component while largely being panel studies. And after all, many studies have ‘before and after’ phases without attention to long term changes (and so are excluded from treatment here). There are also ongoing survey research series without a longitudinal component: GSS, ISSP and NZVS, the University of Auckland national youth health & wellbeing studies. Administrative data often has a longitudinal component. (Examples are the Ministry of Social Development Benefit Dynamics dataset and the Linked Employer-Employee Data (LEED)

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more recently amalgamated into the IDI). Thesis work may involve some overtime work, although unless they are working within a larger project, thesis completion times would usually preclude mounting their own longitudinal studies. The (then) Families Commission published a review of New Zealand longitudinal studies in terms of their relevance to the research work of the Commission and thus through a ‘family lens’ (Poland & Legge, 2005) and Mckenzie and Carter (2010) has also published on this topic, exploring the fit between longitudinal studies’ definitions of family and the concept of ‘whanau’. This editorial extends and updates these two reports. I provide a top-level round-up and cite only the most crucial publications as general information is mainly carried by websites: so only some books of findings or methodological accounts are referred to here. Finding out about some of these studies was difficult and there seemed little on their websites, so there is some ‘missing information’. Further more detailed work is warranted. General Methodological Points Longitudinal surveys follow the same group of respondents over time (sometimes over long periods of time such as decades) with repeated collection of the same variables. There may be disciplinary differences in focus. Sociology uses longitudinal surveys to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations, whereas psychologists study developmental trends across the life span, and medical researchers attempt to pinpoint antecedents (and consequences) of the advent and course of diseases. Examination of turnover (or churn) between surveys rounds allows estimation of durations. Because of the repeated observation at the individual level, they have more power than crosssectional observational studies, by virtue of being able to exclude time-invariant unobserved individual differences, and by virtue of observing the temporal order of events. However, some of the disadvantages of longitudinal studies include the fact that they take a lot of time and are very expensive. A distinction can be made between cohort studies of a group experiencing some event (typically birth) in a selected time period, and studying them at intervals through time and panel studies which sample a cross-section, and survey it at (usually regular) intervals. A retrospective study is a longitudinal study that looks back in time, either through retrospective questions or through

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accessing records – perhaps the most common retrospective question asks about parental backgrounds (e.g. when the respondent was a teenager). One conceptualisation is to focus on life course which is the span of human development from conception to death. Crucial transitions along this path are numerous – inter-generational ‘inheritances’, early preschool childhood, school, secondary school, tertiary education and/or work and adulthood, retirement etc. Different studies tend to focus on different transitions and of course as some longitudinal studies age they mover their focus of attention to transitions relevant to those in their current data-collection phase. ‘Life events’ are more accidental interruptions to life-courses, such as moving house, accidents divorce etc. Life course research (drawing on website material of the UoOtago studies) often focuses both on harmful factors and outcomes (vulnerabilities) and strengths and positive outcomes (capabilities). Recognising strengths and capabilities is important. A schema illustrating this is presented below. Diagram: source, National Centre For Lifecourse Research Vulnerabilities Mechanisms/Link Poverty Social isolation Child maltreatment Violence & conflict Structural inequalities

Capabilities Self control & efficacy Healthy body & mind

Environments that: Mitigate vulnerability or promote capability and contribution

Lifecourse pathways that minimize vulnerability or enhance capabilities

Educational achievement Family/whānau/community development Institutional capability (steps on the ladders to equity & access)

To provide an indication of the types of material included in more public healthorientated surveys the Growing Up in New Zealand study for each data collection wave (DCW) gathers information across six inter-connected domains:  Family and whānau (extended family)  Societal context and neighbourhood  Education, health and wellbeing  Psychological and cognitive development and  Culture and identity. Because many are medically-aligned they will include collection of relevant medical information. Sometimes, too, interviewing extends to parents, teachers,

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doctors, peers and others in the social context. The mode of data collection is usually face-to-face because of the extensiveness of information collected (including nonverbal) but supplemented with phone interviews. The full longitudinal studies also require attempts to annually track respondents over time so that their whereabouts are known when later approached for further research rounds. Roster of New Zealand Longitudinal Studies There are two multi-study centres with longitudinal expertise: - Centre for Longitudinal Research He Are ki Mua at the University of Auckland, School of Public Health established in 2010: https://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/en/soph/centre-for-longitudinalresearch.html, and - The National Centre for Lifecourse Research http://www.nclr.org.nz/ hosted at Otago University and established c2010. The DunChurch Project draws on both the Dunedin and Christchurch longitudinal studies which we are told will combine resources to address important and controversial social policy issues in New Zealand. The main studies identified include those in Table 1 (also see appendix in Families Commission review: Poland & Legge, 2005). As well as the basic description of the study-group, year started, sample size and type, information could also have usefully covered the intervals between study rounds and the length (duration) of the study. Table 1: Roster of Studies: ordered chronologically Study name

Type

Host

Participants

URL, notes

1990 2014

Post-election postal survey of 2500 or more electors

http://www.nzes.org/

1993 2002

ten year longitudinal study of 302 individuals who made medically serious suicide attempts

Year start ed NZ Election Study (NZES)

Partial VU Cohort W/ UoA

Canterbury Suicide Project

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Survey of Families Income and Employment (SoFIE)

Cohort SNZ

11,500 hhs

http://www.stats.govt.nz/ browse_for_stats/incomeandwork/Income/sofie.aspx

WIPNZ

Partial

AUT 2007 Cohort 2015

1200 participants from around New Zealand and is part of an international collaborative project

http://www.aut.ac.nz/rese arch/researchinstitutes/icdc/projects/wo rld-internet-project

Longitudinal Immigration Survey

Cohort Mbi 2005 e/ DOL 2009 / SNZ

migrants aged 16 years and over approved for permanent residence in New Zealand from 1 November 2004 to 31 October 2005 n=12000

http://www.stats.govt.nz/ browse_for_stats/populati on/Migration/lisnz.aspx

A longitudinal study of electronic cigarette users

Cohort Tūra 2011 nga 2013 is a mult idisci plina ry netw ork

Internet n=477 Clients

http://www.turanga.org.n z/node/221

2002 2010

UoO Dunedin Multidisciplinary Cohort Health and Development Study

1972

Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS)

Cohort UoO

1977

Competent Children, Competent Learners

Cohort NZC 1993 ER

1,037 Participants born in Dunedin

http//dunedinstudy.otago. ac.nz/news-and-events

more than 1,000 people born in Christchurch

http://www.otago.ac.nz/c hristchurch/research/healt hdevelopment/

500 young people from the greater Wellington region.

http://www.educationcou nts.govt.nz/publications/s chooling/competent_child ren_learners

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The Best Outcomes for Māori: Te Hoe Nuku Roa Pacific Islands Families Study (PIFS)

Cohort MU

AUT Cohort

Te Rerenga

1994

550 Māori households

2000 1,398 Pacific children born at Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland and their parents

http://www.niphmhr.aut.a c.nz/researchcentres/centre-for-pacifichealth-and-developmentresearch/pacific-islandsfamilies-study

2001

111 Children 5 years

Looks at the educational achievements of students in kaupapa Māori education

114 young people

http://www.nzcer.org.nz/r esearch/pathways-andprospects

ĀTe PĪRere (“The Flight of the Fledgling”) Pathways and Prospects: A longitudinal study of young people negotiating transition after school

Cohort NZC 2003 ER

Youth Connectedness Project

Cohort Roy Mac kenz ie RC

2003

Three cohorts aged 10, 12 and 14, will be followed for three year

FWWP

Panel

UoA

2003

Census data, 1981- http://www.arts.auckland. 2013 ac.nz/en/about/ourresearch/research-centresandarchives/compass/compas s-projects/family-whanauand-wellbeing-projectfwwp.html

OU

2004

100 working farms

Transdisciplinary

investigated how young people make career choices and the meaning of different pathways to them, including how they deal with discontinuity, indecision, and "changes of heart".

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http://www.argos.org.nz/

New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Study of Agricultural Sustainability in New Zealand (ARGOS)

Health, Work and Retirement Study (HWR)

Cohort MU

2006

Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ)

Cohort UoA

2009

7000 2009/10PREBIRT H, Auckland, Hamilton

http://www.growingup.co .nz/en.html

New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS)

Partial UoA Cohort

2009

20-year longitudinal national probability study of social attitudes, personality and health outcomes. N=10000

https://outlook.aut.ac.nz/o wa/

The Quit Group Service Longitudinal Client Survey

Cohort Quitl 2011 ine, DH Bs

881 quit group graduates

www.quit.org.nz/file/sixmonth-survey-full-reportfinal.pdf

Graduate Longitudinal Study New Zealand (GLSNZ)

Cohort UoO /Uni versi ties NZ

2011

c14,000 final-year university students

https://www.glsnz.org.nz/ about/

2012

Year 9 and 10 students from sixteen different schools in the wider Wellington region n=937

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/ psyc/research/youth-andwellbeingstudy/resources/Wave-2Feedback-for-Parentsand-Whanau.pdf

8,000 New Zealand

later midlife (55 to 70 years)

workers and retirees

Youth Wellbeing Cohort VU Study (YWS) W

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 How young New Cohort Fin- 2012 Zealanders Ed, perceive political wesp & financial c& MU wellbeing New Zealand Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NZLSA)

Cohort MU 2012 Heal ? th and Agin g Rese arch Tea m (HA RT)

Profile of a Law student

Cohort UC

Longitudinal Interprofessional (LIP) Study

Cohort UoO 2014 ? & Poly techs

2014

300 young people

www.cffc.org.nz/assets/D ocuments/LS-StudyUpdate-2014-final-10March-2015-rev2.pdf

http://www.massey.ac.nz/ massey/learning/departme nts/school-ofpsychology/research/hart/ publications/projectreports_nzlsa.cfm

713 Law graduates

http://www.laws.canterbu ry.ac.nz/longitudinal/long itudinal%20index.shtml

550 students have https://lipstudy.researchnz completed baseline .com/Info.aspx surveys before entering their final year of professional training

There are some commonalities. Most are reasonably well institutionalised – marked by acronyms to substitute for long project titles – and have separate websites and a semi-autonomous existence, albeit usually hosted by one or other university. Publication outputs appear to vary enormously with the two classic studies having produced over 1200 outputs each while others have only a few. The availability of information for more detailed levels, for secondary analysis and for storage seems highly variable: e.g. LIS has some tables downloadable. Some offer cooperation with offers of shared work. Although longitudinal studies take a coherent and consistent framework, they also spawn sub-studies or take on particular concentrations at some points (perhaps as an angle around which to raise funding). For example, sub-studies of the Dunedin Study which will yield data across three generations, include the

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Family Health History Study (conducted in 2003-2005) which gathered information about the health of the study members' parents and families; the Parenting Study which began in 1994 as a study of Dunedin Study members who are parenting a 3-year old; and the Next Generation Study (which commenced 2007) which is a study of the 15-year-old teenagers whom study members are parenting. These studies will provide valuable information. The studies fall into two periods: the ‘classical’ studies: in the previous millennium (and in fact the 1970s) and the ever-expanding wave of studies since which have been either larger or smaller. For example, the more recently launched Auckland-Waikato Growing up in New Zealand study features:  A sample size 7 times larger than the classical studies;  The information on babies starts before their birth;  Dads’ or mums' partners are included from before birth;  The ethnic diversity of the children represents all births in New Zealand;  Parents were questioned face-to-face three times, and twice by phone before their child turned two, aiming to fill gaps in knowledge about early child development;  Working with policy makers to turn research into change. Dwarfing all the surveys is the recently developed historical longitudinal census (NZLC) which has the broad objective of understanding of aspects of population change across time. Beginning in 2012, SNZ has linked the 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006 – and later 1981 and 1986 - censuses in linked pairs. In addition to census-to-census linking, SNZ has investigated linking birth and death registration data to their nearest census, and linking international migration data. More generally this is part of the Integrated Data Infrastructure. Other related studies include the Mobility of migrants. Longitudinal studies clear face complex methodological problems, including retention - see also tables in the Families Commission report. For example: The initial SOFIE sample comprised approximately 11,500 responding private households in Wave 1 (77% response rate). In Wave 1 22,000 adults responded, which reduced to just over 17,500 in Wave 4 (76% of Wave 1 responders). In Wave 1 there were over 22,000 adults responding which reduced to just over 17,500 in Wave 4 (76% of Wave 1 responders) (Statistics New Zealand, 2008) It is also possible, through drop-out, that the composition is biasing in particular (unintended) directions. For example, a cohort study as it ages will exclude 12


younger people. Another issue is the representativeness of the sample going forward as surrounding social conditions change. Some New Zealand longitudinal studies have developed good methodological studies: e.g. NZAVS, SOfie, and LIS. However, a lot more methodological work is required. Longitudinal studies often are generators of scales and methodological developments, and several New Zealand studies have contributed methodologically in this way. An important aspect of longitudinal studies is their concern with policy applications. I’m sure this partly arises because of the incredible cost of mounting these, especially over a long time. But it also relates to the quality of the data and to the potential policy relevance of the subject-matters which are often covered (e.g. medical). Conclusions: Some longitudinal researchers have seen the relevance of their studies for sociology: most notably the ChchDS), but New Zealand sociologists seem still unappreciative of the relevance of several of these studies to their discipline. Yet, such studies promise immense pay-offs in being able to study social change and especially the individual-level changes generating or constituting such change. Perhaps the statistical modelling required to handle the data may be off-putting. Certainly, it is an area not replete with qualitative studies, although there are some (although not noticeably in New Zealand). There are some drawbacks too. As McKenzie and Carter (2010) conclude: In summary, a large amount of information on families could be generated from existing New Zealand longitudinal studies. However, the lack of a simple categorisation or description of whānau makes it significantly challenging to describe whānau in statistical terms. The same point might be made about families more generally. And often there is awkwardness in moving between individual and household levels. Perhaps when New Zealand sociologists discover the richness of (already collected) longitudinal data New Zealand sociology will be able to make some rapid advances. References Boden, Joseph M.; Fergusson, David Murray & Horwood, L. John (2013) Pathways to economic outcomes at age 30: income and living standards in a New Zealand birth cohort New Zealand sociology 28 (3): 102-135 Bryant, J (2009) Attrition in the Longitudinal Immigration Survey: New Zealand nzae.org.nz/.../Attrition_in_the_Longitudinal_Immigration_Survey_New...Paper 13

New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 presented at the New Zealand Association of Economists Conference 2009 at Wellington. Cotterell, Gerry (2009) The 'Family, Whānau and Wellbeing Project’: 2003-2008 New Zealand sociology 24 (1): 106-111 Cotterell, Gerard & Crothers, C. (2011) Social indicators and social reporting in New Zealand, and the potential contribution of the Family Whānau and Wellbeing Project Social policy journal of New Zealand 37: 152-171 Crothers, C. & Billot, Jennie (2010) The New Zealand Internet Project: marrying a global survey with local funding New Zealand Sociology .25 (2):150-158 Cunningham, C., Stevenson, B., & Tassell, N. (2005). Analysis of the characteristics whānau in Aotearoa. Wellington: Massey University, Ministry of Education. Families Commission. (2004). The kiwi nest: 60 years of change in New Zealand families (No. Research Report No 3/08) Wellington: Families Commission. Forster, M. (2003) Te hoe nuku roa: A journey towards Māori centered research. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 1: 47–53. Mckenzie, Sarah and Kristie Carter (2010) Measuring Whānau: A review of longitudinal studies in New Zealand MAI Review 3 Morton, Susan M.B.; Jacqueline Ramke, Jennifer Kinloch, Cameron C. Grant, Polly Atatoa Carr, Heidi Leeson, Arier Chi Lun Lee and Elizabeth Robinson (2015) Growing Up in New Zealand cohort alignment with all New Zealand births Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 39 (1): 82–87 DOI: 10.1111/1753-6405.12220 Pearson, David & Thorns, David C (1986) A tale of two cities: marriage and mobility in New Zealand Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 22 (2): 208-224 Poland, M., & Legge, J. (2005). Review of New Zealand longitudinal studies. Wellington: Families Commission. Poulton, R., Hancox, R., Milne, B., Baxter, J., Scott, K. & Wilson, N. (2006) The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study: Are its findings consistent with the overall New Zealand population? New Zealand Medical Journal, 199: 1235. Poulton, R., Moffitt, T.E., Silva, P.A. (2015) The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study: Overview of the first 40 years, with an eye to the future Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 50(5): 679-693. Silva, Phil & Warren A. Stanton (1996) From Child to Adult: Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, Oxford UP Statistics New Zealand (2013) Integrating New Zealand Census Mortality Study and New Zealand Longitudinal Census: Privacy impact assessment. Statistics New Zealand (2013) Developing a historical longitudinal census dataset in New Zealand: A feasibility study Stevenson, B. (2014) NZLSA measures. Technical report for the New Zealand Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Palmerston North: Massey University. von Randow, Martin; Crothers, Charles. (2014) Measuring Changes in Family Wellbeing in New Zealand 1981 to 2013: an update New Zealand Sociology 29 (3) : 30-37.

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Reducing Recidivism: An Evaluation of The Pathway Total Reintegration Programme Jarrod Gilbert and Benjamin Elley

Abstract There are a variety of programmes available that seek to help released offenders avoid recidivism in New Zealand. Despite good intentions, and an often cited concern first mooted by Martinson (1974) that ‘nothing works’, it is important to identify what varieties of support and methods of rehabilitation are actually effective in reducing reoffending. The data used in this article are drawn from the first five years of the Pathway Total Reintegration Strategy. This programme offers a variety of services organised around a core of social work support, and shows early evidence of success. Quantitative data measuring the 12-month recidivism rates of programme graduates show that reoffending was markedly better than overall reoffending data. Qualitative data from interviews with 12 Pathway clients illuminated what elements of the programme contributed to this success, and how. The key finding drawn from these interviews was that although many different services were valued by individual participants depending on their individual needs, it was the consistent and highly individualised social work support that was found to be crucial among all participants. Keywords: Reintegration, offenders, New Zealand, Program evaluation Pathway Total Reintegration Strategy The Pathway Reintegration programme (run by the Pathway Charitable Group, henceforth PCG) is a programme that seeks to successfully reintegrate prisoners back into society. This programme is based around individualised social work support and counselling as well as assisting clients with employment, accommodation and other practical support. It is run in Canterbury, New Zealand, and takes clients from the two local men’s prisons. The reintegration programme lasts a total of eight months, made up of two months of assessment before the client is released and six months of targeted work of varying intensity after release. Contact after this period

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continues as necessary, with many clients remaining in contact with the organisation long after they have formally ‘graduated’. At present the programme is run only with male offenders, who make up over 93 percent of New Zealand’s prison population. This programme has been operating since 2008, and the data for this study was collected in 2013. Pathway began with one full-time social worker and with a second joining in 2011 (after this study was completed, a third was also added). In order to determine how effective this service is, Pathway approached us to conduct a review of these five years of operation. Pathway’s service is highly collaborative, and is reliant upon relationships with the Department of Corrections and various non-government-organisations. This includes referring clients to a wide range of other organisations where they have needs that Pathway cannot address directly. Pathway staff work with prisoners for around eight weeks prior to their release in order to determine their specific needs, their suitability for the programme and their likelihood to fully commit to reintegration. This work is designed to get to know the client personally and build a rapport with them, which is essential for a functioning social work relationship. A detailed plan for reintegration is written, laying out in clear terms what steps are necessary for building a ‘good life’ on the outside. These plans focus on ‘restorative reintegration’, a process that, where possible, involves mending bridges with those who the offender has wronged, including the victim, the offender’s family and the community in general. Each plan is individualised and does not follow a set template: every client’s needs are different and not all aspects of Pathway’s services are relevant to all clients. The one element that is common to all clients is Pathway’s regular one-on-one social work support, but the majority of plans also include a community mentor and a commitment to attend around two community work days. Social work support The Pathway reintegration programme is based on a core of social work support. Each Pathway client is assigned a social worker whose workload is balanced to ensure that they are always available in moments of crisis and can be proactive in their support. This social work relationship forms the backbone of the programme, and aims to form a strong bond between Pathway staff and clients that can survive if the client backslides or even reoffends:

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Relationship is core. Being able to build a trusting relationship between us and the men we work with is the most important thing that we do – it needs to be a relationship which can live through the good days and bad, and this means that at times we live with people letting us down, mucking us around. It means looking past the present behaviour and seeking to understand why is this person acting in this manner and what can we do to make it safe enough for this person to take a risk of trusting me (2013: pers. comm.). Pathway’s social work is organised around the concepts of Desistance Theory (Maruna, 2001) and the Good Lives Model (Ward & Stewart, 2003), which provide the tools for an approach that aims to address the drivers of offending in the long term. Desistance Theory ‘Desistance’ – meaning desistance from offending – refers to the permanent cessation of offending activity rather than a short-term or impermanent interruption (Farrall & Calverley, 2006). Although it is the goal of many penal and rehabilitative organisations, desistance remains poorly understood (Mulvey, et al., 2004). Much desistance happens spontaneously: many offenders gradually ‘mature out’ of crime as they take on more adult roles such as ‘father’, or ‘breadwinner’ (Bottoms, Shapland, Costello, Holmes, & Muir, 2004), and reoffending rates decline steadily as prisoners’ age at the time of release increases (Department of Corrections, 2009). Desistance is theorised as a process that can essentially be divided into two distinct stages – primary desistance, which means the basic cessation of offending, and secondary desistance, which is the long-term development of a pro-social lifestyle and identity that can exist without needing to offend (Maruna & Farrall, 2004). One of the major hurdles to the unassisted development of desistance from crime is that segregating offenders from society as a form of punishment often fails to address the issues that caused them to offend, and instead serves to disconnect them from “informal social control” mechanisms within families or communities that might otherwise inhibit offending and promote positive development (Clear, 2007). Instead of creating a deterrent, this may leave offenders in a position where, even if they are able to avoid reoffending, secondary desistance becomes almost impossible. Applying negative social labels such as ‘offender’ and ‘criminal’ to released prisoners has also been theorised to inhibit positive life change (Braithwaite, 1989; Becker, 1963). The

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aim of desistance is to find a way to break this cycle: as Opie (2012, p. 29) explains, "the desistance objective is to encourage and support the person to persist in taking a new, pro-social direction; the question informing desistance is how best to support the desister to move on towards a more pro-social life". Desistance Theory allows for the inevitable failures and ‘slip-ups’ by offenders to be understood in terms of an overall narrative of desistance and life change. This narrative approach puts small mistakes into context and allows change to progress gradually instead of expecting it to be instant. As Carey Ewing (2013, pers. comm.), one of Pathway’s social workers explains, this allows Pathway to take a much broader view of reoffending: Desistance Theory gives us a way of understanding what we are seeing in the guys’ behaviour; they won't be perfect and will have bad days and at times this will include re-offending. What we are looking for is what direction are they heading in – is offending slowing down or speeding up, is it more serious or less serious than last time, and how did they seek to respond to the situation; for example did they take the hard choice and front up to it or did they seek to hide or misinform others of their actions. We accept that people will make mistakes, what’s more important is the response to that mistake (2013: pers. comm.). Desistance is complicated by the social environments ex-prisoners face upon their release: not only are they often ill-equipped to deal with life outside the wire but many face additional social sanction in forms such as limited access to employment and accommodation. Desistance Theory seeks to find ways of linking ex-prisoners to society through methods such as the appointment of ‘mentors’ – who are volunteers drawn from among the community – and working to reaffirm offenders’ sense of their own value to society. Mentors give desisters a link to the community and provide a role model for the pro-social lifestyle that forms the heart of secondary desistance. These mentors may be desisters themselves; a successful desistance narrative often results in a desire to share life lessons and help others to avoid making the same mistakes (Maruna S. , 2001). Another method used by Pathway is ‘community days’ in which clients engage in volunteer work alongside other community members, which function as a “reintegration ritual” to undo the “rituals of punishment” and exclusion that take place during the imprisonment process (Maruna S. , 2011). Dialogue is created between offenders and the wider community through volunteer work, which helps to show that desisters are not only committed to being a part of the community but also that they are a useful addition to it. This is intended to 18


provide an environment in which a return to pro-social functionality can take place organically, because "individuals spend only a tiny fraction of their daily lives undergoing formal treatment or counselling, so most of the hard work involved in changing one's sense of self takes places outside therapy or other formal professional interventions" (Maruna, Immarigeon, & LeBel, 2004, p. 12). The Good Lives Model Within the Pathway framework, the task of developing secondary desistance is assisted by the tools of the Good Lives Model. The Good Lives Model was developed by Tony Ward of Victoria University and is often used for the treatment of sex offenders. It was devised in part as a response to the ‘RiskNeed-Responsivity’ (or RNR) model, which focuses on identifying the ‘risk factors’ that might drive crime and eliminating them (Bonta, 1995). The primary issue with the RNR model is that it concerns itself with “risk management” and preventing the possibility of further harm to the community instead of addressing the needs that make offending necessary (Ward & Stewart, 2003, p. 353). In contrast, “the Good Lives Model assumes that offenders typically share the human needs and aspirations of the rest of the community and that their offending occurs as a consequence of the way they seek the primary human goods emerging from these needs” (ibid p.354). What this means is that by providing offenders with the “necessary conditions (e.g., skills, values, opportunities, social supports, etc.) for meeting their human needs in more adaptive ways, the assumption is that they will be less likely to harm others or themselves” (ibid p.356). This approach leads to a method of treatment that is much more personal and tailored than those informed by the Risk-Need model, which tends towards a “one-size-fits all approach to treatment and does not really deal with the critical role of contextual factors in the process of both offending and rehabilitation” (Ward, Mann, & Gannon, 2006, p. 89). As Ewing explains, this focus allows for an approach with clear goals and outcomes: The Good Lives Model helps us to work with the client to learn about why their past offending actions looked like a good idea at the moment in which they occurred and to learn what they were trying achieve. It gives us a pathway to be able to work, rather than just floundering around to help this guy, it helps us to identify the gaps in this person's life, and gives us the tools to fill in those gaps and build a more pro-social life (2013: pers. comm.).

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In practical terms, this means that Pathway works to identify and fill keenly-felt absences such as employment, life skills, community engagement and accommodation in their clients’ lives – needs which otherwise might have been direct causes of ongoing offending. Methodology This study is comprised of two sets of data collected in 2013. The first aimed to provide a measure of if the programme was working, while the second used interviews to determine what parts of the programme were contributing to this success (or otherwise). The first data set is based on a sample of 50 Pathway clients (at the time this represented all of Pathway’s clients, less nine whose prison registration details could not be verified) whose reoffending trajectories were analysed and compared with what would have been expected without Pathway intervention. This data was compiled and analysed by the New Zealand Department of Corrections using an actual versus expected model. The second data set is based on qualitative data derived from a total of twelve semi-structured interviews with a randomly-selected sample of Pathway clients. A chronological list of all Pathway clients (excluding those who were undertaking the programme at the time) was created and every fourth person selected as a participant, ensuring that all five years of Pathway’s operation were properly represented. If a person on the list could not be contacted, the next person on the list was used as a replacement. The interviews used semistandardised questions, with variations for those who had been reconvicted and those who had not. Of the clients who were selected and agreed to participate, ten were free in the community and two had returned to prison. Of the ten in the community, five had reoffended but not returned to prison and one had returned to prison but had since been released. Results – Quantitative Between establishing the programme in 2008 and the time of data collection in 2013, Pathway created 69 individual plans for a total of 59 clients, seven of whom had been through the programme more than once. Of the 69 people who had started (including the repeats), 86.95 percent (n=60) successfully completed the six months that the programme formally entails post-release.

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The offences for which clients were serving their most recent sentences tended to be serious, and included aggravated robbery (16), murder (5) and various kinds of assault (6). Of these crimes 52.1 percent were of a violent nature, compared with the prison average of 40.3 percent (Department of Corrections, 2011). These represent only the last convictions prior to each client entering the Pathway programme. According to Pathway’s records 66.1 percent (n=39) of these were preceded by a large number of prior convictions, and in conducting this research we interviewed clients who were life-long offenders. Of a possible sample of 59, 50 made up the cohort to be analysed. This reduction was due to the fact that certain clients could not be accurately traced, and because those who had not been free from prison for more than 12 months after release were necessarily excluded. A 12 month period was the maximum timeframe over which the cohort’s reoffending could be analysed (after that point, the sample shrinks too significantly because too few traceable clients had finished the programme by 24 months or more at the time of analysis). In measuring the success of Pathway’s programme, an ‘actual versus expected’ method of analysis has been used, comparing the rate of reconviction and re-imprisonment that would statistically be expected from this cohort versus their actual rates of reconviction and re-imprisonment. Offences that were of an administrative nature, such as breaches of community sentences/orders or breaches of bail, were excluded. This analysis is done using RoC*RoI scores. RoC*RoI is the ‘Risk of reConviction X Risk of re-Imprisonment model’ developed by the New Zealand Department of Corrections that is designed to generate a numerical score that predicts an offender’s chance of reoffending after release (Bakker, O'Malley, & Riley, 1999). The model was developed using the criminal records of more than 133,000 offenders, and is now used to calculate the recidivism risk of every offender in New Zealand. Scoring is calculated with the input of a wide range of data, including personal characteristics, time spent at large and in prison, a running total of court appearances and convictions, and the severity and classification of each individual offence. This score ranges from 0.0 to 1.0, representing a range from 0 to 100% of the projected likelihood of re-offending after five years. Department of Corrections research shows that from a sample of released prisoners with an average RoC* RoI of 0.599 one would expect to see 54 percent reconvicted of new offences and 35 percent return to prison after 12

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months. Of the Pathway sample, the actual rates were 36 percent reconvicted and 20 percent re-imprisoned. In other words, those people involved with the Pathway programme are 33.3 percent less likely to be reconvicted and 42.9 percent less likely to be re-imprisoned than what we would expect if they were not involved with Pathway. This is a significant reduction not only from what was expected of Pathway’s clients but also from the national average reoffending rate. Furthermore, the offences of the Pathway cohort who were reconvicted were generally less serious than their earlier offences – many were non-violent crimes such as theft, driving offences and drug use. Figure 1

Percentage of parolees

Expected vs. Actual recidivism for Pathway clients within 12 months 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Percent Reconvicted Expected

Percent Returned to Prison Actual

These data suggest that the programme is evincing significant efficacy. Notwithstanding that, however, we need to outline a number of caveats. Given the fact that Pathway screens its clients in advance we are unable to allow for selection bias, nor can we accurately assess the impact of other rehabilitation and reintegration efforts beyond those delivered or facilitated by Pathway (for example education programmes undertaken in prison). Most significantly the total number of clients is currently small, meaning that these results should be seen as indicative rather than conclusive. Confirmation therefore awaits analysis of a larger cohort measured over a longer timeframe. These factors, however, do not diminish the fact that these initial findings are extremely encouraging. Despite showing a clear indicator of provisional success, these recidivism rates are a rather blunt tool in indicating overall success of any programme as they fail to take into account the positive social impacts of fewer victims of

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crime and other social damage related to criminal offending. Furthermore, Pathway’s approach seeks to ensure not only decreased offending by its clients but also increased healthy participation in their community by helping them to gain the skills needed to find work and to engage positively with society as a whole – a goal untested by recidivism data. This is best assessed by a qualitative framework, to which we now turn. Results – Qualitative Having found that the Pathway programme has been (at least provisionally) effective in reducing recidivism, the qualitative component of this research sought to find out why. These data were gathered through interviews with Pathway clients. The information from these interviews allows us to gauge the delivery and the impact of Pathway’s work on a personal level, and also to assess how the component parts of the programme contribute (or otherwise) to the success shown by the quantitative results. Did it help? Without exception, all of those who were interviewed spoke highly of the reintegration programme. Every participant reported that Pathway had helped them in some way and that this help was extremely significant. For sure [it has kept me out of prison]. And I’m not just saying that. Sometimes when I was feeling like reoffending I would ring up Carey and he would talk me down. (1) Yeah for sure. Hard out! (7) The whole programme helped me! (11) Of those participants who were in the community, all but one directly credited Pathway with assisting in keeping them out of prison. Many were unequivocal. If I didn’t have their support, I would be in jail. (10) I would still be going back to jail if they hadn’t have been there. (12) Notwithstanding this, there was a strong feeling among participants that they themselves had to make a conscious and real effort to change, but when it came to putting this change into practice it was the base provided by Pathway that allowed it to occur. It’s up to the person themselves, but without the foundation to build on you’ve got no real chance. (10)

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Change was already happening – but it made it a lot easier. (5) This sentiment was echoed by those who had failed to desist, all of whom found Pathway to be useful in some capacity. None blamed Pathway or attributed their failure to a lack of support, instead accepting their own failure to commit. Pre-release Assessment As previously noted, Pathway works with clients for approximately two months before their release. For Pathway staff this is an opportunity to assess each individual’s needs and their suitability for the programme. Participants reported that this was an important phase during which they learned what they can expect from the programme as well as what will be expected of them. This form of ‘phasing in’ was reported by participants as being important to ensuring they were prepared for release and to decrease the stresses associated with the transition from prison to community. It meant I had to take action, I liked that they “weren’t rescuers”. They say that they really want you to take the initiative, I didn’t think much about it at the time but then I had a think about it and I thought I’d give it a go. (4) The best thing for me was, being real. At the start Francis said to me, ‘we’re only going to do this if you’re really serious about making a change’. And I took that seriously. (10) The paperwork set me up for the challenges I was going to face – things I wouldn’t have been aware of. (13) The initiation before getting out is important – you need to know what you’re getting in to. You don’t get out and go, ‘hey man this isn’t for me’. Pathway laid it out at the beginning. (4) Even those who reoffended reported Pathway’s work to be beneficial, and as with those who did not reoffend, a strong sense of individual responsibility was reported among those who reoffended after graduating from the programme. The programme did as much as they could. The thing that got me was, I had, when you been in jail as long as I have – half my life, really, that’s all I knew. Pathway couldn’t – they were there, I can’t say they weren’t – but… the reason I came back to prison is because of my prison mask. Sometimes your pride gets in your way. I wasn’t willing to back down from a situation. I didn’t stop and think. Pathway did the best they could for me. (11) 24


No, they couldn’t have done more. It was me. (12) It was my own… I was given all of the prompts to help myself. It was my fault. They say they will work with you for 6 months, I was out for 13 months. (15) Staff/Social Work Support As might be expected given the individualised approach of the programme, participants noted a range of factors that they found to be important depending on their needs. The major aspect identified by all participants, however, was the support provided by the reintegration staff. Given that social work support is fundamental to the Pathway approach, the findings here are particularly important, and they clearly speak to the vital role performed by staff. Their support. Gee, they were just real hands on. I got the feeling that they understood the challenges I was going to face when I got out. (13) I found the staff really incredible. What more can I say? (12) In all cases participants spoke extremely highly of Pathway staff. It appears quite clear that much of the satisfaction with the programme stems from the people filling these two social work roles. Carey has a really good rapport. I can be open with him. He’s not hyper critical of me, he’s very open minded and supportive. He’ll tell me what I need to hear! He doesn’t just tick the boxes, but he’s supportive while doing that. (6) Francis is a champion. So’s Carey. (7) Carey…I mean they’re all the same really helpful and supportive – the whole outfit. (15) Working with a high-needs population in a programme that offers individualised support plans, staff clearly require certain skills in order to connect meaningfully with clients, and many participants found the communication skills of Pathway staff to be a key strength. [Staff] answers will be simple. I like that. I called it ‘life for dummies’ at one point. They put everything out there in the most basic format. You can’t have it too complex, [or] add bullshit into it. (4)

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If someone says something is dumb to do, I want to know why. He told me why. (4) He’s real good. He’d call past my work. He’d come past my work and just see if I needed anything but he wasn’t overbearing. He’s great with communication. (13) One consistent finding was the importance of Pathway staff’s availability. To many participants it was often a safety net that was not available to them elsewhere. Almost universally this was found to be fundamental to those in the programme. He [Carey] was on a good level. He was supportive. I always had his phone number. And if I text him, BANG, he’d text right back. He never had excuses. He was real supportive. (13) If I needed any of them – even today – if I need to talk with them they will be there. If I text Francis today, even though it was a year and a half ago, he’d text me back. He was great for support. (10) Related to this was the fact that participants reported that staff stood by them, even when it appeared difficult to do so. Their support. They’re consistent with you. They stick by you. Even if you stuff up they are there. I find them really reliable, really loyal. Didn’t give up. (12) I had a bit of trouble early on – mental health wise – and they helped me through that. (15) If you needed anything or anyone all you had to do is ring up. Even if you made a mistake, they would help you fix it. (11) This commitment to clients during times of crisis and after they ‘fail’ is key to Desistance Theory, and it appears to produce a reciprocity of commitment with those who they worked with. They haven’t given up on me, and I’m not gonna give up on them. (11) Pathway’s support, however, was not seen as being unconditional. When a line needed to be taken or boundaries drawn, staff reportedly did so. As can be expected, at times this was not without occasional conflict, but the firm approach was something that was appreciated by participants. We had our moments. I can be a pretty difficult customer, and we would argue, but he would always handle it well. He wasn’t forceful 26


and in your face. He’d say ‘I’ve said my piece and I’ll leave it and come back in a couple of days’... – he had to take a tough line with me. He said I had two choices: the life I had and the life I wanted. He showed me how to get the one I wanted. (2) They were really good toward me – just helped me along and [helped me to] stay on track. Even though it was annoying. (9) Community Days Participation in volunteer work days in the local community is included in 75 percent (n=52) of plans. This underpins the Pathway approach, which seeks to link participants with their local communities and engage them meaningfully in pro-social activities. This is an approach that has shown some success in preventing recidivism with other programmes (Fox, 2014). For many participants these community days were an introduction to completely new elements of society and life. Just to go out and do things. I really enjoyed it. Went out to Little River to plant trees. It was sunny and we had a BBQ. It was all about meeting people. Get out of the city. It was full on but great. (6) They were intense. Hard work. I was sweating. They were positive, definitely useful. I got to see a different side of the community. I saw people working to help others – I’d never seen that before. (10) I watched a 70 year old man [another volunteer] chopping wood in 30 degree heat and it was refreshing to see. (11) The psychological changes that stemmed from interacting with people in the community in a positive way were well evidenced. Many Pathway clients recalled attitudes of “negative labelling” (REF), where the social alienation that they felt from being seen (or perceiving themselves as being seen) as a criminal kept them from developing a pro-social identity. By introducing clients to people who were not only non-judgemental but also found their assistance to be valuable, Pathway were able to begin to reverse this effect. We do community work and communicate with people who I wouldn’t usually come across – and get that prison mentality out of my system. It was really helpful, I thought everybody was looking down at me because of where I was, but they weren’t. (9) The thing about social responsibility is you have to do it for yourself you can’t do it just because you have to… I learned a lot about

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communication. I made myself say hi to people. It fed my brain – rejigged it. (4) One clear outcome expressed by participants was a feeling of giving something back to society, or a form of social debt repayment. In these ways, then, these activities serve to alleviate the alienation and sense of guilt that might otherwise have kept them from engaging meaningfully with the community. Once you’ve offended in the community and you give something back, it shows you are prepared to change. Instead of saying ‘poor me, poor me’ you got a chance to get out there and show you have changed. That’s why [community days] are so important. (2) It was a chance to do something for the community – put things right. (5) When you find out why you do it – give back to the community. You feel like you’ve contributed – given something back. I really benefited from it. (13) In this way they appear to serve as effective “rituals of reintegration” (Maruna S. , 2011), providing a clear line of demarcation between life as an offender (in prison) and as a citizen (freedom), thereby aiding reintegration. Mentors Volunteer community mentors were assigned to participants in 59 percent (n=41) of plans. Given the importance proscribed to community engagement, it might have been expected that mentors would play a much more significant role than what was discovered. While in the majority of cases mentors were seen, in various ways, as positive, their apparent significance was low. For those whose experiences with their mentors were constructive, the relationship provided a useful extension to the social support provided by Pathway staff and generally proved to be of value. Incredibly important. I can be really open with him. He’s really supportive (6). A fairly relaxed relationship, mainly texting and phone calls. But he was good, we were well matched. He was supportive. I was quite in awe that somebody would go out of their way for me. It was a gracious thing to do. It’s the type of person I aspire to be. (15)

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He was quite supportive. Gave me work at his house – laid drains – and paid me for it. Had a couple of meals with him. Used to meet him a bit – quite regularly (1). For some participants and mentors, finding time appears to have been a hurdle to building and maintaining a relationship. I seen him when I could because I worked quite long hours and he did too. We text each other. (9) It’s basically a stranger at the start and it was good to get to know him and that, but for me personally it was finding time. I was working 60 hours week and I didn’t have the time. If I had more time, I would have liked it. (10) For others the relationship, while not negative, was not seen as overly meaningful. A little bit of conflict; I didn’t really get on with him, and I’d text him and he was a bit busy. But luckily I had other support people through the church. (2) While the above evinces the need for appropriate matching between mentors and clients, it became clear that community mentors had at best a supplementary role in desistance and were not a meaningful substitute for social work support. It may be, however, that because of the quality and breadth of the support provided by Pathway staff, many of the roles that might have been played by mentors were simply unnecessary. Restorative Justice Facilitating restorative justice conferences between participants and their victims is often a crucial component of clients’ reintegration plans. Second only to social work support, restorative justice was reported as being a key tool used by the programme and one that fundamentally impacted on clients. Half of Pathway’s plans (n=35) include the intention to provide restorative justice meetings with the participant’s victims. In a number of cases this proved to be untenable, but for those who participated in it, restorative justice appears to have been transformative. Participants reported that it was instrumental in facilitating meaningful life change by gaining an empathy with victims that was previously absent, which in turn sparked or confirmed a desire to change: What changed me was the restorative justice programme. The hopelessness [the victims] felt. I understood where they were coming from. It wakes you up. (4) 29


[Had you considered victims in the past?] No, not really. (9) I was just thinking of myself. To see the victims cry in front of you in wakes you up. You walk in their shoes. As an offender you didn’t see the victims, you just read about it in the paper. But to see it come out of their mouth. And the fact I could talk, I think it helped heaps. It wasn’t easy. (10) A further restorative justice service is family conferences. Many offenders, due either to their offending or their subsequent incarceration, lose touch or have strained relations with their families. Reflecting this, 56.5 percent (n=39) of plans sought to repair some form of family relationship, either through informal measures or though formal restorative family meetings. These initiatives were reported as being important in healing old wounds and assisting movement away from criminality by restoring important support networks: I had lost contact with my family. Pathway united me back with them, and it helped them to understand what I needed. And you see how you’ve hurt them – you don’t want to do that again. (11) There was something missing in my life. I thought they didn’t care about me. That’s where a lot of my offending came from, because I didn’t think I was loved. We’re a big part of each other’s lives now. (7) External services Where clients had more specialised or resource-intensive needs, Pathway referred them to other organisations. In some cases – such as with accommodation – these other organisations were sometimes other ‘arms’ of the Pathway Charitable Group, or projects undertaken by Pathway in partnership with others, while some were unrelated organisations. For clients in need of employment, for example, clients might be referred to Oaktree Devanning1 which is run by another arm of the PCG, or to a construction firm that has agreed to consider appropriate clients, while clients with debt issues might be referred to specialised debt-consolidation and financial planning organisations. This collaborative approach was highly valued by participants, who often did not have the life skills or knowledge to take the first step in these areas. Even among those who were making their own life changes, being guided through the ‘Devanning’ is the process of unloading shipping containers and repackaging them for local transport. 1

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process of sorting out the details was seen to dramatically reduce the stresses placed on offenders at a key time: Change was already happening – but it made it a lot easier. I was in for 14 years it was pretty stressful, and that was exactly what I needed. Takes so much stress off it. And I think stress is a big thing for people getting out of prison. Stress leads to other things – getting on the piss heaps and that leads to other things… (13) This is particularly important because of the notoriously low levels of awareness among prisoners with regard to what services are available and how to access them (mills, meek ref). Even the facilitation of basic services such as doctor’s visits or budgeting advice was seen as important by many clients who lacked basic skills such as making appointments: I didn’t have a doctor or anything and they set me up with a Doctor. I just rang Carey and I was crook and said, “Can you help me out?” He made the appointment and everything for me. It used to be hard for me to make appointments because I’d been out of society for so long. They were teaching me to walk again in a way. (13) One service that many appreciated was accommodation support during the early release period. While some participants had access to private accommodation on release, many did not and would have been forced into housing arrangements that were either substandard or provided by criminal friends, or simply left homeless. Pathway’s services include a small number of flats available for short-term stays as well as a ‘Retreat’ where clients can live out of town and undertake a programme of work skills training. A total of 40.5 percent (n= 28) of plans included one of these forms of accommodation of assistance. For those who were given accommodation, it was seen as an invaluable service. That [accommodation] was paramount – you usually wake up on a couch with no money. (1) It [the Retreat] was the foundation for me, really I had to start from scratch and I couldn’t have done it without the Retreat and the support. I went to jail when I was 17 and didn’t get out until I was 21, I hadn’t even been flatting or anything. (10) The flats –accommodation– the phone, and they gave you two weeks’ worth of food. That covered all the bases. It gave me a good solid base. It’s really important having a place to come back to that

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you’re okay with. It was big for me to only invite people around who were going to be helpful or beneficial. (4) Accommodation allows you to settle back in [to society] without a major stress. (6) For some people, this accommodation was seen as the only option that they would be able to obtain. They got me accommodation, without that I’d still be inside. I’m heavily tattooed and the chances of me getting one, well… and then after the earthquake there wasn’t much around. When landlords see tattoos, particularly of the face, they are reluctant. (7) For some participants, this accommodation was more than just finding somewhere to live, but also a change in geography that allowed them to make a break from negative elements of their past and start afresh. It’s not in a scummy part of town so you’re not likely to bump in to people who were involved in your past. (13) It was really beneficial for me to have my own space – and getting out and doing things – social things – with Pathway people and others like the Christian people at Addington. (6) You go back to the same geography and that often means you go back to the same habits – to crime. (4) Perhaps unsurprisingly, employment support was seen as being similarly crucial to transitioning clients toward a life no longer dependent on crime. The work [at Oak Tree] was really hard; I got fit really fast. But it encouraged me to do other things. I got another job because the [new] employer liked the way that I worked – so he offered me employment. (4) Work experience I did [at the Retreat] on a variety of things… chainsaw license and everything… Getting yourself into that work routine. The variety of jobs we did. The ordinary person wouldn’t know how to cut down a tree. It was all good skills. And when it was time to look for another job, they helped out with writing CVs out, knocking on doors, ringing people... Where I’m at today, I’ve got a good job and that. I owe that to them. (10)

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It used to be hard for me to make appointments because I’d been out of society for so long. They were teaching me to walk again in a way. (13) Transformation to ‘Good Lives’ Pathway does not simply seek to reduce offending by participants, but to fundamentally and positively change their lives. Numerous participants reported significant – literally life changing – turnarounds that they credited to the Pathway programme. Building or redeveloping a ‘good life’ that includes a healthy relationship to the community and meets all of the clients’ personal needs is theorised to be central to the long-term reduction of crime, and this was borne out by the experiences of many participants who had made major changes. Reflecting Pathway’s client base generally, the majority of participants reported histories of extremely negative, unhappy, and crime-dominated lifestyles, and many had undertaken long stretches in prison. Two interviewees had life sentences and another had done nine stints in jail from 18 years of age before entering the programme at 35. Participants reported that both their life histories and long jail terms had created a mentality that inhibited reform. They also shared a perception that society was unable or unwilling to give them a chance. I came out and I had prison mentality. I swore a lot and didn’t really fit in. I felt I didn’t. (11) I used to keep things inside – bottle things up – instead of talking to people. (9) A lot of people out there think if you’ve been to prison you ain’t going to change. (11) Pathway was credited with changing the thinking of participants and allowing them access to options that they were previously unaware of or were seemingly out of reach. I trusted Carey if he said something, I would do it because he had more experience doing things in normal life. So I would change my plan, and do something else. (4) Yeah, definitely. I’ve got a bit more gentler. Francis gave me the tools to deal with conflict issues, and that sort of thing. (7)

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The support, and someone to talk to. Because I had no support in Christchurch, and they helped me deal with anything that came up – any red flags. (9) In many instances, this was reported as being transformative. I was always quite resentful… I accept that. I just found smiling [at people difficult]. Now I say hello to people if they looked depressed. I would never do that. If somebody talked to me, I’d tell them to fuck off or beat them up. I just started saying hello to people – some light conversation. It was really hard, it felt creepy at the start. But now it’s normal. (4) But while a number of examples appear undeniably promising, many of these people are only beginning their new journey. Keeping this in mind, it is impossible to predict how meaningful and lasting these changes may prove to be in the long term. While it was those who had, in the words of one participant, been ‘dragged up’ rather than ‘brought up’ who reported the most profound, or at least most promising transformations, an interesting example stemmed from a less likely source. One participant, a white-collar offender, stated quite adamantly that he was never going to reoffend when released, but nevertheless found the transition from prison life to normal life to be a difficult one. I had good family support, good friends support, but it was still a shock coming out. (5) Even though reoffending was not an issue for this participant, he was surprised to find the value that he began to gain from the reintegration programme. One immediate impact came from a restorative family meeting, which he credited with helping to rebuild the relationship between him and his wife. It assisted my family, it meant everybody talked about it in a family conference, my wife may have said things she wouldn’t already have said – how it affected her. He also credited how Pathway staff operated, the plight of his fellow clients, and the community days with a transformation in his outlook toward those less fortunate than himself. [I’m now involved] in charitable work. I’m more supportive of people in trouble. I believe we have to help people who aren’t fortunate enough or in a position to help themselves. He credited the transformation toward a more generous outlook and fulfilling life as stemming directly from Pathway. If one accepts the idea, central to the Pathway approach, that for many prisoners change will take time and that reoffending for some is an inevitability, 34


then judging success becomes more relative. One example highlights this point well: despite returning to jail, one participant gained two significant legacies from his time with Pathway: the first is that he was reunited with his estranged family, a relationship that he values and maintains, and the second is that he no longer uses drugs following alcohol and drug support facilitated by Pathway. I was IDU 40 [identified drug user: 40 incidents] in jail before Pathway. Five years later I’m IDU nil…. I chose to change. (11) While this participant is back in prison, the fact that he has kicked his drug habit is a source of pride, and it would appear to be a self-evident, and certainly he is of the view, that when he again returns to society he will be better placed to live a constructive crime-free lifestyle. While statistically he is a failure, it might be more accurate to see him as potential deferred. Conclusion This study found that Pathway’s reintegration programme is appearing to significantly decrease recidivism within the first year of release. Furthermore, Pathway’s theoretical framework is being put into practice and this is effectively guiding the programme. Pathway’s clients are aware of what is expected of them before leaving prison, and at time of release they are equally aware of what is ahead of them. The social work support that lies at the heart of Pathway’s theoretical approach is seen by clients as the vital component to the programme and underpins all other services. While this was the clearest finding of this research, it is less clear whether it is the importance of the roles or the impacts of the particular individuals who fill them that is contributing toward successful outcomes. Reflecting the individualised nature of the client plans, participants reported finding value in different service elements, and it is therefore obvious that recognising client needs and wide offering of services is fundamental to maximising success. ‘Success’, being a relative notion within Pathway’s approach, means that reoffending does not necessarily equate to failure and staff standby reoffending clients in the belief that the transition to a crime-free lifestyle is a process and not an event. Demonstrably, participants who had reoffended found this loyalty to be of value, and available evidence appears to offer hope to these ‘failure’ situations may lead to complete desistance. Finally, whether or not long term success from the Pathway approach will be evinced is yet to become clear, but the encouragement offered by the initial recidivism data was supported by the information provided by participants, who 35


were all of the mind that they were on a path to, or were enjoying, a crime-free and better life. The only remaining question, then, is whether or not this optimism is sustained and realised in the longer term. References Bakker, L., O'Malley, J., & Riley, D. (1999). Risk of Reconviction: Statistical Models predicting Four Types of Reoffending. Wellington: Department of Corrections. Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: Free Press. Bonta, J. (1995). The responsivity principle and offender rehabilitation. Forum on Corrections Research, 7, 34-37. Bottoms, A. E., Shapland, J., Costello, A., Holmes, D., & Muir, G. (2004). Towards desistance: Theoretical underpinnings for an empirical study. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 368389. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, shame and reintegration. Cambridge University Press. Clear, T. R. (2007). Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods Worse. Oxford University Press. Department of Corrections. (2009). Reconviction patterns of released prisoners: a 60-Months Followup analysis. Wellington: Department of Corrections. Department of Corrections. (2011, December). Prison facts and statistics - December 2011. Retrieved from http://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/facts_and_statistics/quarterly_prison_statistics/ ps-december-2011.html#offence Farrall, S., & Calverley, A. (2006). Understanding desistance from crime: Theoretical directions in resettlement and rehabilitation. Maidenhead: UK: Open University Press. Fox, K. J. (2014). Theorizing Community Integration as Desistance-Promotion. Criminal Justice and Behavio. Martinson, R. (1974). What works? Questions and answers about prison reform. The Public Interest, 22-54. Maruna, S. (2001). Making Good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives. American Psychological Association. Maruna, S. (2011). Reentry as a rite of passage. Punishment and Society, 3-28. Maruna, S., & Farrall, S. (2004). Desistance from crime: a theoretical reformulation. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie(43), 171-194. Maruna, S., Immarigeon, R., & LeBel, T. P. (2004). Ex-offender reintegration: theory and practice. In S. Maruna, & R. Immarigeon, After Crime and Punishment. Routledge. Mulvey, E. P., Steinberg, L., Fagan, J., Cauffman, E., Piquero, A. R., Chassin, L., . . . Losoya, S. H. (2004). Theory and research on desistance from antisocial activity among serious adolescent offenders. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 213-236. Opie, A. (2012). From Outlaw to Citizen: Making the Transition from Prison in New Zealand. Auckland: Dunmore. Ward, T., & Stewart, C. A. (2003). The Treatment of Sex offenders: Risk Management and Good Lives. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 353-360. Ward, T., Mann, R. E., & Gannon, T. A. (2006). The good lives model of offender rehabilitation: Clinical implications. Aggression and Violent Behaviour, 88-106.

Jarrod Gilbert is a sociologist and lecturer at the University of Canterbury and is a coordinator of the Criminal Justice Degree. He is also the lead researcher at

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Independent Research Solutions. Jarrod has done extensive research in the areas of crime and justice, particularly around issues of recidivism. He is the author of Patched: the history of gangs in New Zealand, an award winning and bestselling book based on the most comprehensive ethnographic study ever undertaken on gangs. Ben Elley has a Masters Degree with Distinction in Sociology, a First Class Honour’s Degree in English literature and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Media & Communication. His academic expertise is in semiotics and youth culture. Ben is a Researcher at Independent Research Solutions, where he has contributed to a number of large studies on issues of crime and justice.

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Gaining acceptance: Discourses on training and qualifications in peer support Anne Scott Abstract The debate relating to formal qualifications for peer support in mental health reflects conflicting ideas about the nature of this new occupation. Three discourses among peer supporters/peer support managers in New Zealand are identified in relation to training and qualifications. The health professionalism discourse sees peer support as a set of tools which can be developed through education and training. The grassroots discourse holds onto the non-hierarchical, nonprofessional and inclusive nature of peer support as a form of relational ‘common sense’. The transformational peer support discourse sees peer support training as potentially instigating radical revisioning within one’s life journey. While seeing peer support training as crucial, its proponents are circumspect about formal qualifications in mental health. This article identifies these three discourses, discusses them in relation to the development of peer support as a new occupation, and draws a comparison with the professionalisation of counselling in the 20th century. Keywords: Mental health; peer support; New Zealand; discourse analysis; qualifications; credentialing

Introduction The creation of new occupational groups in health care is an ongoing phenomenon (Timmons, 2011: 338). However, peer support is also a new type of occupation in mental health, in which paid or funded volunteer services are provided by people who are, or have been, service users themselves (Clay, 2005; Orwin, 2008; O’Hagan, McKee and Priest, 2009). It had its origins in the self-help movement (Archibald, 2007) and the mental health consumers movement (Chamberlin, 1977; Campbell, 2005) in the context of deinstitutionalisation during the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, peer support developed in the context of two different movements operating in the wealthier English speaking countries in the 1970s. These included the reformist self-help/

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mutual aid movement, which focused on personal support complementary to the medical system, and the more radical mental health consumers/psychiatric survivors’ movement (Everett, 1994; Nelson et al., 2008: 193). Within the consumers/survivors movement, peer support emerged as a key part of a liberation agenda (Chamberlin, 1977; Campbell, 2005: 19; Adame and Leitner, 2008). Judi Chamberlin (2004) has described the way peer support emerged in Canada and the United States as consumers, psychiatric survivors and mental patients began organising informally, and discovering that they could provide support that addressed each other’s unmet needs. This was accomplished in spite of discouragement for such horizontal relationships by the mental health system (Chamberlin, 2004). Similarly, in Aotearoa New Zealand, peer support first emerged in the 1970s as an informal arrangement of ex-patients visiting, and providing support to, current patients on a voluntary basis. Peer support as offered by the consumer/survivor movement had a rather oppositional relationship with the mainstream mental health system. As Mead, Hilton and Curtis argue, it saw ‘recovery’ as undoing the cultural processes by which people develop careers as mental patients (2001: 135-136). Psychiatric labels were thus discouraged; peer supporters instead encouraged their peers to talk about the experiences themselves, and thus to normalise experiences of extreme mental distress (Chamberlin, 2004; Adame and Leitner, 2008: 149). They strove to minimize hierarchy and to encourage mutuality in relationships (Chamberlin, 2004; Mead and MacNeil, 2006). Choice and empowerment were cornerstone principles, in response to a sometimes coercive mainstream mental health system (Campbell, 2005; Clay, 2005). During the past twenty years, peer support has been moving into the mainstream of mental health provision. In developed Anglo-Saxon countries, it is now often funded by the public sector and provided by paid workers (Bradstreet, 2006; O’Hagan et al., 2009). This has been driven by the development of the ‘recovery’ approach (Deegan, 1988; Anthony, 1993), and its institutionalisation in the mental health systems of many liberal democracies (Ontario Ministry of Health, 1993; Mental Health Commission, 1998; President’s New Freedom Commission for Mental Health, 2003; Scottish Executive, 2006). At the same time, the consumers movement which gave it birth has become larger, more diverse and generally more pragmatic and reformist, even while the links between the consumers’ movement and peer

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support are becoming somewhat attenuated. These developments, along with a shift towards consumerist models in healthcare more generally, have led to a willingness to experiment with funded peer support. A meta-review of the evidence found that peer support is at least as effective as other forms of mental health provision (Doughty and Tse, 2011). Peer support now takes place in a broad diversity of forms and through a wide variety of organisational structures. In Aotearoa New Zealand, most peer support involves a former service user walking alongside a person currently undergoing mental distress. It might involve facilitating support groups; producing educational programmes; doing advocacy; providing face-to-face mentoring; providing safe accommodation for people in crisis; running drop-in centres; supporting people to find employment or housing; visiting inpatients; operating telephone support lines; or providing activity programmes. Much peer support is provided through community based NGOs or small business, although some is provided through mainstream mental health services. Most peer support in Aotearoa New Zealand is funded through a combination of public funding provided by District Health Boards and voluntary sector fundraising. All peer support in Aotearoa New Zealand draws on a common set of values, which have been recently articulated as mutuality; the value of experiential knowledge; self-determination; participation; equity; recovery and hope (Te Pou, 2014a: 4). These values mean that peer supporters will not engage in coercive practices or restraint of clients within the workplace. This article focuses on the attempts by peer supporters and peer support leaders to gain legitimacy with clinicians and funders as a new health occupation, particularly as these relate to calls for a national qualification in peer support in New Zealand and to advocacy for greater levels of educational accreditation amongst peer supporters. Larson argued in the 1970s that it is an occupation’s technical knowledge which enables it to persuade the State to license and protect it (Timmons, 2011: 339). It is on this basis that occupations are able to claim some autonomous area of practice, and the respect of other stakeholders. This is a problematic requirement for peer support, which has been based from the start on a rejection of technical expertise in favour of an identity-based claim to legitimacy through lived experience. Recently, there have been active attempts by peer support leaders and consumer advocates in the New Zealand mental health sector to develop a national qualification in peer support and to require the accreditation of all peer

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support workers. While these attempts have so far not resulted in a national peer support qualification – beyond the organisationally based qualification offered by one peer support provider – they have resulted in the development of national standards and a set of peer support competencies which are expected to inform job descriptions, training curricula, quality assurance procedures, service specifications, performance management and auditing (Te Pou, 2014a; 2014b). These recent developments have been hotly debated within the peer support sector, and have been approached with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation. In this article, I will explore three discourses articulated around the standardisation of training and qualifications by peer supporters and peer support managers in Aotearoa New Zealand. How does the development of national educational standards dovetail with the historical constitution of peer support? In a classic paper, Valerie Fournier (1999) argued that professionalism and expertise play a role in governmentality. In order to achieve the legitimation which goes with professionalisation, occupations must conduct themselves with ‘competence’ as defined by the concerns, norms and values of other, socially powerful, actors. In so doing, they discipline themselves. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis, Fournier suggests that domination intersects with ‘technologies of the self’ (1999: 283). In the process, occupations come to be constituted in ways that align with socially powerful discourses. A discontent with professionalisation among many occupations such as alternative health practitioners has thus been associated with a fear of the loss of independence and autonomy to practice in a manner at odds with dominant paradigms (Timmons 2011: 338). Peer support is moving into a period of occupational development, rather than professionalization. However, I will argue in this article that it is such fears, regarding the possibility that the disciplining effects of occupational development might strip away the essence of peer support that generates the disquiet many peer supporters feel about the trend towards greater accreditation of peer support practice. Methodology The data used in this article were collected in a descriptive study of peer support services in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2010. A listing was made of every organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand funded by a District Health Board which at that time offered a peer support service. Approximately 60 organisations were

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identified. Purposive sampling was then used to choose ten organisations offering peer support; this amounted to fourteen peer support services, given that some organisations offered more than one peer support service. Sampling was done in such a way as to reflect the population distribution around the country; there were seven organisations chosen in various parts of the North Island and three in the South Island, a division which roughly reflects the spread of population in Aotearoa New Zealand. Sampling also ensured that both urban and rural areas were included, and considered diversity in terms of the type of organisation offering peer support, the type of service offered, the model of peer support being employed, and the size of the organisation and service. All fourteen services invited to participate agreed to do so. Peer support services included in the study offer a variety of types of peer support, including one-on-one peer mentoring, support groups, Kaupapa Māori peer support, intensive peer support for people leaving long term hospital care, drop-in centres, advocacy, support to inpatients, telephone support lines, and crisis houses. There were a number of organisational structures included. Four of the peer support services were based in small consumer-led trusts. Two services were based in a consumer-led business. One service was located with a District Health Board’s Specialist Mental Health Services arm. The rest of the services were based within larger mental health trusts offering a variety of services, including consumer-led services. Several of these organisations have been offering peer support for up to twelve years, although a period of four to five years was more common. All of the peer supporters and peer support managers we interviewed held paid positions, with the exception of one manager whose position was unfunded, and two volunteer peer supporters in one of the Kaupapa Māori services. It is important that knowledge about indigenous people’s services is collected and analysed within an indigenous framework (Smith, 1999). Thus, different data collection strategies were used for the twelve mainstream services and the two Māori orientated services. In the twelve mainstream services, the author visited each service over two to three days, and spent informal time in the office. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a peer support manager and one or more peer supporters on the staff. Participants were chosen by the organisations themselves. Two in-depth interviews, focusing respectively on peer support relationships, and policy and practice, were conducted with each participant. This process involved 24 participants in total.

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In the two Kaupapa Māori services, a tikanga-based methodology was used. Tamehana Consultants, who have expertise in Māori mental health, designed a process that involved two day visits by themselves and a Māori researcher to each service. During these visits, unrecorded whakatau and mihi1, which are designed to build relationships, were followed by several recorded group interviews, similar to focus group interviews, which included peer support managers, peer supporters, kaumatua, clinical supervisor and volunteers in the two services. Thirteen participants took part in these group interviews. There were thus 37 participants in total. All names given are pseudonyms, and identifying details have been changed. The interview transcripts were coded through 67 themes expressed by participants. Some of these were generated by interview questions, and others emerged inductively from the data in a process of bottom up coding to identify recurring themes (Strauss, 1987). Themes related to ways of conceptualising peer support, to practice issues, to benefits of peer support, to relationships with clinical services, and to policy issues. In this article, the areas of policy issues and the conceptualisation of peer support are the focii, with the codes of training, qualifications, professionalism and ‘what is peer support?’ being most central. I engaged in a Foucauldian discourse analysis relating to the talk coded at these nodes. As Willig notes, within a Foucauldian approach, discourses are seen as sets of statements that construct objects and subject positions; they thus constrain what can be said by whom, and how it can be said (Willig, 2008: 112). Discourses are bound up with institutional practices, and they thus play a major role in legitimating – or in the case of counter-discourses in challenging – entrenched power relations. Subject positions, which involve becoming located within a structure of rights and obligations by using a discursive repertoire (Willig, 2008: 116) can lead to one seeing the world from the vantage point of a particular position. I engaged in the form of discourse analysis elaborated by Carla Willig (2008). This involved recording the discursive constructions of the objects ‘training’, ‘qualifications’ and ‘peer support’, and then looking for patterns in these constructions to identify discourses which were operating. I explored what was gained by constructing these objects within each of the discourses 1

A whakatau is a welcome, while mihi combine personal introductions with connections on the basis of whakapapa. 43


identified, and looked at the subject positions enabled or facilitated by each discourse. I then looked at the relationship of each discourse to practice. My major concern in this article was to identify the discourses operating in regards to qualifications in the talk of peer supporters and peer support managers in Aotearoa New Zealand. I looked at the way these were tied up with power relations around credentialing and acceptance for the new occupation of peer support, and explored the ways that participants drew on these differing discourses to construct subject positions for peer supporters and for peer support itself. Credibility of the analysis was assisted by presenting this article to members of the peer support community for comment before submission. Careful records have been kept of each phase of the research process to assist in the research’s dependability. The research was approved by the Multi-Regional Health and Disability Ethics Committee of Aotearoa New Zealand. Analysis Three differing discourses were identified in relation to qualifications, training and occupational development for peer supporters. The first, ‘health professionalism’, is a hegemonic discourse in the health sector, and most participants spoke to it in some fashion, although very few located themselves within it in an uncomplicated fashion. The second discourse, which I have called the ‘grassroots discourse’, challenges health professionalism, while also existing in an uneasy tension with it. The third discourse, which I have dubbed ‘the transformational peer support discourse’, involves a more thoroughgoing challenge to the philosophical basis of health professionalism, although it also involves practices which might be seen to be moderately close to the pursuit of educational qualifications central to this approach. Participants drew on these differing discourses to negotiate strikingly different subject positions, and to construct peer support in quite different ways. This article suggests that the occupational development debate within peer support is partially driven by quite different understandings of what peer support is, and of where it should be going. The health professionalism discourse The health professionalism discourse is found in various forms throughout the health sector. It sees health work as performed by technically skilled, knowledgeable and capable individuals, whose competence is assured by their

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acquisition of educational qualifications. Knowledge is equated with expertise, and thus with competence to practice. Personal experience, life experience and subjective understandings hold an inferior value within this discourse if, indeed, they are present within it at all. Practical experience is valued within this discourse, but is held to be secondary to the holding of the appropriate qualifications, which enable one to practice safely. Some of the participants articulating this discourse came from an organisation offering an NZQA level 4 Certificate2 in peer support, and requiring all of its peer supporters to complete this certificate. When asked if she thought this shift towards requiring qualifications for peer supporters was helpful, a peer supporter from this organisation said, “Yeah, I do. You want to have people that are competent” (PSW 1). She understood competence, however, within the strengths based philosophy which underlies this organisation’s approach, which does not sit easily within a mainstream health professionalism discourse3. Some participants drawing on this discourse used the metaphor of the toolkit to conceptualise the relationship and awareness skills taught within peer support education as just that… skills. They could be mixed with standard mental health work approaches as taught within the Mental Health Support Workers’ Certificate and other forms of mental health education. In the past, peer support has probably thought that by learning the mental health certificate you’re going to end up with a different philosophy than what peer support is about. But I don’t think that is necessarily true. They’re both for the good of the people. So if one of those tools isn’t one that you necessarily think is the best one to use… you will take some of those tools, and take some of those ones and take some of those ones, and blend them together to use them for the best. And if one tool isn’t working, you pop out another one. So the more education, and the more understanding you have of the whole picture, I think, the better (PSW 2). This approach sees peer support education as one form of technical knowledge to be combined with other forms of technical knowledge in order to create a 2

New Zealand Qualifications Authority Level 4 Certificates are the lowest level of formal post school qualifications. They require no pre-qualifications for entry and generally take one year to complete. This philosophy focuses on the autonomy of individuals and on supporting self-determination within a framework that emphasises individual strengths rather than deficits/pathology 3 This philosophy focuses on the autonomy of individuals and on supporting selfdetermination within a framework that emphasises individual strengths rather than deficits/pathology 45


more competent practitioner. Should a combined qualification for all mental health workers be created which incorporated peer support and recovery principles, as advocated by one manager (Mgr. 1), it might take this form. A peer supporter from a service which took all its workers through at least a Level 4 Mental Health Support Workers qualification, noted that a lack of proper training and support at other services could expose the entire peer support sector to risk: You’ve got to have that right training and the right support all the way through, constantly, you know, and that does worry me. All the good work that people do, you know it is noticed. It is noticed. But all you need is the occasional person that becomes sick and then goes up and really stuffs up. You know, at the unit or wherever else, and those are the times that are really remembered (PSW 3). By raising the possibility that a mentally unwell peer supporter might bring peer support into disrepute by going to work at the hospital when not well enough to conduct themselves there responsibly, he conflates educational background with the ability to manage one’s own mental illness reliably. This raises the spectre of clinicians who feel that peer support is too risky, because peer supporters are untrained, unprofessional and liable to become unwell. Anecdotally, this is quite a common belief amongst mental health clinicians in Aotearoa New Zealand; it was raised as a major issue by peer supporters and managers from both crisis houses involved in this study. It is the use of the health professionalism discourse which locates unqualified peer supporters as ‘risky’ in this way. Educational qualifications thus come to represent the ability to behave professionally and to maintain self-control at all times. As Fournier notes, competence is indexed not just in terms of mastery of a body of knowledge, but also in terms of appropriate conduct (1999: 286). The good opinion of clinicians and funders is extremely important to peer supporters and peer support managers. Indeed, it was spontaneously mentioned as one of the most important issues for peer support by over half the participants in the study. Credibility with these important players is seen by many to depend on having qualifications, and thus on playing to the health professionalism discourse: That’s something that they could at least say that they have, is a certificate in peer support to validate what they do. And to keep any critics at bay that might say, “Well, where’s this bit of paper that says you’re qualified at what you do?” Because that happens as well. (Mgr. 2). 46


Credentials are sources of power for individuals, effectively blocking substantive judgements about their actual performance and abilities (Brown and Bills, 2011: 135). The pressure thus created to move towards credentialing peer support is powerful, and many participants at least made mention of a push for greater qualifications as a trend within the peer support sector. In the guide for planners and funders which accompanies the new Aotearoa New Zealand set of competencies for peer support workers, it is noted that the Ministry of Health’s new mental health and addiction services plan expects peer support education and training programmes to be put into place by providers (MoH, 2012; Te Pou, 2014b). The Competencies document also recommends development of a national peer support qualification, along with revised service specifications, career pathways, and development of new peer practice tools (Te Pou, 2014b). However, the subject positions open to peer supporters within this discourse are not attractive. At best, a well-qualified peer supporter can speak with authority which plays catch up to that of his or her very well qualified counterparts in other parts of the mental health sector. More commonly, however, peer supporters are seen as unqualified, untrained and are thus located in an inferior, risk-bearing, position. This is a position which in some ways recapitulates the stigma to which mental health consumers are subject. Participants responded to this positioning in a variety of ways. A very small number embraced this discourse; however, most participants had more complex responses to a discourse that challenged their status as health workers. These included fear. One manager, on receiving information about this research study, initially interpreted it as related to a wider attempt to require greater credentialing for peer supporters, and reacted with alarm (Mgr. 2). Other participants responded defensively to any hint of the health professionalism discourse. When a question about the value of qualifications was raised in the interviews, many participants responded by listing their own educational qualifications, or those of their staff; these might include anything from accountancy, to teaching, to counselling, to the mental health support worker’s certificate. A few participants launched into stories about the practical barriers which were preventing them from completing relevant qualifications. Some people, on the other hand, responded to this discourse more positively, by arguing that a national qualification in peer support was needed: In New Zealand, we really love qualifications. And we love, you know, qualifications are valued with money. And it’s one of the first things people ask about, you know, what qualification do they have? 47


So we either need to shift that, the way we honour credentialing in New Zealand, or we create a certificate or a degree or a diploma, that really has a much broader understanding of the work. (Mgr. 3). This approach, of chasing validation, was adopted with reservations by some participants, as illustrated here. As in journalism (Aldridge and Evetts, 2003), the discourse of health professionalism was seen to be operating as a mechanism of occupational change; it was seen to be challenging the historical nature of peer support. The desire for standardised qualifications, therefore, was often paired with a wider concern not to lose the ‘essence’ of peer support. The most common strategy in response to the health professionalism discourse involved recognition of its influence, while also challenging the basis of the discourse, either wholly or in part. In challenging the health professionalism discourse, two counter-discourses were proffered. It is to these that I now turn. Grassroots Discourse As discussed earlier, peer support has its origins in the psychiatric survivor movement’s analysis of ‘patients’ disempowerment in traditional services (Morrison, 2005), and in its calls for mental health services which are based in mutual relationships between mental health consumers. In her early call for such alternative services, Judi Chamberlin noted that nonprofessional, clientcontrolled services don’t divide people into ‘sick’ and ‘well’, or into ‘helper’ and ‘helped’. They thus allow people to discover that there are no ‘experts’ (Chamberlin, 1977: 63-64). This view of non-professional services rejecting discourses of ‘helping’ and ‘expertise’ was core to the early peer support established in the 1970s and 1980s. Peer support is now provided formally in New Zealand, in funded and structured programmes run by paid peer supporters and managers, or occasionally by paid managers with trained and supported volunteer staff. In this context, the grassroots vision of a truly non-hierarchical set of services has come under pressure. However, elements of this vision remain intact, where they sit in some tension with the ‘health professionalism’ discourse. This approach was expressed through what I have called the grassroots discourse. It was most strongly expressed in smaller peer support services where staff are not generally qualified with certificates/diplomas in psychology, mental health support work or peer support, but instead work through job-based training, hands-on experience, their own life experiences and what they regularly referred to as ‘common sense’:

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A lot of the things that we do, a lot of it is based on life skills, you know, things that have happened to you before and common knowledge and common sense. You can’t train a person, really, I don’t think, in how to relate to other people. Some people could have twenty years’ training and they still couldn’t do it. But they might be able to write books on it, but once, you know, make them try and actually do it; it’s not going to happen (PSW 4). The claim that qualifications don’t ensure good peer support work, and that some people without academic qualifications are very good at the job, was regularly made by participants in this study. Often this was accomplished through telling stories about people with qualifications who made ‘shocking’ peer supporters or who lacked confidence in the role, while conversely telling stories about unqualified people who were ‘naturals’ at peer support. The subject position taken up by peer supporters within the grassroots discourse is much more appealing than that offered within health professionalism. Within this discourse, it was common for participants to claim authority for life experience and hands-on experience, while disparaging the authority which comes from books. When talking about her role on a mental health advisory committee, the manager of a small service said she was asked by an academic in the group, “What degrees do you have? Oh, from what university?” And I said “from the university of life”. And she was stumped, she didn’t know how to respond to that. But you know, that’s how I felt about what I brought to that table. I could have had all the degrees in the world but it wouldn’t have made me a safe or knowledgeable person. But that lived experience was the asset that got me onto that advisory group in the first place (Mgr. 2). This subject position was not held in an uncomplicated way, however. The above quote was immediately followed by this manager listing all the diplomas and degrees held by members of her staff, while asserting that workforce development was an important value within her service. She went on to describe the health barriers which had prevented her from finishing her degree. A tense relationship between the health professionalism and grassroots discourses led to the latter discourse often being articulated defiantly, from a defensive stance, as if the participant was trying to convince themselves of its validity even while articulating it. Statements made within this discourse were often followed, as in the above quote, by the qualifications of the speaker, or other members of his or her service. For instance, one peer supporter suggested

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that she was a ‘doing learner’ and had learned more on the job than colleagues who did have qualifications, then switched directly into an account of practical restrictions which had prevented her undertaking a qualification and the fear that new requirements around minimum qualifications might prevent her from continuing in a peer support role (PSW 5). Another peer supporter responded to a question about formal qualifications by interspersing her articulation of the grassroots discourse with a nod to her own desire to gain more qualifications: Interviewer: Do you think having a formal qualification makes a person a better peer supporter? PSW 6: No. No I don’t. In saying that, I have always wanted to better my education and carry on with my tertiary education, definitely. But I don’t believe – anybody can get the concept of recovery if that’s what they choose to do. And I think people just have to be approachable and very open to meeting people, seeing people on the same level as themselves. Just being mutual, being relatable, I guess. Yeah. No matter where you’ve come from, your background, whether you speak English, whether you’re whatever. No matter what qualifications you have (PSW 6). The grassroots discourse was extremely inclusive. People drawing on this discourse regularly asserted that non-academically inclined people – even illiterate people – and members of other socially marginalised groups, could become good peer supporters. At the same time, they claimed an epistemological authority from their lived experience. However, nobody directly referenced the historical origins of this discourse in the psychiatric survivor’s movement, and almost everybody used it in interactive and somewhat defensive relation to the health professionalism discourse. What comes through strongly is that this ‘nonprofessional’ understanding of peer support has reduced credibility in the present context, and is losing ground in the contemporary peer support scene. Transformational peer support discourse A third discourse offers a robust challenge to the philosophical basis of the health professionalism discourse, while also taking on board its high regard for education and training. This discourse, which I have called the ‘transformational peer support discourse’, asserted that peer support training was highly valuable and could indeed be transformative. However, formal qualifications in mental health were not usually seen as necessary, and could even be seen as a hindrance. This discourse tended to be articulated by participants trained in one of three peer support models which, with one exception, did not provide NZQA 50


approved qualifications and are not formally assessed. They are instead delivered through informal workshops and training. This discourse was associated with a very strong conceptualisation of what peer support should be, grounded in psychiatric survivors’ conceptualisations, but further developed through a focus on the reframing of experience and the development of robust relationship skills. One manager described her first experience of peer support training: I turned up to the training thinking, “oh, well, it’s about communication and I know about that stuff. And it’s about this and that, and I know about those things”. And perhaps was on the first morning a little bit arrogant in my own thinking about what it was going to be. And was completely unprepared for what it actually was, and what it meant to me and how it changed my life (Mgr. 3). She went on to say that learning her difficult life experiences had intrinsic value – and had built a strength and resilience within her that allowed her to assist others – changed her. It was about turning the notion of ‘mental patient’ inside out, letting go of diagnostic labels and exploring what was valuable about herself. As a trainer, she had seen the same transformational process with other people. “There’s some sort of magic that happens for people” (Mgr. 3). Within this discourse, peer support education was seen to have much wider applicability than just training former mental health consumers in a set of technical work related skills. In fact, a number of participants said that peer support education should be made available to the wider community: It’s about development of relationships, really. And the responsibility of relationships and mutual responsibility and awareness. And it’s also about re-telling your story, using, you know, from a different viewpoint than from a medical viewpoint. So I think Intentional Peer Support training is really good. As a matter of fact I think it’s, I think all people that work with people should do a similar sort of training. Because it’s more than a peer support approach (Mgr. 5). Alongside this view, peer support was conceptualised as being much more than standard mental health work, albeit operated from a nonclinical and nonprofessional perspective. Instead it was about mutual learning relationships which could bring about personal transformation for both parties. Peer support is a very deep thing, you know. And recovery and wellbeing’s a very deep thing as well. It’s all basically, you know, you could say it’s almost like, it’s almost like, recovery’s almost like a spiritual experience. But it’s certainly I would say it’s a critical learning experience. It’s an experience of true learning. If you look at 51


learning environments and recovery environments, they’re the same thing (Mgr. 5). This discourse offers peer supporters and peer support managers a powerful subject position from which to speak. Rather than playing catch-up in terms of formal qualifications and expertise, or speaking authoritatively only from the unstable and often disrespected ground of life experience, peer support training offers – in addition to life experience – an authoritative position as knowledgeable and well trained in that most important of human activities – relationships. And if 80% of what you do is in relationship, I think if peer support workers, I guess our end game is to be exceptionally skilled at relationship, really. If that’s one thing we can bring, it’s relationships with people (Mgr. 6). This is a subject position which also positions peer supporters as innovators and leaders, in addition to their role as skilled mental health workers. Starting from the hugely stigmatised subject position of mental health consumer, the peer support movement has developed a training and practice model which can bring great benefits to the wider world. And the training in peer support and self-care is for everyone, not just for mental health. The fact that it’s emerged out of mental health is significant, because we’re the ones who maybe have the greatest difficulties in maintaining relationships. But if we can make it work for ourselves, surely it’s going to be quite easy for people who don’t have the struggles we’ve had to make it work (Mgr. 6). This approach runs aground on the lack of official credentialing for peer support, and the consequent tensions raised by the hegemonic status of the health professionalism discourse. Aside from one NZQA level 4 qualification in peer support, largely used by a single organisation, there are no recognised qualifications in peer support within New Zealand. Some rather fragmented efforts by a few providers to create a nationally recognised qualification which would have NZQA level 4 status, based on the principles of this ‘deep’ form of peer support, have so far borne little fruit. Such attempts have led to some misgivings, as noted by one manager: For if you look at what is the inherent, inherent basis of peer support, it is something that’s unpaid, you know. Is just a mutual relationship between me and you. It’s got nothing to do with whether I’m qualified and you’re not. And as soon as you start professionalising something, some of that disappears. And what impact will that have on relationships? Because people will, you know, have that: “Well, 52


I’m a professional and you’re not.” And what does that do in the end? Will peer support be peer support if we do that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m very conflicted about it (Mgr. 7). The concern was, that by bringing assessment, academic standards and credentialing into peer support training, it’s transformational nature might be compromised. As in the psychiatric survivor’s discourse, the question of whether this is something which can be ‘taught’ arises? Is this material to be learned, or is it necessary only to create the correct learning environment for people to undergo these powerful experiences? Discussion These three discourses value strikingly different approaches to the development of qualifications and training for peer support in Aotearoa New Zealand. The health professionalism discourse suggests that peer support should quickly go down a route of greater accreditation and national standards for education and training, rather along the lines of the Mental Health Support Workers’ Certificate. The grassroots discourse resists this trend, holding tight to the historical origins of peer support as mutual aid within inclusive, nonhierarchical relationships. While the transformational peer support discourse draws a middle line between these two approaches in relation to training, it does so with an eye to protecting the radical nature of peer support as grounded in empowering relationships. Liz Bondi has argued (2004) that counselling went through a process of professionalisation not unlike that which peer support now seems to be embarking upon. Counselling emerged in the 1950s as mutual aid by nonexperts, inspired by Carl Rogers’ humanistic vision of liberating relationships which were explicitly non-judgemental, non-hierarchical and egalitarian (Bondi and Fewell, 2003; Bondi, 2004). Counselling training was based on the practice based development of existing relationship skills, rather than on extensive academic study. There were no academic pre-requisites for counselling training, for example (Bondi, 2004: 321). Counselling, Bondi notes, thus originated as an avowedly lay practice, and was constituted as something wholly different from a profession (2004: 321). This has parallels with the way peer support is understood by peer supporters now. Just as psychotherapy was the shadow of counselling at that time, understood as a hierarchical, expertise-based form of practice (Bondi, 2004), counselling is now understood as the shadow of peer support. One peer support manager described the way two trained counsellors found that training 53


in peer support required them to think quite differently. She said that one of these new peer supporters received negative feedback during training, that he was ‘being the counsellor’, and needed to move into a less expert driven relationship with his peer (Mgr. 8). Bondi argues that counselling has been professionalised by three primary mechanisms. The first was the establishment of systems of voluntary selfregulation, which have become increasingly influential and ‘necessary’ to practitioners. The second was through the establishment of recognised training standards, and procedures for the validation of training courses by academic institutions. These courses have increasingly become formal. Finally, development of a career niche for counsellors, through the establishment of paid counsellors within many institutions, has led to an expectation that counselling should be a remunerated occupation (Bondi, 2004). Within peer support, the third of these processes is already in place. During the 1990s and 2000s, funded peer support programmes were developed in a number of jurisdictions, such as Scotland (Bradstreet and Pratt, 2010), New Zealand (Scott, Doughty and Kahi, 2011), Canada (O’Hagan et al., 2009), and Australia. Designated service user roles still make up a very small part of the total mental health workforce in New Zealand – approximately 1% of the District Health Board workforce and 4% of the NGO workforce (O’Hagan 2011: 23), but the numbers are growing quickly. The Ministry of Health’s latest service development plan for mental health and addictions sees peer support as an essential part of services in New Zealand, which suggests that this growth will continue (MoH, 2012). There are also changes occurring in relation to the first two processes, as seen in this article. The disciplinary regime of occupationalism is operating within peer support in a manner similar to that described by Fournier for the professions (Fournier, 1999), even though this occupation remains underpaid and relatively stigmatised. The grassroots discourse already is operating from a defensive position, and the health professionalism discourse is gaining ground. As counselling did, there is the possibility that peer support might change in character as these new ‘facts on the ground’ take hold. As Mgr. 6 asked, ‘Will peer support be peer support if we do that?’ Interestingly, the niche in which peer support operates was suggested by one counsellor Bondi interviewed to be a necessary and constantly regenerating one. [Counselling] will fossilise, just like other professions fossilise. And after it there’ll be another wave of people who call themselves 54


befrienders or something like that. And there’ll be cowboy chaos in that area for a while and then... that will begin to professionalise and it will fossilise too, and then there’ll be another [...] vehicle for unlocking the talents of the population (Cited by Bondi, 2005: 511). The challenge for peer support is to prevent the fossilisation of the practice, while supporting some training and processes of standardisation. In this respect the transformational peer support discourse has much to offer, with its vision of transformative practice sustained through alternative, holistic, training and education practices. It is this discourse which is being put into practice in the mental health and addictions consumer and peer workforce competencies, with their focus on mutuality, experiential knowledge, authentic relationships and human rights (Te Pou, 2014a). The challenge is to implement these competencies in a way that respects the historical constitution of peer support as fluid, relational, equitable and as non-hierarchical as is possible. References: Adame, A.L. and Leitner, L.M. (2008) Breaking out of the mainstream: the evolution of peer support alternatives to the mental health system. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry 10(3): 146-162. Aldridge, M. and Evetts, J. (2003) Rethinking the concept of professionalism: the case of journalism. British Journal of Sociology 54(4): 547-564. Anthony, W. (1993) Recovery from mental illness: the guiding vision of the mental health service system in the 1990s. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 16(4): 11-24. Archibald, M.E. (2007) The Evolution of Self-Help: How a Health Movement Became an Institution. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bondi, L. (2004) ‘A double-edged sword’? the professionalisation of counselling in the United Kingdom. Health and Place, 10, 319-328. Bondi, L. (2005) Working the spaces of neoliberal subjectivity: psychotherapeutic technologies, professionalisation and counselling. Antipode 37(3): 497-514. Bondi, L. and Fewell, J. (2003) ‘Unlocking the cage door’: the spatiality of counselling. Social and Cultural Geography 4(4): 527-547. Bradstreet, S. (2006) Harnessing the ‘lived experience’: formalising peer support approaches to promote recovery. The Mental Health Review 11(2): 33-37. Bradstreet, S. and Pratt, R. (2010) Developing peer support worker roles: reflecting on experiences in Scotland. Mental Health and Social Inclusion 14(3): 36-41. Brown D.K. and Bills, D.B. (2011) An overture for the sociology of credentialing: empirical, theoretical and moral considerations. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29(1): 133-138. Campbell, J. (2005) The historical and philosophical development of peer support programs. In S. Clay (Ed.), On Our Own Together: Peer Programs for People with Mental Illness (pp. 17-64) Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Chamberlin, J. (1977) On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. Lawrence, MA: National Empowerment Center.

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Chamberlin, J. (2004) User-run services. In J. Read, L. Mosher and R. Bentall (Eds.), Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Schizophrenia (pp. 283-290) London: Routledge. Clay, S. (2005) On Our Own Together: Peer Programs for People with Mental Illness. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Deegan, P. (1988) Recovery: the lived experience of rehabilitation. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 11(4): 11-19. Doughty, C. and Tse, S. (2011) Can consumer-led mental health services be equally effective? An integrative review of CLMH services in high-income countries. Community Mental Health Journal 47(3): 252-266. Everett, B. (1994) Something is happening: the contemporary consumer and psychiatric survivor movement in historical context. The Journal of Mind and Behavior 15(1-2): 55-69. Fournier, V. (1999) The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. Sociological Review 47(2): 280-307. Mead, S., Hilton, D. and Curtis, L. (2001) Peer support: a theoretical perspective. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 25(2): 134-141. Mead, S. and MacNeil, C. (2006) Peer support: what makes it unique? International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation 10(2): 29-37. Mental Health Commission (1998) Blueprint for Mental Health Services in New Zealand. How things need to be. Wellington: Mental Health Commission. Ministry of Health (2012) Rising to the Challenge: The Mental Health and Addictions Service Development Plan, 2012-2017. Wellington: Ministry of Health. Morrison, L.J. (2005) Talking Back to Psychiatry: The Psychiatric Consumer/Survivor/Expatient Movement. London: Routledge. Nelson, G., Janzen, R., Trainor, J. and Ochocka, J. (2008) Putting values into practice: public policy and the future of mental health consumer-run organizations. American Journal of Community Psychology 42(1-2): 192-201. O’Hagan, M. (2011) Peer support: Mapping the Terrain. Wellington, New Zealand: Careerforce. O’Hagan, M., McKee, H. and Priest, R. (2009) Consumer Survivor Initiatives in Ontario: Building for an Equitable Future: Report for CSI Builder Project. Toronto, Ontario: Ontario Federation of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs. Ontario Ministry of Health. (1993) Putting people first: the reform of mental health services in Ontario. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Health. Orwin, D. (2008) Thematic Review of Peer Support: Literature Review and Leader Interviews. Wellington: Mental Health Commission. President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. (2003) Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America. Final Report. DHHS Pub. No. SMA0303832. Rockville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Scott, A.L., Doughty, C. and Kahi, H. (2011) Peer Support Practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Retrieved 17 July 2015 from the World Wide Web: http://www.hdc.org.nz/media/199065/peer%20support%20practice%20in%20aotearo a%20nz.pdf . Scottish Executive. (2006) Delivering for Mental Health. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Smith L.T. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. Strauss A.L. (1987) Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Te Pou o Te Whakaaro Nui (2014a) Competencies for the mental health and addiction service user, consumer and peer workforce. Auckland: Te Pou. Te Pou o Te Whakaaro Nui (2014b) Service user, consumer and peer workforce: A guide for planners and funders. Auckland: Te Pou. Timmons, S. (2011) Professionalization and its discontents. Health 15(4): 337-352. Willig, C. (2008) Foucauldian discourse analysis. In C. Willig (Ed.), Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology: Adventures in Theory and Method (pp. 112-131) Maidenhead: Open University Press. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Mary O’Hagan, Frank Bristol, Andrew Cook, Tiina Vares, Terry Austrin and Angie Rippon for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Carolyn Doughty and Hamuera Kahi for help with the data collection stage of this project. Finally, thanks go to the generous participants in this study. This study was funded by the University of Canterbury College of Arts. Dr. Anne Scott is a sociologist in the Sociology and Anthropology Dept. at the University of Canterbury. She is a specialist in sociology of health and illness, and has done previous work on genetic testing, biobanking, alternative medicine, mental health and community informatics. [email protected]

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The new kava user: Diasporic identity formation in reverse. S. 'Apo' Aporosa

Abstract 'Diaspora' studies have broadened their definition to now include hybridised identities situated in both the past and future. The formation of the Indo-Fijian ethnicity is an example of the evolution of a hybrid diasporic identity. This article briefly discusses IndoFijian diaspora in Fiji before shifting its focus to Aotearoa New Zealand. In this new setting, diaspora understanding will take a new direction that concentrates on the uptake of kava drinking and aspects of the kava culture by some Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā. In doing so, the article examines how these Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā, as the 'hosts', are expanding their cultural identity by embracing an icon of identity that came with a diasporic population – Pasifikans to Aotearoa – essentially creating diasporic identity formation in reverse. Keywords: diaspora, diasporic identity formation in reverse, kava, non-Pacific kava users, Māori, Pālangi/Pākehā

Introduction For some time, social scientists have taken a keen interest in the assimilation of migrants and the blending of identities and cultures within diaspora environments (Kraidy, 2002: 323; Khanlou, 2005: 13; Hanlon & Vicino, 2014: 56-8). However, less attention has been paid to the reverse: the intentional embracing of migrant cultural practices and identity expressions by those in the host community/country. That is the aim of this article. After briefly explaining diaspora and how diasporic identity is formed, I will turn 180 degrees and discuss the uptake of kava by some Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā in Aotearoa New Zealand (A/NZ). This will illustrate their intentional use of an icon of identity brought to their homeland by Pasifika migrants. The term Māori refers to those who whakapapa (ancestrally connect) to the indigenous people of Aotearoa. Pālangi/Pākehā are common terms used by Pacific peoples and Māori to refer to those who are mostly of European 58


ancestry. Pasifika/Pasifikan is a term often applied in A/NZ and Australia to those of Pacific Island ancestry as a collective and/or those who live in a 'foreign' country, whether as visitors, recent migrants, or even those born in that 'foreign' country, who identify first and foremost with their ancestral homeland in the Pacific. The evolution of diaspora studies Professor Robin Cohen’s (2008) four stages of diaspora studies suggest themes that illustrate an evolution in diaspora meaning and application. Stage one is essentially the Jewish dispersal approximately 700 years prior to the birth of Christ. The second stage is a period in which academics broadened the definition of diaspora to include people groups who had been 'wrenched' from their homeland (p.1-2). This included groups such as indentured Indians and Chinese (p.4-5). The third stage can be viewed as a period of social constructionalist critique that sough an even wider definition and application from that of the second stage (p.1, 6). This led to a fourth stage in which diaspora meaning was extended to include the movement of all people group's, whether expelled, 'wrenched', or "dispersed for colonial or voluntarist reasons" (p.6). Although Cohen does not specify a fifth stage, this has nevertheless evolved. Diaspora studies now include identity hybridity in which dispersed people retain links to their ancestral homelands but also embrace selected practices and identity expressions found within their new host environment (Safran, 1991: 95). This though has also reinvigorated the critical debate with some suggesting that "the word 'diaspora' seems to have escaped its conceptual cage" and has been pushed well beyond its original scope (Cohen, 2008: 9; also see Rynkiewich, 2012: 295). It has also been argued that this new definition of diaspora – taking on identity features of the host – is not diaspora at all, rather it is “transnationalism” (Spoonley, 2001: 82; Rynkiewich, 2012: 283, 294). Further, regarding cultural hybridity, May (2009) argues that this theory opposes notions of tradition or cultural "rootedness" since the postmodern world fractures identities as opposed to hybridising them (pp.38-9). In this article, I accept a fifth stage model in which diaspora includes hybridised identity which has its foundations in two worlds: the past – 'where I have come from' – and the future – 'my new environment'. As Stuart Hall (1990: 235) stated, identities are "constantly producing and reproducing

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themselves anew". In diaspora, this influences hybridized notions of self situated in both the old homeland and the new host environment. Illustrating fourth and fifth stage diasporic identity formation The development of the Indo-Fijian ethnicity demonstrates both fourth and fifth stage diasporic identity. This people group currently account for around 37.5 percent of the Fijian population, with many of them descending from the 60,000 indentured labourers brought to Fiji from India between 1879 and 1916 (VoigtGraf, 2003: 367). I use the term 'from India’ in a general sense. This is because these labourers came from across sub-continental India and represented different caste structures and language groupings with varied cultural practices and worldviews (Lal, 2000: 169; Voigt-Graf, 2004: 2000). In the years immediately following the initial indenture period, in which 75 percent of the labourers remained in Fiji (Howard, 2011: 48), the first major diasporic identity transformation in diaspora occurred for this people group. This was the melding of Indian identities, essentially the coming together of Indo-ethnic 'personalities' to form a single diasporic Indian identity that unified this group as Indo-Fijians (Lal, 2000: 115). An illustration of this identity shift to greater pluralism was the development of ‘Fiji-Hindi’, a single language comprising a blend of Indian Hindi, Tamil, Teluga and Malayalam (Lal, 2000: 115; Voigt-Graf, 2004: 182) which also drew in some iTaukei (indigenous Fijian) words and phraseology (Mugler, 2004). Fiji-Hindi is now the language spoken by the majority of IndoFijians (Mugler, 2004: 234). The indenture of this people group and their subsequent formation of the Indo-Fijian ethnicity demonstrates the formation of the fourth stage of a diasporic identity whereas the adoption of selected aspects of the iTaukei language illustrates the formation of a hybridised identity or fifth stage. From an atheistic perspective, Indo-Fijian practices continue to reflect generalised images of India which remains an important "source of their culture, identity and traditions" (Voigt-Graf, 2003: 380). An exception to this is the uptake of kava by a large portion of the male Indo-Fijian community (VoigtGraf, 2004: 183). Kava is a drink made by straining the roots and basal stump of the Piper mythisticum plant through water (Aporosa, 2008: 33-35). Kava’s effects are soporific, relaxant and calming with clear-headedness, lacking the excitability, euphoria and loss of inhibition experienced with alcohol intoxication (Aporosa

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& Tomlinson, 2014: 164). The consumption of kava and the cultural practices that accompany it are considered to be one of the most potent and universally recognised markers of traditional Pasifika identity (Aporosa, 2015: 83-85). Known as the 'drink of the gods', kava is believed to contain and be capable of transferring mana (spiritual power), carrying with it powers of healing, recognition, reconciliation and affirmation (Aporosa, 2014: 35-39, 67-73). iTaukei refer to kava as wainivanua, a term that infers 'an ingestible manifestation of the land, people and their cultural practices' (Aporosa, 2014: 67-70). Further, many iTaukei believe there is a moral obligation to consume this traditional drink as part of demonstrating 'Fijian-ness' (Toren, 1988: 704). In taking up kava and selected practices that accompany it, Indo-Fijians have hybridised a quintessential expression of iTaukei identity with Indian culture (Voigt-Graf, 2004: 183) and in-turn demonstrate a fifth stage in the formation of diasporic identity. Indo-Fijian kava use is not isolated to Fiji. Large numbers of IndoFijians who have migrated to A/NZ and other countries continue to use this indigenous substance, extending their fifth stage diasporic identity expression into new environmental spaces (Voigt, 2003: 380). For example, members of the Hamilton (New Zealand) Indo-Fijian Community recently celebrated their annual Diwali Festival of Lights, an observance with its roots in India (Voigt, 2004: 193), while drinking large volumes of kava (T. Wihongi, personal communication, 2 March 2015). Although kava use among Indo-Fijians in both Fiji and A/NZ is commonplace, very little has been written on this theme, especially in relation to identity (Aporosa, 2014: 72, 121). Additionally, in a recent edition of Pacific Studies, Rynkiewich (2012) stated that while "diaspora studies have blossomed during the last two decades" (p.280), it is still in its infancy, with little attention given to Pasifika in general (pp.283, 286). This provides a great deal of latitude for commentators to push definitions and applications of diaspora to create new dialogical space. Instead of considering diaspora as simply those dispersed from their homeland and taking their identity and hybridising it with aspects of their new host environment, this article considers a reverse scenario. That reversal will illustrate the hosts – Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā in A/NZ – engaging and embracing the practice of kava drinking, an action which represents a potent symbol of identity generally attributed to Pasifika peoples. I will call this concept diasporic identity formation in reverse.

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Illustrating diasporic identity formation in reverse Pasifikans living in and visiting A/NZ have been using kava in this new environment for many years. For instance, I have heard numerous stories when at home in Fiji from former iTaukei seasonal workers who described bringing kava with them to A/NZ in the 1960s and 1970s and mixing this indigenous substance at the end of the working day with their non-Fijian co-workers. Today, kava is relatively easy to source in A/NZ, being sold in many IndoFijian owned dairies and fruit and vegetable shops. The use of kava by NZ Pasifikans is believed to be increasing with many using this traditional drink "as a visible means of affirming and demonstrating their Pasifika-ness" (Aporosa, 2014: 72, 176). By combining Census New Zealand statistics with Ministry of Health (Mason, et al., 2010: 141) data on drug use together with several recent ethnographic studies that considered kava use by Pasifikans in South Auckland (Fehoko, 2014; Port, 2014; Taufa, 2014) and Hamilton (Aporosa, 2014), it is estimated there are more than 20,000 kava drinkers in A/NZ on any given Friday or Saturday night. Moreover, from personal observations, these numbers appear to be increasing, bolstered by a growing number of non-Pasifika kava users. The uptake of kava by non-Pasifikans is not limited to A/NZ. Commentators report a growing interest in kava among American adolescents (Stacy, 2011) and the opening of kava bars in the USA (Renfro, 2015). Admittedly, there has been some kava use by non-Pasifikans in A/NZ for a number of years. Until recently though their numbers have been small and tended to reflect the likes of long-term kava user 'Mike' (fictitious name) whom I have known for a number of years. 'Mike' is a Pālangi/Pākehā who lives an alternative nature-focused lifestyle in a North Island coastal town that many would stereotype as 'hippy'. However, over the past five years I have noted increasing numbers of new kava users who reflect a greater sense of general A/NZ, especially those from the Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā ethnicities. For example, despite a high Pasifika presence at the annual Raggamuffin Reggae Festival, the majority of drinkers at The Kava Lounge (within the festival) have been of Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā ancestry. Discussions with Māori attendees regarding their kava use gleaned comments such as, “my wife is Tongan, so I drink [kava] with her brothers”, "it's good for us coz kava makes us relax, not like alcohol", and "kava fits with our culture and kōrero [conversation style]". Comments from Pālangi/Pākehā attendees at The Kava Lounge included, “I tried it in Fiji and liked it, so try to drink when I can”, “I sometimes drink kava

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with the Islanders from work”, and “I first heard it was good for stress and sleeping. I mix it up and keep it in the fridge, have like one cup a-day before bed” (various, personal communication, March, 2012; March, 2013). These comments from Kava Lounge attendees provide the first hints of diasporic identity formation in reverse resulting from the use of kava by nonPasifikans in A/NZ. Of added interest is the representation of females at the Raggamuffin Kava Lounge where female attendees often outnumbered the males. Although Pasifika woman consume kava in their homelands and A/NZ, when compared with their male counterparts, they are usually the minority. This is partially influenced by kava’s association with masculine ideologies and roles (Lebot, Merlin, & Lindstrom, 1997: 137-138). I will return to this theme later. Motivating kava-related diasporic identity formation in reverse Several factors appear to be promoting and encouraging the uptake of kava by non-Pasifika users in A/NZ. These include access, health, and changing attitudes toward alcohol. As Mike Jay (2012a) points out, people have sought out and used drugs for their effects since the beginning of time (pp.6, 9-10). The freedom of travel, globalisation and access to a wider variety of drugs has increased knowledge, popularity and availability (Jay, 2012b: 1min.20sec). Concerning health, the benefits of kava are widely documented (Lebot & Cabalion, 1988: 23-29), especially kava’s use as an anti-anxiety aid (Sarris et al., 2013). Schmidt (2014), citing a June 2014 German Court ruling, stated that kava is safer than anxiolytics such as "benzodiazepines [as these] and other chemically defined pharmaceutical medications" cause higher rates of liver toxicity. Kava is also a mild anaesthetic (Singh & Singh, 2002: 734) with Rasmussen (2005: 6-7) explaining that in a hepatotoxicity safety study which compared kava and paracetamol, kava was found to be "dramatically" safer than "a popular non-prescription drug widely sold through grocery outlets." More recently, scientists have been investigating the link between lowoccurrence rates of specific cancers, namely ovarian, bladder and lung cancer and leukaemia and kava use (Sotheeswaran, 2002: 17; Tabudravu & Jaspars, 2005: 26; Zi & Simoneau, 2005: 3485-6; McNarie, 2012: 92-4; Leitzman et al., 2013; Vasich, 2014). Kava therefore offers a unique alternative for those who are considering or seeking out a sugar and calorie-free traditional substance with health related benefits that do not cause marked euphoria, increased anti-

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social behaviour or manifest the nasty hang-over effects of alcohol. Further, because kava is not alcohol and does not “befuddle the mind” (d'Abbs, 1995: 169; also see Aporosa, 2011: 159), I have noted an increase in users from the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and Islamic community where alcohol use is forbidden. I would suggest though that sports and sporting celebrities – especially those from the rugby league and union codes – are leading influences for the introduction of kava to new users which in turn contributes to diasporic identity formation in reverse. For instance, Zorim – of Waikato-Tainui (Māori) whakapapa, a former Penrith Panther’s and Warrior's rugby league player – commented that former rugby league team captain Ruben Wiki – of Samoan/Māori ancestry and nicknamed the Kava King – played a key role in his introduction to kava. Zorim is only one of many who Wiki has influenced (Wilson, 2014). In a 2012 TVNZ documentary (Lumsden, 2012), Wiki explained his motives behind introducing kava to his fellow players stating it was an attempt to “...change the culture. There was a lot of bad publicity... due to guys going out after the game and getting caught in the [news] papers due to too much alcohol. I wanted to change [this].” The benefit of kava over alcohol for some is not limited to the professional sports arena. For instance, within 12 months of the Australian government placing import restrictions on kava (DA&H, 2011), reports of increased alcohol use and anti-social behaviour began to surface from within the Australian Pasifika community. One commentator reported, What is now happening is alcohol has become the substitute for kava; kava's promotion of a gentle sense of contentment is being replaced with the violence so often associated with excessive drinking. The good work done with young people by fostering their traditional culture... [is being] undone by pushing them towards alcohol (Pinomi, 2008: 15). Fehoko (2014; 2015), in his study that focused on young Tongan men and their attendance at faikava venues in South Auckland, described these environments as "cultural classrooms" critical to increased levels of empowerment and wellbeing. Moreover, these faikava circles were shown to deter alcohol use and in turn decrease the likelihood of anti-social behaviour and gang involvement by attendees (also see Black, 2015). This suggests the value of kava over alcohol and its role in both cultural continuance and socio-cultural stability

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within Pasifika communities, a factor that plays a role in kava use by some professional rugby union and league players. The Dox Brothers Kalapu is an example of a rugby kava venue in A/NZ that has gone on to influence non-Pasifikan kava users. This club was initially founded by former Waikato Chiefs (A/NZ rugby union franchise) and All Black (A/NZ national rugby team) Sione Lauaki (Tongan). Initially members were rugby union and league players of Pasifika ancestry, although this expanded as players from non-Pasifika ethnicities began attending. In another example, former Waikato Chiefs and All Black Sitiveni Sivivatu (Fijian) and Auckland Blues (A/NZ rugby union franchise) and All Black Jo Rokocoko (Fijian) frequently had non-Pasifikans being introduced and subsequently returning to kava drinking in their homes in A/NZ prior to taking up rugby contracts in France. Sivivatu and Rokocoko are now introducing European friends to kava, some of whom had never heard of this traditional substance prior to meeting this pair. Current Waikato Chiefs, All Black and Māori All Black, Liam Messam is a regular at kava sessions in Hamilton and when on tour he occasionally takes kava with him to drink with his team-mates. An example of this can be seen in a recent Pacific TV video (2014: upload). It shows some of Messam's All Black team mates drinking kava following their game against Scotland in November 2014, a kava 'session' that included several of the Pālangi/Pākehā players. Additionally, near the end of the 2014 ITM Cup (New Zealand) rugby union competition season, Te Karere news (2014) interviewed Northland Taniwha players (Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā) who described the team coming together and drinking kava following their game. These are but a hand-full of rugby league and union players who regularly drink and introduce new consumers to kava (also see Walshaw, 2014). Kava use by sporting heroes has increased its popularity among ethnic groups not usually associated with it and in turn facilitated diasporic identity formation in reverse. While the reasons cited above also contribute to the uptake of kava by Māori, many from this ethnicity are also introduced to this traditional substance following inter-marriage and the blending of their families with Pasifika immigrants. But there are also wider issues at play. Hoturoa Kerr, a WaikatoTainui tribal member, academic and traditional navigation expert adds an interesting perspective. He is a regular kava drinker who is married to a Hawaiian. Kerr stated that while his wife's family had some influence on his

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kava use, "we Māori originally came from the Pacific, so kava is already in us" (H. Kerr, personal communication, 22 Oct., 2014). Kerr went on to explain that while whakapapa and ancestry is critical to ‘being’ Māori, many Māori perceive their ancestral line as commencing at the arrival of Māori to Aotearoa some 850 years ago. “We [Māori] talk about coming from Hawaiki [the pre-migration homeland of Māori], but at the same time we are mostly inward focused and see ourselves as separate, with no Pacific link”. Kerr added that imagery such as Steel & Goldie's famous 1898 painting entitled, ‘The arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand’, plays a role in this. He stated that the painting – presented in Figure 1 – creates impressions that Māori arrived in Aotearoa emaciated and near death which in turn fuels notions of a severance between Māori and Pasifika ancestral, cultural and environmental ties due to ‘return’ appearing impossible. "That painting is rubbish" asserts Kerr; and he should know, he is the owner of Haunui, a double hulled waka haurua based on traditional specifications similar to the vessels used by early migrating Māori. Kerr has sailed Haunui from Aotearoa, through the Pacific Islands, to South America (NZMM, 2013). He explained that Haunui can sail between Fiji and Auckland, New Zealand, in seven days, demonstrating the ease in which early migrating Māori could travel between Aotearoa and their former Pasifika homes (Kerr, 2014). "Kava has always been important to Islanders. Early voyagers would have taken kava with them, brought it here [to Aotearoa], used it here. Kava is part of Māori culture, but we gave it up once we got established here."

Figure 1. "The arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand"; a famous painting by Louis John Steele and Charles Frederick Goldie suggesting Māori arrived in Aotearoa emaciated and near death. (Source: Steele & Goldie, 1989).

Commentators add to Kerr's assertion. For instance, Huffman (2012: 25) stated, 66


Early Pacific Islanders considered kava a desirable and tradeable commodity. It had to be traded because, lacking flowers and seeds, it cannot reproduce naturally… Well cut and wrapped fresh kava branches can be planted after sea voyages of up to two weeks… Thus, we can attribute the entire distribution of drinkable kava across the Pacific to the earlier maritime explorers of the region, long before the late arrival of European explorers. Crowley (1994) spoke specifically of early Māori and kava; The first Polynesian migrants in New Zealand probably also brought kava with them, though it failed to grow in the colder climate. However, the plant kawakawa of the related Macropiper excelsum from a different genesis (which the Māori used for medicinal purposes) is found there. The word kawa in Māori is also used to mean ‘marae protocol’, which would accord with kava having been previously used in a ceremonial context as we find in Polynesia today (p.95). Additionally, Taylor (1848: 24, 100) presents a Māori proverb – "Eaha te tohu o te Ringaringa he kawakawa", literally meaning, “What is the sign in our hands? Kawakawa leaves!” – and suggests that kawakawa – which Bock (2000: 176-7) called "Māori kava" – was consumed as “cava” when Māori first arrived in Aotearoa. Adding weight to this theory is Anderson (2000) who suggests that the Māori place names of Parikawakawa (at Kaikoura), Te Kawakawa and Kawaranga (near Thames) were given by Māori to reflect their meeting together and drinking of kawakawa, mirroring their traditional consumption of kava prior to sailing south to Aotearoa (p.393). Finally, Aporosa (2014: 29-31), drawing on several sources of literature, argues that early Māori would have used kawakawa spiritually and recreationally as a substitute for kava, adding that this knowledge was lost following the introduction of the 1907 Tohunga Suppression Act. Kerr, as part of revitalising traditional knowledge concerning early voyaging, is playing a critical role in the creation of diasporic identity formation in reverse related to kava use framed within Māori-Pasifika ancestral and cultural connections. In recognition of Māori's Pasifika links, kava is frequently consumed aboard Haunui (Figure 2). An additional factor that appears to encourage new non-Pasifika kava users and thereby facilitate diasporic identity formation in reverse are venues which are not dominated by one Pasifika ethnicity. This, I would suggest, is because multi-ethnic venues appear to be more inclusive and less threatening to the new user. The Dox Brothers Kalapu provides a good example of this. This

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kava club (shown in Figure 3) is situated in a garage near Templeview, Hamilton, and is currently run by an A/NZ born Tongan. Unlike the Tongan faikava kalapu, iTaukei or Indo-Fijian groups that meet across Hamilton, since its inception, The Dox Brothers Kalapu has not been dominated by one particular Pasifika ethnicity. Non-Pasifika attendees at this kalapu quickly adopt and engage in Pasifika behaviours and values. This includes reciprocity by offering small amounts of kava, sweets and fruit as a contribution to drinking sessions, sitting cross-legged on woven mats on the floor, showing respect to one and other and the kava by clapping when receiving and finishing their cup of kava (Toren, 1990: 35), using Pasifika words and phraseology associated with kava use, and wearing sulu/lavalava and bula/aloha shirts or t-shirts depicting symbols of Pasifika culture.

Figure 2. Crew members drinking kava aboard Haunui (waka haurua). (Source: Turanga Kerr, 2011).

In the case of The Dox Brothers Kalapu, diasporic identity formation in reverse results from more than simply ‘drinking’ kava. It is created through a cultural engagement with Pasifika people through kava. The Pasifika influence comes from across the Pacific region as opposed to a single environment such as Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu or Hawaii. Non-Pasifika attendees create hybridised Pasifika expressions based on personal understanding by self-selecting and using cultural expressions related to kava from the various Pasifika environments. This adds depth and meaning to the experience and is critical in the development of diasporic identity formation in reverse. I will expand further on this shortly. Although The Dox Brothers Kalapu is a male only 68


environment, I frequently see Māori and Pālangi/Pākehā female kava drinkers in other venues across Hamilton and Auckland. Admittedly these numbers are fewer than at the Raggamuffin Kava Lounge; however it does appear that diasporic identity formation in reverse for kava drinking females is unaffected, or not concerned by, the masculine discourse and concepts associated with Pasifika kava consumption.

Figure 3. Multi-ethnic attendees at The Dox Brothers [kava] Kalapu (Hamilton, New Zealand). (Source: Author, 2013).

An example of this new Pālangi/Pākehā kava user is Marty and Richard who I have known for approximately four years. Both are first and third generation New Zealand born Europeans. Visually and vocationally these two contrast the likes of long-time kava user 'Mike', mentioned earlier. They dress more conservatively, with Marty a post-doctorate university researcher and lecturer and Richard a doctoral chemistry student. Both started coming to The Dox Brothers Kalapu as a result of meeting kava drinking Pasifika men at Church and in the community. Richard, recalling his first time at The Dox Brothers Kalapu, stated, The atmosphere blew me away. It [the club house] was dimly lit, with 20 plus men sitting on chairs with the legs cut off, in a circle on the floor. They were all age groups… a mixture of Polynesian and Pāpalangi [Pālangi]. There were Tongans, Samoans, Fijians, Fijian Indians, and even Niueans – all associating together in mutual respect, without animosity or any kind of class system… At no point did I

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ever get made to feel out of place; in fact I felt like they were honoured for a Pāpalangi to be taking such interest in their culture (R. Brunton, personal communication, 5 Nov., 2014). When asked why he continues returning to The Dox Brothers Kalapu, Marty added, because “we talk about important things… I’ve made new friends… it [kava] relaxes me and sharpens the mind… [and] the next day… I'm much more relaxed… One thing I appreciate is the semi-ceremonial way we drink…” (M. Atkins, personal communication, 5 Nov., 2014). Marty and Richard have since acquired their own kava drinking utensils and drink in Pālangi/Pākehā only groups in their own homes having formed a kava club called Kalapu Pālangi. Marty stated that when drinking at his house with Pālangi/Pākehā friends, “we still observe the same cultural aspects… Drinking kava out of this context seems strange and not as enjoyable.” As they have become more familiar with the kava culture, they have ventured into new environments dominated by one ethnicity (Tongan, Fijian etc.), spaces in which non-Pasifika peoples would never have been seen a few years ago. This adds to, and strengthens, diasporic identity formation in reverse. Conclusion Kava is arguably one of the most potent icons of collective Pasifika identity (Aporosa, 2015). Its influence as an input of ‘who I am’ is increasingly being taken up by those who traditionally had very little or no connection with this traditional substance and the cultural practices associated with it. As Pasifika kava users have immigrated to new environments and engaged fifth stage diasporic identity change, they have also contributed to diasporic identity transformation in reverse as some non-Pasifikan hosts have taken up kava use, an imported Pasifika identity marker (Spoonley, 2001: 95-96). New non-Pasifika kava users cite health, alcohol alternative, camaraderie and good discussion as reasons for pursuing and then returning to kava consumption. These observations also add to earlier speculation by Lebot et al. (1997) on whether or not kava might be the next “world drug” (p.198-9). Whereas most drugs are popularised due to their effects (Jay, 2012: 22), the traditional aspects and identity elements associated with kava – often borrowed and incorporated into the use practices of these new users – add efficacy to Lebot et al.’s world drug proposition. Moreover, this would suggest these new kava users are adding to their sense of self and defining their identity in

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comparison to, and in association with, an ethnicity in diaspora. Marty reinforces this observation when he stated, What is New Zealand ‘Kiwi’ culture? How do you define it? My parents came from England, but I don’t call myself English. Kava gives me a connection to something physical, to people, to a culture. It adds to me as a person (M. Atkins, personal communication, 4 Nov., 2014). Richard added: As a white New Zealander, at times I feel a disconnect from what my cultural identity is supposed to be. When people speak of New Zealand culture, it often takes the shape of alcohol-fuelled gatherings, which I want no part of. Kava is not native to [me... but] I feel that I am able to include the practice of kava drinking into my culture. Although racially I am white, I do not accept that I must follow the practices and culture that my race predominantly follows. Instead, I feel that I am able to create my own culture, and I feel connected to other cultures that use kava as I do so (R. Brunton, personal communication, 5 Nov., 2014). In taking up kava drinking, these new users are drawing on and including identity attributes of a people group in diaspora and in turn outworking diasporic identity formation in reverse. This is particularly the case for Pālangi/Pākehā. While a similar case could be made for Māori, perhaps this is more-so identity re-construction in diaspora following a 850 year hiatus? As Kerr stated, kava “is” an aspect of Māori culture, but one that was given up during the early settlement of Aotearoa. As Māori continue on their path of decolonisation, identity solidification and self-determination, maybe a day will come when kava will again sit alongside the dominant Māori cultural markers of pōwhiri, waiata and kapa haka, re-embracing a powerful identity element that was, until 800 odd years ago, also what defined Māori identity. Such a move would have similarities with male Hawaiian post-colonial re-engagement with their former kava culture, much of which was lost following the arrival of the early missionaries (Kanahele, 1995: 108). Of interest here is Tengan (2008: 12, 62-3, 216) who explains the role that Māori have played as part of this Hawaiian cultural revitalisation, a partnership that could possibly be reversed to aid Māori in reuniting with an element of their pre-migration Hawaiki culture. While this article has added to Rynkiewich's (2012) observed lack of commentary regarding Pasifika diaspora and identity, it has also demonstrated that Pasifikans have identity markers that some within their host environment 71


find attractive. This has occurred to the point that some hosts have stepped out of their comfort zones to purse new ways of learning and participation in order to enhance their own sense of self through reverse diasporic identity formation. In return, as Pasifikans have seen hosts embrace aspects of their culture, this has resulted in increased notions of empowerment for Pasifikans which in turn adds new dimensions to their fourth and fifth stage diasporic identity formation experience.

Glossary aloha/bula shirt faikava Fiji-Hindi Indo-Fijian

Colourfully patterned shirts frequently worn by Pacific Islanders.

Recreational kava consumption (Tonga). Common language spoken by Indo-Fijians. Mostly the descendants of the 60,000 indentured labourers brought to Fiji in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Hawaiki Pre-migration homeland of Māori (see Smith, 1910: 257-60). iTaukei Indigenous Fijian. kava The Piper mythisticum plant and traditional beverage made from it. Kalapu Contemporary creation for the word 'club' (Tonga). kapa haka Cultural performance (Māori). kawa Protocol, ceremony (Māori). kawakawa Macropiper excelsum; an Aotearoa native plant. Kiwi The flightless native bird and national icon of New Zealand; also a term of reference/nickname for people from New Zealand. kōrero Conversation, discussion (Māori). lavalava See sulu. mana Spiritual power, super national power (for the purpose of this article; Firth, 1940: 485). Pākehā A New Zealander of European descent. Pasifikan Term often applied in Australasia to those of Pacific Island ancestry. Pālangi Term used by Pacific peoples to refer to those of European ancestry. Pāpalangi This, and Pālangi, are used by some Samoan’s and Tongan’s to refer to those of European ancestry. pōwhiri Māori welcome ceremony. sulu Cotton wrap-around skirt typically worn by Pasifika men and woman. Also known as lavalava and sarong. taniwha Water spirit, monster, powerful creature, powerful leader (Māori). The Dox A kava club in Hamilton, New Zealand, with its name inspired by Brothers Tongan language; 'Dox' is slang for Tokoua, a Tongan word literally Kalapu meaning ‘brother'. ‘Kalapu’ is a contemporary creation for the word 'club'. Tohunga Regulation enacted in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1907 aimed at Suppression encouraging Māori to forsake their religious practices and traditional Act healing systems. waiata Song, chant, psalm (Māori). 72

New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 wainivanua waka haurua whakapapa

Inferring 'water of the land, people and their cultural practices' (Fiji). Double-hulled voyaging canoe (Māori). Genealogy, lineage, descent (Māori).

References Andersen, J. C. (2000) Maori place-names: Also personal names and names of colours, weapons, and natural objects. Christchurch: Cadsonbury Publications. Aporosa, S. (2008) Yaqona and education in Fiji: A clash of cultures? Germany: VDM Verlag. Aporosa, S. (2011) Is kava alcohol?: The myths and the facts. Journal of Community Health and Clinical Medicine for the Pacific, 17(1): 157-164. Aporosa, S. (2014) Yaqona (kava) and education in Fiji: Investigating ‘cultural complexities’ from a post-development perspective. Albany: Massey University, Directorate Pasifika@Massey. Aporosa, S. (2015) Yaqona (kava) as a symbol of cultural identity. Locale: The AustralasianPacific Journal of Regional Food Studies 4: 79-101. Aporosa, S., & Tomlinson, M. (2014) Kava hangover and gold-standard science. Anthropologica (Journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society), 56(1): 163-175. Black, T. (2015) Graduate keeps culture alive through kava. Maori TV. Jan. 18. http://www.maoritelevision.com/news/regional/graduate-keeps-culture-alive-throughkava. Bock, M. P. (2000) 'Maori kava' (Macropiper excelsum). Eleusis 4: 175-179. Cohen, R. (2008) Global diasporas: An introduction (2nd ed.) New York: Routledge. Crowley, T. (1994) Proto who drank kava? In A. Pawley & M. Ross (Eds.), Austronesian terminologies: Continuity and change (Pacific linguistics. Series C-127) (pp. 87-100) Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University. d'Abbs, P. (1995) The power of kava or the power of ideas? Kava use and kava policy in the Northern Territory, Australia. In N. J. Pollock (Ed.), The power of kava (Vol. 18, Canberra Anthropology (Special volume,1&2): pp. 166-183) Canberra: Australian National University. DH&A (Department of Health and Aging). (2011) Importation of Kava. Australian Government (July 8). Retrieved from http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/importation-of-kava. Fehoko, E. (2014) Pukepuka fonua: An exploratory study on the faikava as an identity marker for New Zealand-born Tongan males in Auckland, New Zealand. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology. Retrieved from http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/7723. Fehoko, E. (2015) Social space and cultural identity: The faikava as a supplementary site for maintaining Tongan identity in New Zealand. New Zealand Sociology, 30(1): 131139. Firth, R. (1940) The analysis of Mana: An empirical approach. Journal of Polynesian Society, 49: 438-510. Hall, S. (1990) Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference (pp. 222-237). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Hanlon, B., & Vicino, T. J. (2014) Global migration: The basic. New York: Routledge. Howard, M. C. (2011) Transnationalism and society: An introduction. North Carolina: McFarland.

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Huffman, K. (2012). Kava: A Pacific elixir. MUSE (Journal of the Sydney University Museums)(1): 24-25. Jay, M. (2012a) High society: Mind-altering drugs in history and culture. Vermont: Park Street Press. Jay, M. (2012b) High society. YouTube, Jan. 26. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1orJhOqkOCo. Kanahele, G. D. (1995) Waikiki 100 B.C. to 1900 A.D.: An untold story. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Kerr, H. (2014) Haunui and rangatahi development. Presentation at Waikato-Tainui all-staff hui. Aug. 12. Hamilton: Tainui Group Holdings Board Room. Khanlou, N. (2005) Cultural identity as part of youth’s self-concept in multicultural settings. International Journal of Mental Health & Addiction 2(3): 1-14. Kraidy, M. (2002) Hybridity in cultural globalization. Communication Theory 12(3): 316339. Lal, B. V. (2000) Chalo Jahaji: On a journey through indenture in Fiji. Canberra and Suva: Division of Pacific and Asian History, Australian National University and Fiji Museum. Lebot, V., & Cabalion, P. (1988) Kavas of Vanuatu: Cultivars of Piper methysticum Frost (Vol. Technical Paper No.195). Noumea: South Pacific Commission. Lebot, V., Merlin, M., & Lindstrom, L. (1997) Kava, the Pacific elixir: The definitive guide to its ethnobotany, history and chemistry. Vermont: Healing Arts Press. Leitzman, P., Narayanapillai, S. C., Balbo, S., Zhou, B., Upadhyaya, P., Shaik, A. A., . . . Xing, C. (2013) Kava blocks 4-(Methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone– induced lung tumorigenesis in association with reducing O6-methylguanine DNA adduct in A/J mice. Cancer Prevention Research, 7(1): 86-96. Lumsden, A. J. (2012) Radar across the Pacific: Epilogue (Episode 6) New Zealand: TVNZ (broadcast July 24). http://tvnz.co.nz/radar-across-the-pacific/s2011-ep6-video4970982. Mason, K., Hewitt, A., Stefanogiannis, K., Bhattacharya, A., Yeh, L. C., & Devlin, M. (2010) Drug use in New Zealand: Key results of the 2007/08 New Zealand Alcohol and Drug Use Survey. Wellington: Ministry of Health. (p.141) May, S. (2009) Critical multiculturalism and education. In J. A. Banks (Ed.): The Routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 33-48). New York: Routledge. McNarie, D. A. (2012) Root medicine. Hana Hou! The magazine of the Hawaiian Airlines, 15(5): 91-97. Mugler, F. (2004) The spice of life: Borrowing and Fiji's Indian languages. In J. Tent & P. Geraghty (Eds.), Borrowing: A Pacific perspective (pp. 233-252). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. NZMM (New Zealand Maritime Museum) (2013) Our latest visitor. Voyager, March 6. http://blog.maritimemuseum.co.nz/2013/03/our-latest-visitor.html. Pacific TV. (2014) All Blacks drink kava after Scotland game: Nov. 16. https://www.facebook.com/PacificTV.info/posts/741694292591805. Pinomi, S. (2008) Kava restriction puts an unfair burden on Pacific culture, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 30. p.15. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/kava-restriction-puts-an-unfair-burden-onpacific-culture/2008/05/29/1211654216506.html. Port, H. (2014). Kava: A longitudinal study into kava consumption and emerging patterns of kava usage with subsequent effects on Pacific families living in South Auckland.

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 (Bachelor of Health Science: Honours in Psychology), Auckland University of Technology. http://www.aut.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/591195/Hilda-PortKava-Dissertation-2014.pdf. Rasmussen, P. (2005) Submission on proposed reclassification of kava as a prescription medicine - Medicines Classification Committee, June 2005. Auckland: New Zealand Association of Medical Herbalists. Renfro, K. (2015). I drank kava - the trendy, non-alcoholic beverage that's supposed to make you feel high - but it just made me sick. Business Insider Australia (online), September 11. http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-does-kava-tea-do-2015-9. Rynkiewich, M. A. (2012) Pacific Islands diaspora studies. Pacific Studies. Special issue: Pacific Islands diaspora, identity, and incorporation 35(1/2): 280-302. Safran, W. (1991) Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1(1): 83-99. Sarris, J., Stough, C., Bousman, C. A., Wahid, Z. T., Murray, G., Teschke, R., Savage, K.M., Dowell, A., Ng, C., Schweitzer, I. (2013) Kava in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study. Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 33(5): 1-6. Schmidt, M. (2014) German Court ruling reverses kava ban; German Regulatory Authority appeals decision. HerbalEGram, 11(7) http://cms.herbalgram.org/heg/volume11/07July/GermanKavaBanReversal.html?ts= 1443080085&signature=4a90e6b17036bdef1912cdf1d6eb19c3 Singh, Y. N., & Singh, N. N. (2002) Therapeutic potential of kava in the treatment of anxiety disorders. CNS Drugs 16(11):731-43. Smith, S. P. (1910) Hawaiki: The original home of the Maori: With a sketch of Polynesian history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sotheeswaran, S. (2002) Anticancer activity studies on kava (Piper Methysticum) extracts. Paper presented at the Pacific Kava Research Symposium, Suva. Spoonley, P. (2001) Transnational Pacific communities: Transforming the politics of place and identity. In Macpherson, P. Spoonley & M. Anae (Eds.) Tangaga o te moana nui: The evolving identities of Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 81-96). Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. Stacy, S. (2011) Relaxation drinks and their use in adolescents. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology 21(6): 605-10. Steele, L.J. & Goldie, C. (1898) The arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand (painting) http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/1601/depicting-the-arrival-of-maori. Tabudravu, J. N., & Jaspars, M. (2005) Anticancer activities of constituents of kava (Piper methysticum) South Pacific Journal of Natural Science, 23: 26-29. Taufa, A. H. M. (2014) Her side of the kava story: Exploring the effects of heavy kava use based on the perspective of Tongan women residing in Auckland, New Zealand. (unpublished Master’s thesis of Public Health), The University of Auckland. Taylor, R. (1848) A leaf from the natural history of New Zealand. Auckland: Robert Stokes, at the Office of the New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian. Te Karere. (2014) ITM Cup: Taniwha trio do the damage in Dunedin. Te Karere [Māori news]: Television New Zealand. Sept. 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddI9U7PDJf4. Tengan, T. P. K. (2008) Native men remade: Gender and nation in contemporary Hawai‘i. North Carolina: Duke University Press. Toren, C. (1988) Making the present, revealing the past: The mutability and continuity of tradition as process. Man (New Series) 23(4): 696-717.

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Toren, C. (1990) Making sense of hierarchy: Cognition as social process in Fiji. London: The Athlone Press. Vasich, T. (2014) Can kava cure cancer? UCIrvine News (University of California: Irvine), Feb. 25. http://news.uci.edu/features/can-kava-cure-cancer/. Voigt-Graf, C. (2003) The emergence of an Indo-Fijian transnational community. In R. R. Iredale, C. Hawksley & S. Castles (Eds.), Migration in the Asia Pacific: Population, settlement and citizenship issues (pp. 367-387) Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Voigt-Graf, C. (2004) Twice migrants' relationship to their ancestral homeland: The case of Indo-Fijians and India. Journal of Pacific Studies 27(1-2): 177-201. Walshaw, N. (2014) Cult Eels hero Semi Radradra talks about being lured to the NRL, and bringing his kava with him. The Daily Telegraph, March 10. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/cult-eels-hero-semi-radradra-talks-aboutbeing-lured-to-the-nrl-and-bringing-his-kava-with-him/story-fni3fbgz1226850050327. Wilson, C. (2014) The Kava King going soft? Not Ruben. E-Tangata: Sports, Nov. 27. http://e-tangata.co.nz/news/the-kava-king-going-soft-not-ruben. Zi, X., & Simoneau, A. R. (2005) Flavokawain A: A novel chalcone from kava extract, induces apoptois in bladder cancer cells by involvement of Bax protein-dependent and mitochondria-dependent apoptotic pathway and suppresses tumour growth in mice. Cancer Research, 65(8): 3479-3486. Acknowledgements Special thanks must go to my family, friends and research assistants in Fiji and New Zealand who, without your wisdom, trust and openness, together with the many hours we have spent together at the kava bowl, this article would have been impossible. I also wish to acknowledge the input and guidance of my friend Dr. Matt ‘Maciu’ Tomlinson (Australian National University), American born – New Jerseyan of European ancestry – who has ‘borrowed’ the kava culture and woven it into his own sense of self, epitomising the focus of this article. Thanks must also go to Hoturoa Kerr (Waikato-Tainui, Aotearoa), waka warrior (see http://www.maoritelevision.com/tv/shows/waka-warriors) and Pacific unifier and to noqu i tau o Valerie Bichard (Draubuta, Tailevu, Fiji; University of Canberra) for your valuable comments. Finally, to the Pasifika kava drinking rugby union and league players, my iTaukei family and friends in New Zealand, Tokoua Troy Wihongi (Ngapuhi, Aotearoa/Vava'u, Tonga), and Kauasi Bourne Senior (Otea, Vava'u, Tonga) and the crew at The Dox Brother’s [kava] Kalapu (Hamilton, New Zealand); malo 'aupito and vinaka vakalevu sara (huge thanks) for providing kava consumption venues where non-Pasifika peoples are welcome, allowing them to experience 'our' culture and add something of 'us' to who they are. 'Apo' Aporosa is maternally related to the village of Naduri in Macuata, Fiji. He has a PhD in Development Studies from Massey University, New Zealand, focused on the interplay between traditional kava use and contemporary society. He was awarded the 2016 New Zealand Health Research Council Pasifika PostDoctoral Research Fellowship. Situated at The University of Waikato’s Anthropology Programme and working with the University’s School of Psychology’s Traffic Road Safety Research Group (TARS), Aporosa is

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 investigating driver fitness following the consumption of large traditional volumes of kava. www.aporosa.net

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The Impact of Police Culture on Organisational Change: the case of Police Use of DNA Catherine Gardner Abstract International literature pertinent to the police use of DNA technology identifies that when the police do use DNA to investigate crime the results are good, confirming that DNA is an effective means by which to identify offenders and that the police should make use of it. There are two key issues that prevent the effective use of DNA technology: 1) ineffective application of organisational processes to use it efficiently; in that there is reluctance by staff to change their behaviours leading to a likelihood that new processes will be circumvented; 2) the cultural resistance to change at both the middle management and front line levels. These two are intrinsically linked as they drive each other. This is interpreted from the theoretical construct of Chan’s ‘field and habitus’ conceptualisation of policing and the impact that police culture can have on the successful implementation of new technology. This research looks at one district within the New Zealand Police to examine how they use the national DNA database to investigate crime. Files where DNA was found at the scene of a crime were reviewed and a range of practitioners were interviewed to establish their views on DNA use by the police. The results of the study were the identification of several issues with the data entry and the capturing of statistics. While the data was limited due to the vagaries of police information, it was discovered that despite all the time and energy the New Zealand Police have spent on DNA technology they have not reduced crime or in some cases even solved crime in spite of its use. The empirical evidence gathered from police files, interviews and other literature showed that although the New Zealand national DNA database functions as intended, the police do not make the best use of it to investigate crime. Keywords: Police culture, technology, field and habitus, DNA, legitimacy, change management. Introduction The research aimed to establish if police culture prevented the New Zealand Police from making the best use of DNA technology to investigate crime. The 78


emphasis has been placed on police culture as the theoretical construct adopted for the research is Chan’s adaptation of the concepts of field and habitus as applied to policing. That is the environment, arena or ‘field’ of struggles within which the police operate and the culture or shared individual ‘habitus’ that may enable or disable that environment. Although police culture is a focus of this research; legitimacy, change management, police technology and police hierarchy are also reviewed. This research focuses on the use of DNA technology to investigate crime by reviewing DNA files and interviewing police staff who use DNA as part of their work. This is to compare the perception or views of staff as to the benefits of DNA technology to investigate crime and the reality of what those interviewed actually do with DNA when investigating crime. DNA is the chemical code specifying a person’s genetic makeup, appearance and lineage and is unique to all individuals except identical twins (Kirby, 1992). In 1984, Jeffreys found that portions of DNA contain regions that are made up of an unusual sequence of 10 to 15 DNA bases (called a core sequence), repeated several times. Jeffreys also discovered that these gene sequences in the hypervariable regions were different in every individual except for identical twins (GeneTalk, 2004). This uniqueness provides necessary differentiation for the identification of a DNA fingerprint for all people. Jeffreys' method of identifying offenders was first used successfully in 1986 in the case of a serial murderer/rapist in Enderby and Narborough in England (Wambaugh, 1989). With this understanding of the potential for the use of DNA, the door had been opened for its use as a forensic tool. With police forces' penchant for adopting new technologies and championing them in public fora as a means of promoting legitimacy, it would be only a matter of time before DNA was taken up as a tool for law enforcement; as a new and novel way to secure the arrest of offenders. Implications for Law Enforcement Agencies The rise of DNA technology has huge implications for law enforcement agencies throughout the world. A growing number of countries have introduced the use of DNA technology into their criminal justice systems and this growth has been rapid and far reaching (Williams & Johnson, 2008). The New Zealand Police have embraced this technology through investment in the National DNA Databank and continue to invest in DNA sampling. In relation to the arrest of

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offenders and reduction of crime, there is a need to establish what actually is accomplished by having a national DNA databank. This is important because a key reason the public support the police is that they view them as legitimate (Hinds & Murphy, 2007). This public perception of legitimacy enables the police to do their job and while this perception is not necessarily the reality, this is not important as long as it is real to the public. According to Samkin, Allen and Wallace (2010) it is the extent of stakeholder support for an organisation that determines its legitimacy. Therefore, investment in this new technology is likely to be acceptable to the public only as long as DNA profiling is perceived as an effective investigative tool and does not violate any human-rights issues in the taking and retaining of DNA profiles. In 1992 the New Zealand government agreed to enact legislation governing the taking of blood samples for DNA purposes. Early in 1993 the police raised a new proposal involving additional powers to take blood samples from convicted offenders for the purpose of maintaining a DNA databank. On 12th August 1996 the Criminal Investigations (Blood Samples) Act 1995 was enacted, enabling the national DNA databank to be established. In 1996 New Zealand became the second country in the world to create a national DNA databank. It took four years for this legislation to be passed because of the contentious nature of DNA and consultation with many sections of society would have been required. The police have previously been keen to adopt new technology and the following paragraphs discuss the history and outcomes of this adoption. The introduction of computers meant that police officers were able to be held accountable for their movements and their workload and quality of this work were able to be monitored. Manning (1992) argued that the most important recent innovations in technology involved computers and related software. According to Chan (2001) technology promised to improve effectiveness and efficiency in policing. She further suggests that one of the reasons police introduced new technology was to improve their performance in order to be more accountable to the public. Manning (2001) agrees, stating that technological changes in policing are driven by the need for efficiency, accurate information gathering for outside agencies and to meet new requirements for police management and public accountability. Likewise, with the growth of new technology, monitoring the work of the police has become far easier (Moore,

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2003; Walsh, 2001; Weisburd, Mastrofski, McNalley, Greenspan & Willis, 2003). According to Chan (2001) there are aspects to the introduction of new technology to the police. It is dependent on how technology interacts with existing cultural values, management styles, work practices and technical capabilities. If any of this is handled badly it may make the successful introduction of subsequent new policing technologies more difficult. Matthewman (2011) suggests that technology can shape the environment and can have an impact on every aspect of our daily lives. The police would need to take this into consideration when introducing any technology into the workplace. DNA evidence is a new technology that gives the police greater ability to solve crime, but has it changed the way in which the police conduct their business? DNA evidence can be described as a resource but one of the constraints of this new technology is the increased workload that will be created. If the police knew that the introduction of DNA evidence might add to their workload, then strategies should have been put in place in order to make the most of this new capital. As stated by Matthewman (2011)) technology can simultaneously solve problems and create new ones. The results later in the article support this view. Methodology There are 12 districts within New Zealand Police (The New Zealand Police, 2010a) but it was decided that there was enough data to be gathered from using only one district, especially given the time constraints. This district is one of three in Auckland, so there was a sizeable volume of work with a variety of crime types in which to gather data. This research looked at police case files where DNA was found at the scene of the crime. The information was gathered by entering individual DNA results received from the ESR onto a separate spreadsheet. Each district may have its own method of storing this data or it may choose not to capture this data separately. Nationally this data can be captured via the apprehension code on the National Intelligence Application (NIA)1 but this does not differentiate between fingerprint and DNA, using instead the generic “forensic” apprehension code. There is no guarantee, either, that police from different districts enter the appropriate apprehension code, with the more common ”interview” or ”patrol” being used. One school of thought is 1

Police national computer 81


that an officer interviews an offender because DNA was found at the scene and therefore the apprehension code is “forensic”. However, other officers contend that if the person admits the offence it is due to the interviewing skills of the officer and therefore the apprehension code should be ”interview”. While it can be argued that the only reason the person is being interviewed is as a result of DNA evidence being found at the crime scene and ESR linking the sample to a name it may be that the ego of the investigating officer has some part to play in this. Irrespective of the reasons, these complications added to the difficulty of tracking the effectiveness of DNA in resolving crime. Policing statistics tend to refer to the financial year which runs from 1 st July through to 30th June. For the purpose of this research the files and statistics relate to the calendar year unless otherwise stated as the researcher found it easier to gather data based on the calendar year. The data available spanned a 12-month period from 1st January 2005 to 31st December 2005. This involved 302 files which provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data held within the police case files provided numerical information on the following: - Offence codes (burglary, unlawful taking, theft from motor vehicle, etc.); - Number of case files altogether; - Number of case files where DNA was the only evidence available; - Number of case files where cases were prosecuted; - Number of case files where offenders were convicted; - Number of case files where DNA was superfluous to the investigation because other forms of evidence took precedence; - Number of case files where the suspect was unable to be located. While the quantitative aspect of the study provided a framework, it was the qualitative data which provided explanations2. This included reports completed by the arresting officer explaining his/her decision-making process, the court results and why that decision by the court was made. Moreover, these statements made by the investigating officers had been expected to provide insight into the reasons why DNA profiling was used. In some cases where there were no concluding statements on the file, inferences were made based on the information to hand, the results from the court and the knowledge and experience of the researcher. Sampling 2

Approval from the Auckland University of Technology Ethics Committee was gained. 82


Where the quantitative aspect of the study was concerned, all available DNA case files from the subject district in the year 2005 were analysed. The year 2005 was chosen as it was anticipated that these files would be old enough for the court process to have been completed but recent enough to be relevant to the research which was carried out in 2007. Cases can sometimes take a long time to get to court and often the officer will spend a lot of time finishing the paperwork before filing it. The figure of 302 files initially seemed large but only 146 were available to view. When they were examined it became clear that there were more than 146 files involved. Of the 84 files classified as burglary, closer examination revealed that there were many more files associated with the main files. On this occasion the 84 burglary files increased to 459 files with some unlawful taking and aggravated burglaries also associated. Of these files, three had more than 50 associated files with one file having 98 associated files. It should be stated that DNA was not mentioned on all these files but only on the original 302 files, yet DNA was one way of bringing these crimes together and identifying the offender. These large associated files slowed down the datagathering process as they were often difficult to navigate and it was not always easy to separate the one DNA file within the 459 files. Limitations of this Data Set Not all of the 302 files were available, due either to them being unable to be located or still being with an investigator. A file may remain with an investigator because that investigator is taking a long time to complete the filing process. This might involve updating information regarding the victim, disposing of exhibits or adding the final touches to paperwork. In some cases this may take up to six months after the case is finished at court. The files were reviewed, amongst other things, to establish if DNA had been found at the scene and what the police had done with this information. While it could be argued that the files the researcher could not find were those that had been successfully investigated, there is nothing to suggest that the remaining 156 did or did not result in a successful prosecution. However, it is an acknowledged part of police research that all data will not always be readily available: “Criminological researchers confront missing data problems in practically every analysis they perform” (Brame & Paternoster, 2003: 55). Of the 146 files reviewed, every file contained something that the researcher could use but not all had 100% of the required information. The fact that there were missing or inaccurate apprehension codes or resolution codes is

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an important part of the research. This may highlight a bigger problem in that the institutional design may be part of the issue for the police when trying to manage not only DNA technology but other technology as well. Enough case files were available to make the study viable. As well as missing data there was also limited quality information available which is not unusual in police data due to the many opportunities for distortion both when the data is being gathered and then stored: i.e. in terms of data entry (Alison, Snook & Stein, 2001). In the New Zealand Police there is a lack of consistency with the data entry which makes it difficult to make any definitive comments regarding the statistics. It also causes problems when trying to compare districts both in terms of workloads and crime resolutions. Likewise it becomes more difficult to monitor the effectiveness of DNA evidence in solving crime. Another variable that was considered was the age of the offender at the time of the offence. The law does not allow for a voluntary DNA sample to be obtained from a young person. Their profile could be entered onto the national DNA database only if they had been convicted of a relevant offence or a court had issued a compulsion notice compelling them to provide a sample for inclusion on the national DNA database. This would explain why there was often a delay in a young person being identified as a possible suspect in a burglary when the crime might have been three years old. This was because often a sample was not taken from this offender until he/she reached the age 17, thus becoming an adult for the purpose of the law. There is probably not a large number involved in the study but enough to warrant an explanation. Findings Most jurisdictions split crime informally into two main categories: serious or major crime and volume crime (Adderley & Musgrove, 2001). In 2005 the New Zealand Police had seven crime categories: violence, sexual offences, drugs and anti-social offences, dishonesty, property damage and new drugs, property abuses as well as administrative which included immigration, racial and national interest. Serious crime, including murder, armed robbery and rape, tends to be less widespread whereas volume crime, as its name suggests, is more prevalent (Adderley & Musgrove, 2001). Those interviewed stated that while it was acknowledged that DNA is very effective in identifying offenders in serious crime, DNA evidence alone should not be relied upon to take a case to court. It was noted by the participants that DNA evidence had some excellent

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uses. If a case included DNA evidence, an offender would sometimes plead guilty which meant that the victim was spared the distress of having to give evidence. The police did not have to cast such a wide net as DNA evidence narrowed the search area which resulted in a less labour-intensive enquiry. The results showed that DNA evidence appeared to be more effective in relation to serious crime in that it was used to successfully prosecute or in some cases eliminate suspects. Serious crime types have a higher resolution rate than volume crime and those investigating serious crime appear to have more resources and fewer budgetary constraints than those investigating volume crime. If this level of resource was given to volume crime the resolution rate might well be higher. Of the 146 files available to review only 17 of those related to serious offences so for this reason, this article will focus on volume crime as the results from the research also indicate that investigations into serious crime are supported more. Volume Crime The largest crime category in New Zealand is dishonesty. Within this category, general theft constitutes the largest sub-group with burglary being the next largest. The next sub-group is vehicle crime. Vehicle crime includes unlawful taking and theft from a motor vehicle. As stated previously, the government and the police have singled out burglary as being of greater importance than the other crime types due to its impact on the community. As illustrated in Figure 1, for the calendar year of 2005 the police recorded nationally the unlawful taking of 22,605 motor vehicles with the subject district recording 4,423 unlawful taking of motor vehicles. For the same time 50,927 cases of theft from motor vehicles were recorded. The subject district recorded 9,589 reports of theft from motor vehicles for the same time period. Of the 146 files examined, 44 related to theft from cars, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, criminal damage and general theft. Unlawful taking of a motor vehicle had the most (n=33). Of these files, eight were never resolved even though the suspect had been in police custody several times. From the 33 files, 11 had a resolution which included charging, custody clearance or a warning. For those suspects who were interviewed regarding the DNA alert, three suspects denied the allegation and were released with no further action. Once again there were difficulties with the files and the information entered on to the computer. In one case the file stated that the offender had been dealt with

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for the offence and the alert had expired on the computer. However, there was nothing on the computer or the file to show what action had been taken. If suspects are not dealt with in a timely manner and/or they have been before the courts in the interim, the courts become reluctant to allow them to be prosecuted for old offences. It is considered by the judicial system to be an abuse of process. This can make it difficult for officers to deal with a suspect if they can see that the suspect has been in custody many times previously. Likewise, if an offender is in prison and needs to be interviewed regarding a DNA alert, the police liaison officer will not interview the prisoner if there is no likelihood of a charge. It is believed to be a waste of everyone’s time. Figure 1. Auckland v Nationally Reported Crimes 2005 450000 400000 Auckland District Nationally

350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0

Total Crimes

Burglaries

Unlawful taking

Theft ex car

Auckland District

53615

8920

4423

9589

Nationally

407496

57923

22605

50927

Burglary in New Zealand Most crime recorded in New Zealand is made up of a range of offences included in the dishonesty category. The most prevalent is general theft which is followed by burglary (Statistics New Zealand, 2010). The Ministry of Justice (2009) states that burglary is one of New Zealand’s highest-recorded crimes. In the 2005 calendar year 57,923 unlawful entry with intent, burglary and break and enter offences were recorded, making it the third-highest crime type (14%

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of all recorded crime). The highest recorded crime was theft and related offences at 151,649 (37% of all recorded crime), followed by property damage and environmental pollution next at 51,762 recorded offences (13% of all recorded crime). Therefore volume crime accounted for 261,334 recorded offences out of the 407,496 total recorded crimes (Statistics New Zealand, 2010). Burglaries tend to be serial in nature as offenders rarely commit only one (Ministry of Justice, 2009). It is uncommon for there to be any descriptions of burglars as they are likely to operate when people are not around and so it is difficult to link a series of burglaries to one offender (Adderley & Musgrove, 2001). Perhaps more significant is that individuals who commit property crimes have a higher recidivism rate than those who commit other types of offences. Therefore, arresting and imprisoning a single burglar increases the chances of a significant reduction in burglaries in a community (Roman et al., 2008). Similarly it has been noted that when unknown DNA from a murder scene is checked against the national database in the US it has often found a match with the DNA of a burglar (Zedlewski & Murphy, 2006). A review of the first 1000 hits on the New York database showed that 82% of the offenders were already on the database for a less-serious crime such as burglary or drugs (Zedlewski & Murphy, 2006). The resolution rate for total crime in New Zealand for 2005 was 43% with the burglary clearance rate for the same period being 16%. In contrast Table 1 indicates that the resolution rate for homicide was 87% with rape having a 55% clearance rate (Statistics New Zealand, 2009). In 2005 there were 407,496 total crimes reported to the New Zealand Police. Of those 58,133 (14.2%) were classified as a burglary. During the same year in the subject district the total number of reported crimes was 53,615 with 8,920 (16%) being classified as burglaries (Statistics New Zealand, 2010). Of all the crimes reported in the subject district for 2005, 302 files were identified as having DNA found at the scene and of those 84 were burglary files. This means that 0.5% of crimes reported to the police resulted in DNA being found at the scene. Of the burglaries reported to the police, 0.9% had found DNA at the scene. Therefore DNA is found at very few crime scenes as supported by comments from the UK that DNA is found at less than 1% of crime scenes (House of Commons Home Office Affairs Committee, 2010).

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Table 1. Recorded Crime vs Resolved Crime in NZ 2005 Crime Type

Recorded Crime

Resolved Crime 2005

103

87%

Sexual assaults and other related offences

2,465

55%

Unlawful entry with intent, burglary and break and enter

57,923

16%

Homicide and other related offences

Total

60,491

However, according to the ESR, samples from only 2% of volume crime scenes are submitted for processing and they are able to extract a profile from 64% of those; a link to a potential offender is made in about 38% (Buckleton, 2008). Looking at submission rates for three months in 2007, Auckland had 5,738 recorded volume crimes. Of these 2.37% resulted in submissions to ESR, which suggests that this district does have a slightly higher than average submission rate to the ESR. Buckleton (2008) posits that if police submitted more samples from volume crime scenes more burglaries would be resolved, offering a greater opportunity to reduce recidivism. But this does not match the results which show that, of the 146 files examined that contained DNA evidence, 68 did not have charges attached to them. This would refute Buckleton’s assertion that more samples would equal more resolutions when the police are unable to manage their current workload, although it is arguable whether the police are unable or unwilling to manage their workload. The difference between the ESR identifying a potential offender and the offence being resolved is still great. The real challenge is establishing the number of files resolved due to the use of DNA evidence and it is this information that tends to elude the police. In reviewing the 146 files of the subject district it became clear that there was a high attrition rate in turning identifications into detections. Of the 146 files examined 68 did not have any charges attached to them. Burglary accounted for 33 and of those 31 of the offenders had been in custody but had never been interviewed about the offence for which there was DNA. Yet all of the files had an alert on the police computer informing staff that the person had an outstanding DNA intelligence link. Alerts are mechanisms by which the NIA automatically prompts a system user that some special condition applies to the

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record being viewed (New Zealand Police, 2008). These alerts can be placed on a variety of subjects including persons, organisations and vehicles and cover many specific issues. Of those 68 files, 55 of the offenders had been in police custody in the interim yet were never dealt with for the outstanding DNA matter. Interview Results In view of the findings from the files in relation to police response to DNA hits, two of the questions that were asked of interviewees were: - When you receive a DNA hit are you pleased or is it just more work? - Do you take notice of DNA alerts on offenders? What action do you take if there is an alert? For the purpose of this article the interview results have been condensed to include only some of the results. The first question garnered a positive response with the majority considering a DNA hit as helpful. Participant D was a Detective Senior Sergeant who managed an investigative team with responsibility for budget and deciding if DNA samples will be sent to the ESR for analysis. Participant D: I’m rapt, it’s great. I guess as you well know in the last two years we’ve had a number of quite high-profile matters resolved because of DNA hits that are sometimes five or 10 years old and the guys are just like justice finally comes and it’s really great to find and see and the complainants are just over the moon their case is finally being resolved. The participant sees DNA as an immediate help to his work in that it virtually assures an arrest. Participant D is referring to the successful use of DNA in old cases or what are known as cold cases. Participant F was a Detective Constable who worked in an adult sexual assault team: Participant F: Hugely pleased, very, very pleased, it’s great it also just helps you build up a profile of your sex offenders and that’s a really big thing. I don’t know if we’ve touched on that but just building up this databank, some profiles of sexual offenders and that can be used in conjunction with people that commit burglaries and that’s obviously a huge stepping stone into invasion-type intruder rapes which is probably the homicide if you like of the sexual assault unit. However, the above staff worked in areas that did not have a high volume of DNA hits which may have given them a different perspective. When the same question was put to staff working in the area of volume crime their responses, 89


although positive, were more muted. Participant O was a Constable in a burglary team. Participant O: Oh it’s just another file amongst many, many files that you know there’s no sort of yea or nay, you do think okay this is, hopefully a slam dunk one, or I can clear this one and get back to the harder ones that require a more prolonged investigation. This would suggest that those working in volume crime would not be receiving a large quantity of DNA results from the ESR. This participant was not too excited when receiving a hit as they consider it to be just another piece of evidence. When asked about dealing with offenders with an alert the responses revealed some common threads. All the interviewees acknowledged that there were problems with DNA alerts not being dealt with when the offender was in custody. The top five reasons were given as: lack of knowledge; northern communication centre pressuring staff to answer calls; unable to locate file; too busy and poor processes. Lack of Knowledge When Dealing With DNA Alerts Of those interviewed, 13 felt that a lack of knowledge was possibly a reason for alerts to go unresolved. This encompassed responses that included poor training, incompetence, poor interviewing skills or lack of support. There was a general feeling from the interviews that most offenders were arrested (not during regular hours of work) by junior officers who were neither trained nor supervised well enough to handle even the most basic interviews. Interviews were integral to the satisfactory resolution of a DNA hit. Participant E was a Detective Sergeant who managed an adult sexual assault team. Participant E: My feeling is that junior staff who are probably locking up these guys on a regular basis for disorderly, drugs-type offences, they’re scared of alerts, they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to deal with them. Maybe it’s a training issue, maybe it’s a supervisory issue but at their direct supervisory level and in the watch-house my understanding in central is basically no one should be allowed out of the watch-house until all of their Wanted To Arrests (WTAs), Wanted To Interview (WTIs) and DNAs are cleared on the system or there’s evidence that they’ve been dealt with but I could stand corrected on that. Participant L was a Detective Inspector with the overall responsibility for the effectiveness of the investigative staff in the district.

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Participant L: Most of the officers who bring people into the custody suite here in Auckland are young officers who work in the streets in central Auckland so there’s issues of confidence and competence and doing more than a simple interview or a simple investigation and there’s pressure on them to get back on the road. This lack of knowledge could also refer back to the police not putting systems in place to help officers deal with new technology. DNA evidence was always going to result in the need for interviews so officers should have received more training on how to interview before DNA was enshrined in law. Although when participants with more length of service were interviewed they articulated that interviews were an integral part of policing and did not know why that skill had apparently been lost. Northern Communications Centre Pressuring Staff to Answers Calls The Northern Communications Centre receives calls for assistance from members of the public. Police officers tend to refer to the centre colloquially as North Comms or Comms. These calls can range from life threatening to more mundane events. The three communication centres (Northern, Central and Southern) deal with 600,000 111 calls a year (The New Zealand Police, 2010). Call centres dispatch I (Incident) cars via radio to respond to these calls. Call centres have a Memorandum of Understanding with each district to provide an agreed level of service. The district expects the call centre to take calls from the public and then dispatch these calls to front-line staff in a timely manner. The centre feels pressure to perform well and thus puts the onus back on the frontline staff to answer calls. There is also a feeling that when urgent calls come in, the I-car staff want to answer them. The police are traditionally action-oriented and see a rapid response to calls for service as the most effective way of catching offenders (Graycar, 1999). They regularly have to balance the need to respond to the public and the need to finish the job in the watch-house. The job in the watch-house may be seen as less exciting as it involves paperwork. Just under half of those interviewed felt that the pressure exerted on them by North Communications was a factor in the reluctance by officers to deal with DNA alerts. Participant T was a Senior Sergeant with responsibility for the day to day management of a station: Participant T: I think there’s that and the pressure to get back out on the road because of the urgent jobs and that’s why they shouldn’t be tied up interviewing.

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Participant T does not define what an urgent job would be although it is clear by the response that interviewing a burglar is not important. Unable to Locate the File Of those interviewed, 11 believed that being unable to locate a file contributed to the reasons for DNA alerts remaining unresolved. Prior to a person being interviewed regarding a DNA hit, an officer would need to read the file to prepare for the interview. The file should contain a full picture of the case so that the DNA evidence can be put to the suspect. Every aspect of the case should have been investigated with the result of the DNA evidence being the last piece of the puzzle. In essence, if the file is comprehensive enough anyone should be able to read it, get a good overview and then be able to interview the suspect confidently. The issues raised by those interviewed were that the files could be inaccessible during out of hours or that the quality of the files was so poor that an informed interview was impossible. Participant V (a general duties Constable) believed that the file should only be dealt with by the original officer as it was too difficult to interview someone about a case that you had no knowledge of, whereas the other participants implied that they would deal with the case if the file contained enough information. Participant A was a Detective Senior Sergeant who managed an investigation unit with responsibility for deciding if a DNA sample was sent to the ESR for analysis. Participant A: A lot of them now are saying well it’s not our area, it’s not our district, it’s not my file, I can’t find the file, I don’t know what it’s all about and, for me, you know there’s been times, I talk about the old days and it’s probably not fair to do that, but where you had to interview someone blind and that was your job and if you did a good interview you’d find it, you’d get the information although the laws have changed and the times have changed so. Too Busy to Interview Suspect for DNA Alert It was believed by 11 of those interviewed that officers were too busy to deal with DNA alerts. This differs from the pressure felt from the Northern Communications Centre as they believed that they had a responsibility to the public as well as to their colleagues. Participant N (detective in a burglary squad) states that often the suspects were brought in during the early hours when only front-line staff were at work. If other squads were available they could deal with DNA alerts. However, other staff interviewed felt that people perceive that they are busy with participant B (a detective senior sergeant)

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suggesting that people only think they are busy. Participant Z (a detective sergeant managing a child abuse team) was more forthright, stating that you can only deal with one job at a time. Participant B: I know that in the current day and age everybody is so busy or they think that they’re so busy that they’ve got to deal with what they’re dealing with purely so they can be out and available for the next one but we need to be dealing with all of them. Participant Z: I don’t buy the crap you’re too busy because you’re only as busy as the job you’re dealing with. Processes Only six of those interviewed felt it was the processes that prevented the staff from dealing with DNA alerts. The processes employed by the police can either hinder or assist in the smooth running of the organisation. With the perceived increase of workload by the staff, the easier the system the more likely it is that they will adhere to the policies. Several participants commented that the processes were not conducive to reducing the workload of front-line staff. Participant C was a Detective Inspector with the responsibility for the administrative side of the investigative teams, i.e. the staffing: Participant B: Once again that comes back to people knowing the process, you know what I mean, and so if you see a DNA alert or some sort of forensic alert perhaps it’s not for you to interview but you need to advise somebody so that somebody from CIB comes down or there is some enquiry process. Participant C: Absolutely failing in our system and it’s bullshit, it’s a lack of supervision and a lack of common sense. Even though these participants felt the processes were lacking, they all agreed that someone should take accountability for the alert. Interview Results for Volume Crime The staff interviewed regarding the use of DNA felt that it was of value for volume crime but they struggled with the sheer numbers, the budget constraints and the legislation. Participant K was a Sergeant who managed an enquiry team that investigated volume crime. Participant K: Unfortunately it comes down to money at times which is another bugbear of mine. I think if we can get convictions for crime okay, some of these volume crimes are considered the lesser of the scale however, half these guys start with theft ex cars or burglaries, not that we’re involved directly with burglaries and I think look if 93


we’re going to go to the problem of taking swabs and things for these sort of things it should be followed through to use. The participant states that if they are making the effort to attend scenes and finding DNA samples then the police should exploit this resource. However, the participant raises concerns that perhaps the crime is not serious enough to warrant the effort. This participant is also frustrated that money prevents the full use of DNA technology. Participant K: The problem with it is because of the way this law goes we have to get a sample off them to prove that, now they don’t want to give it then we’ve got to look at compulsion orders and that costs money and therefore if it doesn’t go down that line it's a waste of time and that to me is where we’ve either got to go the whole hog or don’t stutter in the progress and that’s where I just think the laws are stupid. I think surely if they’ve had it taken, why do we have to keep comparing every time this guy’s locked up, get another sample. Other participants felt that the workload was too great to be able to deal with all the DNA results they receive from the ESR. They suggested that the police should prioritise the crimes that would be resourced as it would appear that volume crime is not always treated as a priority. However, he made it very clear that the decision was down to the bosses as to how the squads were staffed which influenced their ability to investigate certain crimes. Participant W was a Sergeant in a burglary squad. Participant W: I think it’s the allocation of staff into the crime categories. If you look at burglaries in the eastern area, well burglaries across Auckland, we have six investigators (...). West have a similar amount and I think the city do as well. West and East have a Law Enforcement Team (LET) however our job’s not to do burglaries but West operate their Burglary Investigation Unit (BIU) and LET as one. (..) Since our sergeant changed here and moved across the LET we’ve started taking forensics from vehicles so they don’t go to the Combined Investigation Units (CIU) because they just get inactivated. We’re helping the BIU now with any burglary files so there is more of a resource there however a few months ago because of the management of the office it was like nothing was leaving the BIU come hell or high water. We go to homicides for a month and come back and no one would’ve touched a thing because the old LET wouldn’t, no not our job. Look there’s staff there, (..) you only need to look outside of Auckland (...) if you look at Christchurch break team it’s stocked with detectives and we have one detective and five

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constables and the constables probably have an average of six to seven months off the I car. (...). Participant W believes that the staffing across the district has at times been mismanaged with homicides always taking priority. He compares the subject district with Christchurch where they are able to staff a burglary team with detectives. He considers this to be impressive as detectives usually have more service and certainly a higher level of training in investigation. In the participant’s district the burglary team is inclined to be staffed by officers with very little service and not as much investigative training. Irrespective of what the New Zealand Police and the Government state about the importance of dealing proactively with volume crime (thereby reducing the number of victims of crime) there seems to be an issue with the resourcing of the units that deal with these crimes. From the interviews and the examined files it seems that the difficulty is not the attendance at the scene or the timeliness of the results from the ESR but rather dealing with the results once they have been received by the police. It could be argued that prioritising responses to crime is a way of dealing with the volume of work and the lack of resources. The less serious the crime the less time and effort was expended in dealing with it. After unlawful taking of motor vehicle, unlawful interference of a motor vehicle had the most number of files. Four files related to this offence type with two of those files receiving a conviction. One file required a suspect compulsion order to obtain a DNA sample but as he was on remand for other offences it was felt that there was no point in pursuing this case. Theft from a dwelling accounted for three files and none of these files had charges. One file had the suspect being interviewed but he denied the offence and there was deemed insufficient evidence to charge in spite of there being a witness. Wilful damage had two files and both suspects were charged with the offences. Conclusion In answering the research question, one of the key issues to emerge was why the police continue to struggle when trying to effect change. This cultural resistance to change is at both middle-management and front-line level. A resistance to change can prevent the implementation of sound business practices. This leads to limited buy-in from staff as they do not perceive the value of this new technology (Chan, 1997; Mastrofski & Uchida, 1993). Throughout its history there have been changes in the police organisation for a variety of reasons. These range from purely budgetary considerations to a desire to modernise and, 95


with the advances in technology to assist, to become an effective and modern police service (Chan, 2001; Colton, 1973; Innes et al, 2005; Manning, 1992). Even though the field the police inhabit may change (and has often done so) the habitus, which is their guiding rule, struggles to change and this may impede successful change management. However, in this instance the focus is on how the culture can prevent the successful application of DNA technology. The interview participants were of the opinion that DNA was a great tool, one of many that they could use to investigate crime. They did not believe that the police were resourced or trained well enough to make full use of the technology. Another common theme was that the officers were too busy to interview suspects and needed to get back out on the streets. Whether they really were too busy or preferred to be out on the streets is debateable but certainly police do see being on the streets as ”real policing” and exactly where they should be, not inside doing paperwork. The case files illustrated that it did not matter what legislation or training were available because the police still did not make use of DNA evidence and appeared to be content to close a file (stop working on it) even when the file contained a named suspect. What should happen is that such a file should not be closed until it has been resolved in some way. DNA is among many other tools available to them to investigate crime but while the police do have an organisational framework to ensure practices, processes and directives are in place to make the best use of this technology, this is no guarantee that staff will abide by these processes. The police say that they are using DNA technology and have exploited some high-profile cases to hail its benefits, yet recent research has shown that greater success could be achieved if it is used well to investigate volume crime (Wilson et al., 2011; Roman et al., 2008). The police are action oriented and will accept the introduction of technology that will enable this style of policing. A technology budget that was mostly spent on weapons and transport may support this argument (Manning, 2001). However, the police appear uninterested in technology that will keep them from being on the street. The participants in this research have expressed the view that staff do not have the time to interview suspected burglars because they need to be back out on the street. Why they have this need has not been expressed but it may be that the desire is there rather than the need. Likewise, the organisational framework for the use of DNA technology has not been set up to encourage its effective use. The inability to embed organisational

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processes to enable efficient use of technology results in a reluctance by staff to change their behaviours. This may cause the police to revert back to old behaviours which in turn can result in the circumvention of any loosely applied new processes. This may be a subconscious reaction to continue to police in a certain fashion but can certainly be linked with the habitus of policing. Staff are comfortable working within an environment they know. If they are not given any guidelines to cope with changes to this environment they will struggle to use the new tools (Chan, 1997). Does Police Culture Prevent the New Zealand Police from Making the Best Use of DNA Technology to Investigate Crime? The data obtained from the subject district indicates that, in at least one district, culture is one reason that may impede the police. However, the New Zealand Police is a national police service and, with the exception of certain nuances in each district, the process for applying DNA technology to the investigation of crime should be the same throughout the country. The subject district is one of the largest districts in the country and it has the highest number of reported volume crime. It has a high turnover of experienced staff leading to less likelihood of entrenched behaviour. Therefore it is a fair assumption that if DNA technology is not being used well there it is not being used to good effect anywhere. For these reasons it can be concluded that the research has shown that, all rhetoric aside, the New Zealand Police fail to make the best use of DNA technology, especially to investigate volume crime. DNA has been used in the New Zealand Police for 15 years. It is no longer new technology and yet the police still appear to struggle with its effective application. Those interviewed state that DNA is a great investigative tool but that the police make its use too complicated. However, it does need to be stated that the police are bound by legislative requirements that can add to the complication. The participants said that the paperwork was too confusing or that staff were too busy to deal with alerts. Another reason was that staff either did not know how to interview or lacked confidence in their ability to interview. This is an example of what happens when technology is introduced and processes are not put in place before the new technology is rolled out: there is an inability or reluctance by the police to introduce an organisational framework for the use of this technology. When staff are unable to manage, they find other ways to cope which, in some instances, can mean subverting the system or

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ignoring it completely. This is when police culture disables the effective use of this technology. Chan (2001) would state that the rules of the game had changed and the police relied on coping mechanisms to survive. However, by changing the field but not altering the habitus these coping mechanisms are a way of making sense of these changes (Chan, 2007). Likewise, if the police choose to change the habitus without altering the field, once again they are doomed to failure (Waddington, 1999a). Both the field and the habitus need to be changed, if only slightly, in order to make sense of the ongoing progress in society that will impact on the police. Advances in technology are one such example and the cause of this study. A robust organisational framework for the use of DNA technology will help staff manage the field and therefore assist them with the required changes in their habitus. DNA evidence is collected at less than 1% of crime scenes (House of Commons Home Office Affairs Committee, 2010). In New Zealand in 2005 the number of files noted as having DNA at the scene in the Auckland City District was 302. This number was obtained from the 53,615 reported offences for that year (Statistics New Zealand, 2010). Of 8,920 burglaries reported 84 files had DNA attached to them. Of the 302 files, only 146 were available for viewing. It was established that only 78 of these files had attached charges, meaning that the identified offenders had been arrested, charged and prosecuted. The remaining 68 files had alerts placed on them identifying them as files with named offenders whose DNA had been found at the scene of a crime. The implication was that should these people come to the attention of the police they would be interviewed regarding the DNA evidence found at the crime scene. However, 55 files had named offenders stating that DNA evidence had been linked to them and a crime scene and although they had been in police custody, some several times, they had never been interviewed or charged for that offence. Given the already low percentage of DNA found at crime scenes and the investment made by the police in DNA technology, these figures are a shocking indictment. These results question the commitment the police have made to use DNA to its fullest potential. In simple terms, a large amount of money and a great deal of time are spent in trying to identify an offender who may or may not be held to account for the offence to which they are connected. On a superficial level it appears that the police want to make the most of any technology that may assist them to solve crime. However, the police as an organisation do not like change and they certainly do not like change invoked

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by new legislation being imposed on them. This reluctance to fully accept new legislation may well be an unconscious reaction rather than a determined refusal to accept outside influences. A perception of being too busy due to a lack of organisational support will result in the same inability to make full use of the technology. This puts the onus back on the police executive to fully engage their staff when making changes to their work environment. A desire to look professional does not automatically translate into a desire to change the style and method of policing and this impacts on the police’s ability to successfully implement change within the organisation. This style of policing may prevent them from fulfilling their promises to reduce crime, catch offenders and maximise DNA technology. Included with this is a failure to be conscientious in their use of DNA technology, thereby breaching the public’s trust and calling into question the need for legislative change. Although the introduction of investigative interviewing is a positive step for the police, there is still the need for a shift in mind set. The research results show that the police are willing to attend crime scenes (although for burglaries in the subject district this is carried out by non-sworn staff) and this appears to be carried out well as perhaps it is considered to be real police work. When the results are received by the police and it is time for paperwork, interviewing or locating the suspect, it is considered the more mundane side of policing at which they are less successful. Viewed from Chan’s field and habitus of policing, police culture can have an impact on the successful implementation of new technology. Police culture can impede change within the organisation as they have a definite comfort zone which does not allow any great change to their practices. This research has identified that police practices have not changed with the advent of DNA technology, thereby impeding the ability of police officers to realise the full benefits of DNA in investigating crime. The interview participants commented on being busy and needing to get back out on the streets. However, this view is merely one aspect of a greater issue which is the entrenched behaviour of the police that is encouraged by the lack of an organisational framework when introducing new technology. This research has discovered that despite all the time and energy the New Zealand Police have spent on DNA technology, they have not reduced crime or in some cases even solved crime in spite of their use of DNA technology. The empirical evidence gathered from police files, interviews and other literature showed that although the New Zealand national DNA database functions as intended, the police do not make effective use of it.

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The New Zealand Police do not make the best use of DNA technology to investigate crime as an action-oriented police culture, combined with a lack of an enforced organisational framework for DNA use, and a lack of accountability for performance affects the desire and the ability to make the most of its potential. References The Criminal Investigations (Blood Samples) Act, (1995). Adderley, R. W., Musgrove, P. (2001) Police Crime Recording and Investigations Systems. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 24(1): 100114. Alison, L., Snook, B., Stein, K. (2001) Unobtrusive Measurement: Using Police Information for Forensic Research. Qualitative Research 1(2): 241-254. Brame, R., Paternoster, R. (2003) Missing Data Problems in Criminological Research: Two Case Studies: Journal of Quantitative Criminology 19(1): 55-78. Buckleton, J. (2008) DNA Solve More Burglaries. Wellington: Environmental Science and Research Ltd. Chan, J. (1996) Changing Police Culture. British Journal of Criminology 36 (1): 109-134. Chan, J. B. L. (2001) The Technological Game: How Information Technology is Transforming Police Practice. Criminal Justice 1(2): 139-159. Chan, J. B. L. (2007) Making Sense of Police Reforms. Theoretical Criminology 11(3): 323345. Colton, K. W. (1973) Computers and Police: Patterns of Success and Failure. Computers and Society 4(3): 4-13. Gardner, C.M. (2015) Does Police Culture Prevent the New Zealand Police from Making the Best Use of DNA to Investigate Crime (unpublished doctoral thesis). Auckland University of Technology, Auckland New Zealand. Gene Talk. (2004) Guilty or Not Guilty. Retrieved 22/07/05 from http://extra.shu.ac.uk/cse/geneticfutures/dwnld/Guilty%20or%20not%20guilty%20art icle%20vs2.pdf Graycar, A. (1999) Capacity-Building in Law Enforcement. Australian Institute of Criminology 123: 1-4. Hinds, L., Murphy, K. (2007) Public Satisfaction with Police: Using Procedural Justice to Improve Police Legitimacy. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 40(1): 27-42. House of Commons Home Office Affairs Committee (2010) The National DNA Database (No. 8) London: House of Commons. Innes, M., Fielding, N., Cope, N. (2005) The Appliance of Science - The Theory and Practice of Criminal Intelligence Analysis. British Journal of Criminology 45(1): 39-57. Kirby, L. T. (1992) DNA Fingerprinting: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Manning, P. K. (1992) Information Technologies and the Police. Crime and Justice 15 (349). Manning, P. K. (2001) Technology's Ways: Information Technology, Crime Analysis and the Rationalizing of Policing. Criminal Justice 1(1): 83-103. Mastrofski, S. D., Uchida, C. D. (1993) Transforming the Police. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 30(3): 330-358. Matthewman, S. (2011) Technology and Social Theory. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Moore, M. (2003) Sizing Up Compstat: An Important Administrative Innovation in Policing. Criminology and Public Policy 2(3): 469-494. Roman, J.K., Reid, S., Reid, J., Chalfin, A., Adams, W., Knight, C. (2008) The DNA Experiment: Cost-effectiveness of the Use of DNA in the Investigation of HighVolume Crimes. Urban Institute Justice policy Center http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411697_dna_field_experiment.pdf Samkin, G., Allen, C., Wallace, K. (2010) Repairing Organisational Legitimacy: The Case of the New Zealand Police. Australasian Accounting Business and Financial Journal, 4(3): 23-45. Statistics New Zealand. (2010) National Annual Recorded Offences for the Calendar Years. Retrieved 12/08/10 from http://wdmzpub01.stats.govt.nz/wds/TableViewer/tableView.aspx The Ministry of Justice. (2009) Addressing the Drivers of Crime. Wellington: The Ministry of Justice The New Zealand Police. (2008) National Recording Standards. Retrieved 04/09/10 fromhttp://intranet/nzp/instructions/manuals/pms/gen%20ops%20and%20responses/P ages/National_recording_standard.aspx#74fa8f7fadfa462e002576a4000b2c79 The New Zealand Police. (2010) New Zealand Police History. Retrieved 12/07/10 from http://www.police.govt.nz/about/history.html The New Zealand Police. (2010a) Policing Services 24 Hours a Day. Retrieved 26/08/10 from http://www.police.govt.nz/about/index.html Waddington, P. A. J. (1999) Police (Canteen) Sub-Culture: An Appreciation. British Journal of Criminology 39 (2): 287–309. Walsh, W. (2001) Compstat: An Analysis of an Emerging Police Managerial Paradigm. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 24(3): 347362. Wambaugh, J. (1989) The Blooding. Bantam Press. Weisburd, D., Mastrofski, S., McNalley, A. M., Greenspan, R., Willis, J. (2003) Reforming to Preserve: Compstat and Strategic Problem Solving in American Policing. Criminology and Public Policy 2(3): 421-456. Williams, R., Johnson, P. (2008) Genetic Policing. Cullompton: Willan. Wilson, D.B., McClure, D., Weisburd, D. (2010) Does Forensic DNA Help to Solve Crime? Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 26 (4): 458-469. Zedlewski, E., Murphy, M. B. (2006) DNA Analysis for "Minor" Crimes: A Major Benefit for Law Enforcement. National Institute of Justice 253, 5.

Catherine Gardner is a former Metropolitan Police officer who now works for the New Zealand Police in a non-constabulary role. She is the Manager, Case Management with a national over-sight for the development and implementation of strategies and applications supporting effective and consistent delivery of Case Management functions across the New Zealand Police. This journal article is taken from her PhD (Does Police Culture Prevent the New Zealand Police from Making the Best Use of DNA Technology to Investigate Crime) recently completed through the Auckland University of Technology.

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The declining state of New Zealand democracy: Community and voluntary sector perceptions of public debate under two governments Sandra Grey, Charles Sedgwick, and Jared Commerer

Abstract Two years ago we released results of a survey into the state of democracy in New Zealand as expressed by organisations in the community and voluntary sector. In releasing these results, those working in grass-roots and community organisations began to express concerns that under the National-led government their ability to engage in public debate had worsened. Comparing results of surveys carried out five years apart, we demonstrate that community and voluntary sector organisations are finding the relationship with political leaders and the contracting approach taken by successive governments a major constraint on their ability to engage in public debate and effect political change. Despite the rhetoric by governments of partnerships and consultation, the reality faced by the community and voluntary sector according to respondents to these two surveys is one where governments entrust millions of dollars of social service provision to the sector but leaves communities little room to critique or debate government actions. Keywords: democracy, community and voluntary sector, NGOs, New Zealand Introduction: It’s about democracy Two years ago we released results of a survey (Grey & Sedgwick, 2015) into the state of democracy in New Zealand as expressed by organisations in the community and voluntary sector. When we released the results, those working in grass-roots and community organisations began to express concerns that under the National-led government their ability to engage in public debate had worsened. The sector not only expressed these concerns to our research team but also in their own publications. Social Development Partners, an umbrella organisation of over one hundred NGOs, undertook a series of eleven Community Dialogues in 2013 (Social Development Partners, 2013) which produced a consensus that there 102


was an uneasy relationship with government. This uneasy relationship was the product of: inconsistent and uncertain government priorities; funding difficulties; contracting; a shortage of resources and time for NGO work; unachievable or unclear outcomes and reporting requirements; as well as regional and rural underdevelopment of the sector. They also expressed a series of perceived contradictions structured by government policy that lowered morale and undermined the strength of the sector (Social Development Partners, 2013; ComVoices, 2014). Added to this, a range of commentators and academics have recently expressed concern about the state of New Zealand democracy. Bryan Gould (2014) commenting on New Zealand joining the Open Government Partnership committed to generating “openness and responsiveness to the people” made the point that: ...even taken at face value, the government’s “reform” is merely about access, not about two-way consultation that gives citizens a say in the decisions that affect them. It is designed to shape individualised interactions, not to engage and involve community organisations representing the considered views of large numbers of people. Dame Anne Salmond (2013) expressed alarm at the government’s extending the powers of the GCSB maintaining citizens should resist: When governments go feral, citizens of all political persuasions and from all backgrounds must stand up and demand that their representatives in Parliament - from whatever political party - do their job, and uphold democratic freedoms in New Zealand. Concerns were raised around the Justice Minister’s failure to activate the review of MMP ignoring the wishes of the New Zealand electorate’s 2011 referendum result retaining MMP but requiring an independent review (Chapman, 2013); the scrapping of the state funded Advice Service operated by the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) which gave advice on the Resource Management Act process and was apparently no longer needed for communities (EDS, 2013); and, the prohibition of the right under the Bill of Rights to disagree with government disbursement for those caring for a disabled adult family member and legislation “governing the response to the Christchurch earthquakes, prohibited government ministers from being challenged in court” (NZ Herald, 2013). Even National’s Minister of Finance, Bill English (2011) noted: I am not sure what it is but there is something about the way government has worked with people that has made them less brave than we know they can be …We are not being challenged –we are

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willing to be challenged but we are not being challenged enough, we are not getting enough people knocking the door down saying “you can do this really differently”. Given all of the concerns raised by the sector and beyond, it seemed timely to revisit the core research question we had posed in 2008 based on work undertaken by researchers for the left-wing think tank, The Australia Institute (Maddison, Denniss and Hamilton, 2004). That question was: How is democracy – as measured by the experiences of the community and voluntary sector – faring? Conducting a second survey would afford a snapshot of the relationship between the community and voluntary sector and the current National-led government. In turn, repeating the survey would also allow us to gauge whether from the perceptive of the sector there had been a decline in space for dissent and debate. As noted by Markoff (1999) democracy is a felt state of being. This means it is crucial to research the perceptions of citizens about the current state of affairs in New Zealand. The focus on organisations in the community and voluntary sector recognises their real and historical place in representing the most marginalised citizens. The role of community groups, interest groups, and social movements in democracy and policy formation has been active, and acknowledged by the New Zealand state in law, since the mid-19th century (see Eichbaum and Shaw, 2006; Mulgan, 2004; Tennant, O’Brien, and Sanders, 2008; Grey, 2014; Grey, 2015). Additionally, the importance of the community and voluntary sector is still acknowledged within state publications today with renditions of their role occupying a continuum from being seen as advocates to partners, through to vehicles for service delivery (see Cabinet Office, 2001; Ministry of Social Development, 2001). As noted by Kamat (2003: 1): The global phenomenon of NGOs reflects the new policy consensus that these groups are de facto agents of democracy rather than end products of a thriving democratic culture. Given this top down view which often prevails in literature and practice, it is important to ask what this environment feels like for people struggling to make a difference from the bottom up (Lynd, 2014). Being acknowledged and having a function is vastly different to having a recognised, respected, democratic voice. It is not enough as Neilson remarks, to demonstrate the importance or worth of the community and voluntary sector by

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asserting a list of “general attributes” that are deemed to exist (Neilson, 2014: 11), but rather it is necessary to find out what actually exists. The environment for the community and voluntary sector is complex as the state finds itself unable to govern “without the cooperation of other actors” and is consequently concerned to open a multiplicity of governance opportunities for “non-governmental actors to engage in the government” at “a distance from the state”? (Taylor 2007:2). Taylor referring to (Stocker, 1998) says “an optimistic analysis of these trends, suggests that the emergence of “negotiated self-governance”, based on new practices of co-ordinating activities through networks and partnerships, offers participants the opportunity not only to influence policy but to take over the business of government” (Taylor, 2007: 2). Swyngedouw (2005: 1993), however, argues that “socially innovative arrangements of governance-beyond-the-state are fundamentally Janus-faced, particularly under conditions in which the democratic character of the political sphere is increasingly eroded by the encroaching imposition of market forces that set the “rules of the game.” According to Somerville this occurs through three processes: All governing coalitions tend to favour their own people (privileged access exercise control from the centre (…recentralisation) and to mould citizens in their own image and likeness (responsibilisation) (Somerville, 2005: 125) Our earlier survey provided evidence that it was the second trend that was developing in New Zealand. Respondents in 2008-09 noted that community and voluntary sector organisations competitively contracted by the state to provide social services found themselves in an environment where their expertise and knowledge was neither respected nor trusted. Attempts to debate the direction or approach in policy were at best tolerated by governments and, at worst, silenced. The sector, once accorded status “as an avenue of and for the expressions of diverse voices” providing “networks ...relationships ... [and] dialogue between the government and the community” (Office of the Community and Voluntary Sector, 2005: -3) seemed to have been recast. As the New Zealand Treasury (The Treasury, 2013:1) puts it: NGOs are part of the “social service market” where government is concerned only with the “effectiveness and efficiency” of their activity and the improvement of their performance. There is little mention of their role in maintaining a healthy and independent civil society. In the published the results of the 2008-09 survey 105


(Grey and Sedgwick, 2013a; Grey and Sedgwick, 2013b), we argued that the 153 completed responses provided evidence that community and voluntary sector organisations found it difficult to challenge governments and, in the words of Verspaandonk, be part of a “well-functioning democracy” (2001: 9). Further, the earlier study noted that successful negotiation over contracts and compliance with funding requirements directed the focus of NGOs’ to government objectives and crowded out spaces to debate about the needs of a constituency. Contracts determined an organisation’s relationship with the state and (Hood, 1995: 94) and “process accountability” had been trumped by “results accountability.” Economic rationalism, expressed as “getting value for money”, was the dominant guide. The results from 2013 indicate an ongoing erosion of the space for public debate and dissent from the perspective of community and voluntary sector organisations. Method, data set, and analysis The starting point for this second survey was the 153 organisations which had responded to the 2008 survey. In total, we received 93 completed surveys from groups who had participated in 2008-09 – a response rate of 60.8%. Of those who did not participate, 18 non respondents explicitly stated they were unable to participate; 32 who had agreed to participate never returned the survey; and 10 organisations could no longer be contacted. The diversity of the 2013 respondents is seen in the “area” or “region” they covered. In all 25 groups that took part in this research provided services to a single community; seven were centred on providing social service support to a single New Zealand city; 45 spread their provision across several towns/centres; 31 organisations were ones that provide services across a whole region; and, 43 of the respondent groups were nation-wide providers of social services. The diversity is also evident in that the organisations came from around New Zealand and varied in size as measured by staffing levels (See Table 1). Table 1: Number of staff employed by the New Zealand community and voluntary organisations who participated in the survey, 2013-14 Number of Staff No full-time staff 1 to 2 full-time staff 3 to 9 full-time staff

Count of Organisations 27 21 20

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 10 to 99 full-time staff 100 or more full-time staff No response Total

14 10 1 93

The groups that provided responses in 2013 also varied in terms of the type of provision the organisations carried out (See Table 2). Table 2: Field of provision of the New Zealand community and voluntary organisations who participated in the survey, 2013-14 Total number of Percentage of total Field of provision* respondents per field of respondents provision Advocacy 21 22.6 Education 4 4.3 Health 14 15.1 Housing 2 2.2 Philanthropic 1 1.1 Social service 51 54.8 Total 93 100.0 * The ‘fields of provision’ are categories set out in The New Zealand non-profit sector in comparative perspective (p.16) J. Sanders, M. O’Brien, M. Tennant, S.W. Sokolowski & L. M. Salamon, 2008. Wellington: Office the Community and Voluntary Sector.

The final 2013 survey instrument replicated the 2008 survey and again had four major sections: 1) the interaction of the community and voluntary sector with government decision-making processes; 2) NGO involvement and impact relevant to government consultation processes; 3) the intersection of government funding, contracts, and NGO participation in public debate; and, 4) information about the respective organisations, as well as any further comments or observations pertaining to the role of NGOs and their involvement in political decision-making in New Zealand. Of the 35 questions from the original survey instrument, 19 remained unchanged. A further nine questions were deleted because they related to the Labour government of 2008-2013; or because in the first survey which either received a low response-rate or garnered incomplete data. Two questions were added focussing on gathering information on government contracts and umbrella organisations – issues that had arisen during the 2008-09 survey. As well as the quantitative data, the completed surveys contained significant commentary from respondents allowing for qualitative analysis of 107


perceptions of how democracy is faring. The final comparative data set included the results from first survey carried out in 2008-09 but only responses from the 93 participants who were able to participate in 2013-14. All comments on the returned survey forms (whether written in comment boxes, beside categories we had given, or i-n separate notes) were entered into Excel and sorted according to common themes. In all, 447 statements from the 93 participants have been analysed and contrasted with quotes from the 2008-09 survey. Active public debates or democracy as “process”? One indicator of democracy is participation by citizens in formal political processes. In the case of the community and voluntary sector this means involvement in consultation processes with both elected and non-elected political elite. The survey responses appear positive if “participation” is the marker of democracy (See Table 3) as nearly 8 out of every 10 of the organisations who completed the survey in 2013-14 have been involved in government consultation processes under the last Labour-led and the current National-led government. Table 3: Have you been involved in government consultation processes over the last term of government? 2008-2009 2013-2014 Yes 80% 78% No 16% 22% No response or ‘N/A’ 4% 0%

However, the mere ability to be involved in consultation does not mean that community and voluntary sector organisations felt New Zealand governments were actively encouraging democracy in its fullest form. Unpacking the survey responses further show that consultation may not be a strong indicator of a wellfunctioning democracy, particularly when set in the context of government attitudes to debate; being heard during public debate; affecting policy change; and, having a group’s expertise recognised by the state. Participants were asked to rank the two major political parties leading coalition governments with regard to their attitudes towards public debate on a scale of one to five (where one represented debate as being actively silenced and five meaning that debate was actively encouraged). Nearly half of the respondents felt that Labour-led and National-led governments tolerated public 108


debate (See Figure 1), which is a long way short of what we might expect from an established democracy. Figure 1: Community and voluntary sector organisations’ perceptions of the attitudes of Labour and National governments to public debate, 1999 to 2013 50 46 45

43

Count of organisations responding

40 35 30

28

28

Labour 1999-2008

25

National 2008-2013

20 15 11

10 10

9

8

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0

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0 1 - Debate is 2 - Debate is 3 - Debate is 4 - Debate is 5 - Debate is actively silenced tolerated encouraged actively silenced encouraged

Did not respond

Under the Labour-led government between 1999 and 2008 (the period evaluated by our first survey) respondents noted that toleration of debate meant a lack of overt government interference in the operations of organisations who spoke out: None of our members have been arrested! (Social service group) There was not a great fear that speaking out or raising issues for debate would be “punished” by for example loss of contracts. However there was not a total encouragement of debate either, e.g. all the fuss about “advocacy” in 2005. (Health group) In contrast respondents who said debate was tolerated under National used this category to indicate the government are “consultative, however, they do what they want anyway and don’t take any notice of debate outcomes” (Social service group). For many in the community and voluntary sector, public debate had become a mere formality. 109


There always seems to be a subtext of “already made our minds up” but we will listen to appear like “the good guys”. (Social service group) [there is a] shoulder-shrugging acceptance that people have a right to their opinions, though it will change nothing. (Mental health group) Added to this community organisations found themselves being “managed” during consultation until the organisation’s position was acceptable to the National-led government. The differences between the Labour-led and National-led governments are further evident in the overall shift in the perceptions of the community and voluntary sector respondents. Since 2008 the community and voluntary sector’s involvement in public debate has become more constrained according to the responses given (See Figure 1). Of the 93 respondents who participated in both surveys, only one said debate was actively silenced under the Labour-led government (1999-2008) and 8.6% noted it was silenced in this period. This contrasts markedly with the 10.8% who said debate was actively silenced and the 30.1% who felt debate was silenced under the National-led government from 2008-2013. The 40.9% of respondents who indicated debate had been silenced or actively silenced under the current National-led government gave a range of illustrative examples as evidence of their assessment of the government’s attitude to public debate. This included comments about groups having their funds cut after they publicly criticised government policy and being removed from government committees. One respondent noted that “critical voices [are] closed down” and “officials say they won't work with you if you don't agree with decisions” (Health group). Respondents in 2013-14 also pointed to public debate being curbed by the use of parliamentary urgency, a lack of genuine consultation, and dismissal of public views by government: Their [the government’s] reactions to referendums have been dismissive. (Social service group) Ignoring the results of surveys that do not support the desired results. (Advocacy group) Comparing responses from 2008-09 with those given in 2013-14, shows a negative shift in the perceptions of the community and voluntary sector about government attitudes to public debate (See Table 4).

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While there is evidence that community and voluntary sector organisations face a worsened environment in which to raise critiques of the state and its actions, in both surveys there were respondents who felt that debate was encouraged or actively encouraged by successive governments. Again there is a difference between the two periods of government. As seen in Figure 1, under the Table 4: Change in NGO perception of government’s attitude towards debate contrasting 2008-09 with 2013-14 responses. Negative Change No Change between Labour-led between Labourand National-led led and NationalProvision Governments led Governments Advocacy* 48% 33% Education 50% 25% Health 64% 29% Housing 50% 50% Philanthropic 0% 100% Social Services 61% 27% Overall 57% 30% *One Advocacy organisation did not respond in 2013-2014

Positive Change between Labour-led and National-led Governments 14% 25% 7% 0% 0% 12% 12%

Labour-led government, 28 (30.1%) organisations agreed that debate was encouraged, while nine (9.7%) felt debate had been actively encouraged by the government. In contrast none of the respondents felt that debate was actively encouraged and only 11 of the 93 organisations (11.8%) said debate was encouraged under the National-led government between 2008 and 2013. Encouragement of public debate where it does exist under National included involvement in “a number of forums/working parties”; “engagement around green papers”; and one group which noted it “has been given and has taken the opportunity to participate” in an interagency forum in one part of the country. However, even groups which agreed that debate was encouraged by the National-led government were sceptical that their engagement would be meaningful or would affect change in policy. If there was an impact it would be in the form of “small changes to wording or tweaks to policy” but “rarely big changes”. [Our influence has been] more in implementation than in major policy topics – e.g. MSD funding processes – we have influenced decisions about changed processes. Review of incorporated societies / Development of accounting stats. (Advocacy group)

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Under the National government nearly 40% of organisations who responded to this survey said they were not successful in getting their voice heard (See Table 5) compared with only 4.3% who said this of the period of the Labour-led government.

Table 5: How successful do you feel your organisation was in having your key concerns heard by government? Labour-led Government National-led 1999-2008 Government 2008-2013 Highly successful 23.7% 4.3% Moderately successful 68.8% 52.7% Not successful at all 4.3% 39.8% No response or N/A 3.2% 3.2%

In addition to the above, we asked organisations whether government consultation processes were productive. The number viewing consultation as unproductive had increased from 18 under the Labour-led government to 32 under the National-led government. Responses showed that an increasing number of organisations clearly believe they are not impacting upon political decisions in a meaningful way and that it is harder to influence the National led government than the previous one. Even though 48% of organisations surveyed perceive that debate is tolerated under the National government, this “toleration” plays out in the form of a mere democratic formality and there is little sense that the sector’s views are being harnessed in order to develop policy. Even those organisations that believed themselves to be “highly successful” in their endeavours to be heard under National said they are not being engaged beyond the level of tweaks to policy and the occasional change in wording of contracts. The questions moved on to try to unpack why the community and voluntary sector organisations feelings that democracy is increasingly constrained. Political leaders, the contract state, and constrained democracy The comparative analysis shows that the party in power does affect the degree to which such engagement in public debate is seen to be constrained or encouraged. The relationship between National and the community and voluntary sector is less constructive than that between Labour and community organisations (See Table 6). The analysis of the first survey carried out in 200809 showed an early positive reaction towards the National-led government and 112


their attitudes to public debates (Grey and Sedgwick, 2013). The latter results indicate this may have been an artefact of the government having only been in power a very short period (five months) at the time of the first survey. By 2013 when we revisit respondents, the perception of organisations when asked about government attitude to public debate shows marked differences between the period under the Labour–led government and that of the government led by the National Party. Table 6: Organisations that dissented from government policy were valued by the government as part of a robust democracy. 2008-2009 2013-2014 Strongly agree 2.2% 1.1% Agree 31.2% 15.1% Disagree 47.3% 54.8% Strongly disagree 5.4% 21.5% No response or ‘N/A’ 14.0% 7.5%

There are a range of ways in which the party in government impacts upon public debate and the enactment of democracy according to respondents. There is perceived to be a “shoulder-shrugging” and “take it or leave it” attitude from the National-led government. PM and Ministers regularly demonstrate their disregard of public opposition to policy decisions and proposals. Through media statements that include a shoulder-shrugging acceptance that people have a right to their opinions, though it will change nothing. (Health group) The National government’s derisive approach to interaction with community and voluntary sector organisations results in non-governmental evidence and perspectives being ignored: This particular government does not seem to listen or take into consideration any conflicting opinion or EVIDENCE contrary to its outlook. This is hugely frustrating and very dangerous to our democratic process. If they continue to “high handedly” proceed with actions and policies without REAL consultation or regard to social or environmental consequences it will be a big turn off and people become disengaged with our democratic system. For example – Tuhoe. (Social service group) If there are mitigating factors in this general tendency it is inevitably due to three reasons: personal relationships with politicians; differential government behaviour towards individual NGOs; or, the resolve of individual public servants. Personal relationships with MPs at the local level can help

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organisations in their attempts to increase funds and or influence policy. However, there is a sense that even this is constrained by top-down authority: Public servants are supportive but constrained by government’s preferred approach. (Education group) Change driven by Ministers who listen to vested interests of industry too much. Public servants follow orders – do not/are not able to act as advisors. (Health group) The data also reveals that the climate of fear that came through in the 2008-09 survey (See Grey and Sedgwick 2013a and 2013b) has only become more entrenched; that there is an ongoing lack of resources available to NGOs; and, that the phenomenon of “high-trust” relationships between the state and the sector occurs to the detriment of non-select groups. These components create a series of tensions and contradictions for a community and voluntary sector which are explored in the next section. Part of the contract environment which is impacting on the community and voluntary sector are actions which turn the sector into an “arm of government” rather than an independent civil sphere. Nowland-Foreman (1997: 8) had foreshadowed this: “voluntary organisations being regarded as autonomous representatives of the community” become instead “convenient conduits of public policy.” This change can be seen in the statements from Ministers in the National government. In 2011 the Minister of Finance affirmed this when he said “the relationship between government and civil society is one of shared responsibility” (English, 2011) and in 2012 the Minister of Social Development sad “I will discontinue contracts where providers have continued to meet Government expectations (Bennet, 2012). The blunt edge of this with regard to democratic debate is the use of “gag” clauses in state contracts. In both the first and second surveys, respondents were asked about the existence of “gag clauses” in their contracts. In 2009, 12.9% of the respondents said that there were clauses in their government contracts which prohibited public comment (or at least restricted their ability to make comment); by 2014 this had grown to 25.8% of respondents.1 Respondents noted: 1

In 2014 Murray Ederidge, Deputy chief executive of Community Investment at the Ministry of Social Development was paraphrased as claiming he had “heard rumours about groups being concerned o voice opinions, but there was no evidence” and saying that “he was not aware of any gagging clauses and had not hear of any threats” (Migone, 2014). 114


Contractual. Must seek departmental sign-off before speaking up about the contract, the contract negotiations, or the work. (Social service group) We are not allowed [to make] public criticism. (Social service group) MSD - Not really restricted but agreement [to contact them] prior to media contact. Corrections – not allowed to contact media on any matter regarding services or about disagreement or contention with them without prior written consent. (Health group) Added to this community and voluntary sector organisations said they were being pressured to mediate or change their public messages to align with those of the government (See Table 7). This tendency was stronger under National than Labour. Table 7: NGOs were being pressured to amend their messages and goals to bring them in line with government policy 2008-2009 2013-2014 Strongly agree 5.4% 16.1% Agree 26.9% 45.2% Disagree 49.5% 35.5% Strongly disagree 8.6% 1.1% No response or ‘N/A’ 9.7% 2.2%

The comments made by community and voluntary sector organisations centred on clearly “managed” risk aversion in the contract process under successive governments: However I am involved in a number of tobacco control MOH agencies that have a political neutrality clause in their contracts. Their contract managers are very risk adverse to anything that may attract adverse ministerial attention. (Health group) … Officials have gradually become more engaged also with the community agencies under National, but there is a strong aversion to risk and change still evident. (Social service group) Whether or not the government’s intention is to silence organisations from public comment, the impact on the minds and actions of the community and voluntary sector is clear. Just under half of the respondents felt that the Labourled government acted punitively against dissenters (See Table 8), this increased to 58.1% under the National-led period. This belief creates a climate of fear. Table 8: Dissenting organisations risk having their funding cut 2008-2009 2013-2014

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree No response or ‘N/A’

7.5% 41.9% 33.3% 6.5% 10.8%

18.3% 39.8% 29.0% 1.1% 11.8%

Discussing the period under National, some respondents said their funds had been cut, or their group had been marginalised and sidelined from processes after they made public critiques of the government: We used to get govt. funding but they stopped that back in 2010 after we became outspoken. (Health and disabilities group) Have been removed from appointments/committees after media article critical of government policy (unrelated to [the] committee). Funding not renewed after criticising. (Social service group) Others spoke about overt threats by the government to cut funds: Government actually threatened to immediately cease funding us if we proceeded with a discussion document with the purpose of establishing some shared understanding between all Social Service Agencies. (Social service group) The result of this perception that governments would punish outspoken critics led to self-disciplining by the community and voluntary sector: If we disagree with a policy decision, because we hold a contract, it is difficult to speak out. (Social service group) … we are very cautious about what we say publicly as we cannot afford to lose our funding. (Social service group) NGOs express reservations about criticising government/”lobbying” (advocating) because of fear of losing funding. (Advocacy group) Beyond the survey there is evidence that community and voluntary sector organisations have either declined to comment on legislative change for fear of losing funding or have commented and lost contracts (Collins, 2010). Others , like the Problem Gambling Foundation (Greens, 2014; High Court, 2015) have been investigated by international accounting firms under Ministerial suspicion and, latterly, lost funding due to being outspoken critics of government policy (Kilgallon, 2014). Even if funding is not cut in all cases where community and voluntary sector groups speak publicly against the government, the perception that it could be cut is of critical importance. Government funding is crucial to many groups in the community and voluntary sector. As early as 2009 Grant Thornton Not116


for-Profit Sector Survey results pointed out that the “… most significant issues challenging” the not-for-profit sector was “… financing activities of the organisation,” followed by “fundraising,” “the role of the board/governance issues,” and “retaining/motivating staff” (2009: 4). Fears and concerns about funding loss has not abated in the interim and moreover is more likely to lead to the modification of actions by the community and voluntary sector as a result of “anticipated reactions” from government (Mulgan, 2004: 312-314). This all amounts to a removal of voices and support from the community resulting in some cases with a replacement of services by private enterprise which has no necessary commitment to New Zealand’s democratic process. In addition to the obvious loss, the underlying mileux of fear does not even speak to toleration. Radio New Zealand explored the climate of the community and voluntary sector in 2014 and found organisations wishing to remain anonymous feared being “punished financially” with “subtle threats from a cabinet minister”. The Chief executive of Platform Trust, a national network of mental health and addiction organisations, confirmed that many groups share the “same concerns about speaking up” or “talking out about things in a negative manner” which may mean “your funding will be jeopardised” (Migone, 2014). A range of reasons were given by respondents to explain the poor and worsening relationship between successive governments and community organisations. This in part speaks to the very processes put in place to facilitate interaction between the organisations in and of the community and the public sector. Respondents noted, in both 2008-09 and 2013-14, that the bureaucratic processes put in place for “contracting” from the community and voluntary sector did not actively support their involvement in public debate (See Table 9). Table 9: The bureaucratic processes in governing interaction between the public and NGO sectors actively supported debate and critique of government policy 2008-2009 2013-14 Strongly Agree 2.2% 0.0% Agree 40.9% 18.3% Disagree 38.7% 58.1% Strongly Disagree 2.2% 16.1% No response or ‘N/A’ 16.1% 7.5%

For 37 of the 93 organisations who responded in 2013-14 the problem was that “little respect was shown for expertise”; for 35 it was about the fact that the government agencies dictate the processes too much; and 33 said consultation came too late in the process. 117


Planning and actions to formulate often well under way and started before any information planned or leaked is made available. Often too late to stop or consult. (Health group) Some clauses have been discussed. However, they are often already decided on by government policy. We have been able to feedback the relevance at times. (Social service group) Government pushes too many things through under urgency – denying proper process. (Health group) Respondents in 2013-14 also commented about the lack of genuine consultation, noting that where consultation does take place there is a lack of resources available for NGOs to participate. Overall the responses indicate that there has been a move to a much more controlling relationship between the state and community and voluntary sector from the period of the Labour-led government to that of the National-led government. As one respondent noted: “The relationship between the community sector and central government is flawed and dysfunctional. Rather than a partnership it is a master/servant type arrangement” (Advocacy group). Similar sentiments were expressed about both the Labour and National led governments, but they were more evident during National’s term in government: We are able to review draft content of contract and suggest changes however there was no negotiation and we were told we had to accept the terms. (Social service group) To a limited degree. RFP proposals are requested to fit a highly specific, predetermined contract. Only details of price, reporting requirements etc. are negotiable. (Mental health group) Consultation was: “this is what we require – how will you measure.” (Social service group) Funding from MOH, MSD, is based on no negotiation ... Take it or leave it, our way or no way. (Social service group) Many of the respondents alluded to the fact that they did not have sufficient resources – time and money – to engage in democratic processes such as forums. For example, provincial organisations were unable to afford the costs involved in travelling to main centres where forums were taking place, as well as logistical issues such as the non-provision of interpreters in situations which required it. Additionally, where organisations did receive funding/contracts, the 118


short-term period stipulated in the contract was not sufficient with regard to the aims of the organisation in question: It is acknowledged by all concerned that it takes a long time for some people in need to change their behaviour/decision-making habits to improve the quality of their lives – perhaps up to 2 years. To do less is to waste time and money already spent. Even though Government is aware of this – they do not fund our organisation fully and other grant money is difficult to source. Closure is always a possibility. (Social Service group) Organisations in the community and voluntary sector note they struggle to achieve their own goals, let alone the intents specified by the government as part of these short-term contracts. The government sector expects engagement very often, yet the contracted funding support provided makes no allowance for this to occur. Funds are targeted to service delivery and allow very little time for research and submission of feedback, let alone time to develop proactive programmes to further the causes of the people we serve. (Mental health group) We are a small organisation with limited funding. It is difficult to keep the organisation operating with our high demand for service, need to fundraise to provide adequate operational expenditure. There is little energy left over to be politically active. (Feminist group) Beyond the elected and appointed political elite, there is also a sense from respondents that the general democratic climate in New Zealand is deficient (See Table 10). Over the last decade the NGO perception is that in terms of broader civil society measures – public attitudes to democracy and the role of the media – democracy is not flourishing. Table 10: Democracy and the civil sphere in New Zealand Public attitudes to The New Zealand media democracy 2008-2009 2013-2014 2008-2009 2013-2014 2008-2009 2013-2014 Strongly agree 6.5% 2.2% 3.2% 2.2% Agree 69.9% 32.3% 38.7% 40.9% Disagree 15.1% 47.3% 46.2% 48.4% Strongly disagree 1.1% 15.1% 4.3% 7.5% No response or ‘N/A’ 7.5% 3.2% 7.5% 1.1%

Conclusion

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Democracy is constantly being undermined and decisions are being manipulated/negotiated behind closed doors by key power-holders. There is a climate of intimidation and management so that ministers only hear “good news” as far as possible. With regard to the health sector the Minister clearly believes that clinically-led care takes priority over patient voice and so consumer advocacy is often minimalised or absent in policy and service planning. There is also a narrow focus on short term measured targets at the expense of other health measures that are as important (Health group). The quote above shows that those within the community and voluntary sector know the difficulties of the environment in which they are working. The conditions set out in this article show that the community and voluntary sector faces an intolerable and untenable environment plagued with contradictions which damage the sector. This is seen in both the responses from survey participants, the work of Treasury, and in documents from the umbrella organisations in the community and voluntary sector. Our conclusion begins with the issue of voice and the constrained democratic environment facing the community and voluntary sector. The lack of democratic space has negatively impacted on the operation of social service providers overall. The sector is not making a claim for engagement in public debate merely as a democratic principle, as important as this is; rather it is about ensuring that the needs of communities and the most marginalised New Zealanders are being met. The community and voluntary sector organisations providing social services aim to create more socially just world and improve the well-being of New Zealanders. Their involvement in public debate, we contend, is crucial if that is to occur. This article has demonstrated that New Zealand has a growing democratic deficit. Community and voluntary sector organisations are met with distrust, dismissal (unless you are a high-trust or preferred provider), or, at worst funding withdrawal. This deficit exists even in those places where NGOs would normally be able to exercise their voice such as meetings with government officials and ministers, in the media, and in sector forums. Regardless of which parties are in power, government for its part rationalised this behaviour to the public as part of prudent fiscal responsibility which mandated prioritising demands and transforming NGOs into preferred areas of service supply. Essentially, the environment for NGOs was one that engendered, at best, political realism and, at worst, fear. The most serious ramification of the latter was gag clauses in government contracts. 120


This inability to engage in public debate or the self-censoring by community and voluntary sector organisations impacts on the types and quality of social services provided. In part, the rationale of the community and voluntary sectors has been to meet the needs of the community, and this drives many of the workers and volunteers today. However, the structural and attitudinal blocks to public debate constrains groups seeking to meet community need. These blocks signal a contradiction in the government approach to service provision by the community sector. Groups are told to work with local communities but then government says what the “needs” of a community are. From the first survey it was clear that structural impositions on the sector were redirecting its attention to the funder’s values and priorities. Government, for its part, opted for what the Auditor General described as a “control approach” when managing the risks in their relationship with NGOs. Treasury confirms this in 2013: 13: “This is a market [the social services market] that is highly “managed” by government through the contracting process”. “Contracts are seen as the way to achieve this control” with the addendum that this relationship constituted an “imbalance of power” which the government should take into consideration, “in the way it conducts the relationship” (New Zealand Audit Office, 2006: 15). The evidence of power is explicit where the funder determines the amount of the contract and sets its outcomes. This situation then shows a sector grappling with the framework in which it has to operate ever-mindful of the biggest challenge: maintaining its unified identity, autonomy, integrity, and capacity to have an independent and acknowledged voice on behalf of communities in the midst of a so-called partnership with the government in the “social service market” through contracts which jeopardises independence, integrity, and capacity of the community and voluntary sector. Despite the rhetoric of partnership, consultation, and accommodation characterising the new relationship with government, our survey shows that the reality is one of increased power exercised by government over community and voluntary sector organisations. This control continually reduces the role of the sector as provider of the public good or possible advocate for democratic rights, and replacing it with an internal self-disciplinary role and an external regulatory role. It is difficult to see how successive governments could have justified the exclusion of community and voluntary sector groups from decision-making.

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These organisations are trusted to provide millions of dollars in social service provision but not trusted to contribute to public debate. The responsibility for accountability and legitimacy expected of government has been conveniently transferred to the community and voluntary sector. References Cabinet Office (2011) Guide to cabinet committee process. November 12. Retrieved from the world wide web http://cabguide.cabinetoffice.govt.nz Chapman, K. (2013) Government’ MMP review response slammed. Retrieved from the world wide web http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8674192/Governments-MMPreview-response-slammed ComVoices. (2014) Pre-Election Briefing. Wellington, March 2014: 6-7. Francesco, D. (2001) The Contract State and the Public Interest. In D. Glover, G. Patmore and G. Jungwirth (Eds) For the People: Reclaiming Our Government, Sydney, Pluto Press. Eichbaum, C. & Shaw, R. (2006) Labour in Government, Social Democracy, and the Third Way: The New Zealand Experience Paper presented at the British Political Studies Association Annual Conference, April, Reading, UK. English, W. (2011) Speech presented at the 50 Key Thinkers Forum at the Families Commission, May, Wellington, New Zealand. Environmental Defence Society. (2013) Press release: RMA Advice Service Cancelled by government, 10 May 2013, Retrieved from the World Wide Web http://www.eds.org.nz/assets/Media%20Releases/Media%20Releases%202013/13051 0%20Advice%20Service%20Cancelled%20by%20Government.pdf Gould, B. (2014) Closed Processes Don’t Make for Open Government. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, http://www.bryangould.com/closed-processes-dont-make-for-opengovernment/ Green Party. (2014) Problem Gambling Foundation persecuted by National, Retrieved from the World Wide Web, https://home.greens.org.nz/press-releases/problem-gamblingfoundation-persecuted-national-skycity-stance Grey, S. (2014) More markets, less democracy”, in D. Cooke, C. Hill, P. Baskett, and R. Irwin (Eds) Beyond the Free Market: Rebuilding a Just Society in New Zealand, Auckland: Dunmore, pp. 130-136. Grey, S. and Charles Sedgwick (2015a) Constraining the community voice: the impact of the neoliberal contract state on democracy New Zealand Sociology 30 (1): 89-112 Grey, S. (2015b) Interest Groups. In J. Hayward (Eds) New Zealand Government and Politics. (6th edition), Victoria: Oxford University Press: 460-471. Grey, S. and Sedgwick, C. (2013a) Voices of the community: the community and voluntary sector’s role in New Zealand democracy’, Report presented as part of the Community and Voluntary Sector Research Network forums Wellington. Grey, S. & Sedgwick, C. (2013b) The Contract State and Constrained Democracy: the community and voluntary sector under threat. Policy Quarterly: 3-10. High Court of New Zealand. (2015) NZHC 1701 Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand v Attorney General ProblemGamblingFoundationvAttorneyGeneral.pdf Hood, C. (1995) The “new public management” in the 1980s: Variations on a theme. Accounting Organization and Society 20: 93-109. Humpage, L. (2011) Neo-Liberal Reform and Attitudes Towards Social Citizenship: Review of New Zealand Public Opinion Data 1987-2005 in the Social Policy Journal of New

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Zealand 37: 1-14. Kamat S. (2003) NGOs and Democracy: False saviors of international development. Harvard International Review 25(1) Spring: 65-69. Kilgallon, S. (2014) Problem gambling court battle set. Sunday Star Times. Retrieved from the world wide web www.stuff.co.nz/national/10056543/Problem-gambling-courtbattle-set Kirk, S. (2014) Problem Gambling Foundation loses Govt funding http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9853344/Problem-Gambling-Foundationloses-Govt-funding Lynd, S. (2014) Doing History from the Bottom Up, Chicago, Haymarket Books. Maddison, S., Denniss, R. & Hamilton, C. (2004) Silencing Dissent: Non-government Organisations and Australian Democracy, Discussion Paper Number 65, June, Canberra: The Australian Institute. Mathewson, N. (2013) Supergrans to close after 17 years, The Press. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/8713296/Supergrans-toclose-after-17-years Markoff, J. (1999) Where and When Was Democracy Invented. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (4): 660-690. Migone, P. (2014) Community groups “fear speaking out”. Retrieved from the world wide web http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/259785/community-groups-'fearspeaking-out' Ministry of Social Development. (2001) Statement of Government Intentions for an Improved Community-Government Relationship, Retrieved from the World Wide Web http://www.ocvs.govt.nz/documents/publications/policies/governmentintentions.pdf Mulgan, R. (2004) Politics in New Zealand (3rd edition, updated by Peter Aimer), Auckland: Auckland University Press. Neilson, B. (2015) Outcomes Plus, The added value provided by community social services, with Sedgwick C. & Grey, S. Commissioned by New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services, Wellington. New Zealand Audit Office. (2006) Report of the Controller Auditor-General on Principles to Underpin Management by Public Entities of Funding to Non-Government Organisations, Wellington: Office of the Auditor General. New Zealand Herald. (2013) Disability bill demonstrates contempt for due process. Retrieved from the World Wide Web http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10884930 New Zealand Treasury (2013) Contracting for social services, Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Treasury. Nowland-Foreman, G. (1997) Can Voluntary Organisations Survive the Bear Hug of Government Funding Under a Contracting Regime? – A View from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Antipode 37 (1): 5-38 O’Brien, M., Sanders, J., & Tennant, M. (2009) The New Zealand Non-Profit Sector and Government Policy, Wellington: Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector Radio New Zealand. (2014) Anti-gambling body loses funding. Retrieved from the World Wide Web. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/239456/anti-gambling-bodyloses-funding Robinson, S. (2015) Relationships Aotearoa closing would be just the start, warns sector http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake2011/68698369/Relationships-Aotearoa-closing-would-be-just-the-start-warns-sector

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Salmond, A. (2013) A warning to New Zealanders keep hold of democracy, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10897497 Sanders, J., O’Brien, M., Tennant, M., Sokolowski, S. W. & Salamon, L. M. (2008) The New Zealand Non-Profit Sector in Comparative Perspective, Wellington, New Zealand: Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector. Shaw, R. & Eichbaum, C. (2008) Public Policy in New Zealand: Institutions, Processes and Outcomes (2ndedition), Auckland: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Social Development Partners. (2013) Internal document, Key Messages- Discussion, 2013 and Having a community dialogue 17 October 2013. www.socialdevelopment.or.nz/featured/issues-trends-and-groups. Somerville, P. (2005) Community governance and democracy. Policy and Politics 33(1), 117-144. Statistics New Zealand. (2004) Non-Profit Institutions Satellite Account. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.stats.govt.nz/tools_and_services/a-z-informationreleases/non-profit-institutions-satellite-account-2004.aspx Swyngedouw, E. (2005) Governance Innovation and the Citizen: The Janus Face of Governance-beyond-the-State. Urban Studies 42 (11): 1991- 2006. Tan, L. (2013) Axe over beneficiary aid service. New Zealand Herald, 4 March 2013, A12. Taylor, M. (2007) Community Participation in the real World: Opportunities and Pitfalls in New governance Spaces. Urban Studies. 44 (2): 297-317. Tennant, M., O’Brien, M., and Sanders, J. (2008) The History of the Non-Profit Sector in New Zealand, Wellington: Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector. Thornton, G. (2009) Pressing Issues Impacting New Zealand’s Not-for-Profit Sector, presented at the Health and Disability Sector NGO-Ministry of Health Forum, September, Wellington, New Zealand. Verspaadonk, R. (2001-2002) Shaping Relations Between Government and Citizens: Future Directions in Public Administration? Research Paper No 5, Canberra: Politics and Public Administration Group, Information and Research Services, Department of the Parliamentary Library. Yeabsley, J. & Allen, J. (2012) Benefits of Community Law, New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) report to Community Law Centres o Aotearoa Sandra Grey is a political scientist from Victoria University of Wellington. Her research centres on the role of citizens in political and social change. This includes research into social movements, the community and voluntary sector, and the role of academics in public debate. Charles Sedgwick is an independent researcher who has been working on research with the community and voluntary sector for the last decade. He has taught in both sociology and criminology Jared Commerer is a master’s student, tutor, and research assistant at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He finalised his BMus (Hons.) under the supervision of Professor John Psathas (ONZM) in 2009, and has since pursued social science, completing his BA(Hons.) in anthropology toward the end of 2013. Jared’s honours research examined notions of interdisciplinarity and critical theory in the sub-field of medical anthropology, and his current interests include political and emancipatory anthropology, the intersection of anthropology and critical realist philosophy, and the anthropology of war, conflict, and violence.

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 As of March 2015, Jared is embarking on his master’s in cultural anthropology; this research involves working alongside Eritrean refugees residing in Wellington with the aim of understanding and explaining the causes, experiences, and effects of nationalism and political violence throughout, and beyond, this small African nation.

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Who wants to change the flag? Results of a national representative survey Barry J. Milne Abstract New Zealand is considering whether to not to change its flag: a first referendum has been held to decide on the alternative flag, and a second referendum pitting the alternative flag against the current flag will be held in March 2016. Through 2015, polls have consistently shown 60-70% favour keeping the current flag, while opinions expressed in the media often express support for change (possibly by a factor of 2-3 to 1). This begs the question, whose views are being over-represented in the media? This article reports analyses from a representative survey – the International Social Survey Programme 2015 survey for New Zealand – on the factors associated with views on changing the flag. Results showed that 60% favour keeping the existing flag, in line with poll results. Groups strongly in favour of keeping the flag include women, those who are socio-economically deprived, who have low levels of education, who work in semi-skilled jobs, who feel they have less influence on government and indeed mistrust government, and those who think being born in New Zealand is important for New Zealand identity. There is, however, no group strongly in favour of change. It is concluded that, barring a substantial shift in public opinion before March 2016, the New Zealand flag will not change. Those lobbying for change may need to develop a message that resonates with women, the socioeconomically disadvantaged, and the politically inefficacious and wary. Keywords: New Zealand flag, socio-economic, citizenship, politics, identity Introduction On 15 October 2014, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced that there would be binding referendums to decide whether or not to change the New Zealand flag (Herald online, 15 Oct 2014). The John Key-led National government was not the first to suggest the possibility of changing the flag – politicians from both sides of the house have periodically raised this for debate 126


at least since the mid 1970’s (Pollock, 2014) – but this is the first time that flag change has moved from an interesting topic of debate to a real possibility of happening. The current New Zealand flag – a British Blue Ensign with four red stars representing the Southern Cross – was first designed and hoisted in 1869, but did not become the official flag of New Zealand until 1902. Prior to that, the United Tribes of New Zealand flag (designed in 1834), and the Union Jack were both in use (Pollock, 2012). The current New Zealand flag has been criticized on at least three grounds. First, it looks like – and is often confused with – the Australian flag, which is also a Blue Ensign with four red stars representing the Southern Cross, but with six white stars rather than four blue stars. As a recent example of this, organisers of the 2015 Water Polo Junior World Championships welcomed the New Zealand team with an Australian flag (albeit the maritime Red Ensign version) rather than the New Zealand flag (stuff.co.nz, 17 Aug 2015a). Second, the flag is seen is as a sign of colonial (British) subservience, with the Union Jack having pride of place. Economist and commentator Gareth Morgan calls the current New Zealand flag “an anachronism” (stuff.co.nz, 17 Aug 2015b), which “symbolises colonial domination” (Herald online, 15 May 2015), while political commentator Morgan Godfery argues that the flag is “a constant reminder of colonialism” (Herald online, 18 July 2015). Third, the flag is considered to not represent Māori or the current multicultural population. Mixed views have been expressed regarding the flag’s representation of Māori. For example, Morgan Godfery says, “The current flag certainly doesn't represent Maori. If anything, it's quite antagonistic having the Union Jack anchored up there in the left corner” (Herald online, 18 July 2015). Kai Tahu kaumatua, David Ellison, takes issue with the Southern Cross rather than the Union Jack, and argues that “The Southern Cross represents the New Zealand Government, not the New Zealand people… The same politicians who chose our current flag are the same people who confiscated Maori [land] and sold them for votes to settlers” (Stuff.co.nz, 19 Aug 2015). Against this, the Māori Anglican Church supports the current flag, saying it “best reflected the country's journey and sense of history” (Stuff.co.nz, 26 Aug 2015). Te Arawa iwi also highlight the historical significance of the current flag to them: “It is important that you are made aware of the authority granted by Queen Victoria to Te Arawa to fly the Royal Ensign on their marae” (Herald online, 28 Sep

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2015). Regarding New Zealand’s multicultural population, Gareth Morgan argues that “The descendants of British settlers are only one of the peoples of this land, but all of us are New Zealanders - and we need a flag that acknowledges that and tells our story” (Herald online, 15 May 2015). The process set in motion by Prime Minister John Key involves two referendums: the first (20 November – 11 December 2015) to choose which of several shortlisted designs will run against the current flag using a preferential voting system; while the ‘chosen’ flag will run against the current flag in a second referendum, where people vote to either change to the ‘chosen’ flag or keep the current flag (3-24 March 2016; www.govt.nz, accessed 15 Dec 2015). The order of these referendums has been widely criticised, with a poll suggesting nearly 80% support for a “Do you want flag change?” question to be included as part of the first referendum (Herald online, 1 May 2015), and a petition signed by more than 30,000 people asking for the inclusion of such a question was presented to Parliament in May 2015 by Labour MP, Trevor Mallard (Herald online, 7 May 2015). Nonetheless, the process remained unaltered. To oversee the flag consideration process, on 26 February 2015 a flag consideration panel was appointed, chaired by Emeritus Professor John Burrows, former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Canterbury, and comprising prominent New Zealanders in the area of sports, literature, academia, business, local politics (New Zealand Government Online, accessed 15 Dec 2015). The two main tasks of the flag consideration panels were to (i) oversee public engagement, and (ii) consider flags for first referendum. As part of public engagement, the flag consideration panel sought the opinion of the public through a series of public meetings. These were very poorly attended - a total of 739 people attended across 25 public meetings (average = 29; Herald online, 14 July 2015). More successful was a ‘What do you stand for’ campaign run from 5 May to 16 July 2015, in which New Zealanders were asked to write on a card (sent to all on the electoral roll) – or enter on a website portal – some words or phrases which describe what they stand for. The flag consideration panel then turned this into a ‘word cloud’, in which words and themes are represented in font sizes commensurate to the number of times they had been expressed. The results revealed words/themes like equality, history, freedom, respect, heritage, and family were most often expressed (Standfor, accessed 15 Dec 2015). However, reanalysis of these data

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from an independent company, Entopix, revealed that comments critical of the process or expressing support for the current flag were ignored in the “Stand For” analysis; when included in the reanalysis the most common themes include, “Keeping the current flag”, “New Zealand”, and “Wasting money” (Herald online, 13 Nov 2015). During the same time period as the ‘What do you stand for’ campaign (5 May – 16 July 2015) the flag consideration panel allowed the public to submit their prospective New Zealand flags to a dedicated website. During this period a total of 10,292 were submitted, and from this a ‘long-list’ of 40 flags were chosen on 10 Aug 2015. This list was reduced to 39 after one flag – the ‘Modern Hundertwasser’ – had to be removed because of copyright concerns. On 1 September 2015, the long list was reduced to a short-list of four: three silver fern designs (two of which included the Southern Cross and differed only in the colour scheme), and one koru design. Almost immediately there was outrage that such a sameness of design could have been chosen. As a commenter on twitter wrote: “After choosing 4 flags, the committee went out and got ice cream. They chose Chocolate, Double Chocolate, Similar Chocolate, and Terrible.” (David Buck, @_d___d_, 11.20am, 1 Sep 2015) There were also claims of conflicts of interest, with one of the panel, Julie Christie, sitting on a government board promoting the Fern Mark logo, and another panel member, Nicky Bell, declaring a conflict of interest which was not revealed (Herald online, 11 Sep 2015). Criticisms also came from the design community. Designers Institute of New Zealand CEO, Cathy Veninga, suggested “there may have been more successful and well-liked options if designers had been involved on the panel from the outset” (Stuff.co.nz, 23 Sep 2015). These criticisms and outrage culminated in growing support for a fifth flag, Red Peak, which designers favoured because it adhered better to design principles (Stuff.co.nz, 23 Sep 2015). Following an intense social media campaign, a petition with over 50,000 signatures in support of Red Peak was submitted to Parliament (Herald online, 15 Sep 2015). Then, after a good deal of political squabbling, Red Peak was added to the ballot on 24 September 2015, Herald online, 2015), and was included as one of the five flags in the first referendum run from 20 November – 11 December 2015. The primary motivation for the current research is this. Through 2015, polls have consistently shown few favour change (60-70% want to keep the current flag in seven of eight polls from May to November 2015: UMR,

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2015a;b; Aardwolf polls [Stuff.co.nz, 15 May 2015; 15 Sep 2015; 1 Oct 2015]; Reid Research [Herald online, 21 Sep 2015]; Herald Digipoll [Herald online, 1 May 2015]; the eighth poll [a Herald Digipoll] reported 53% want to keep the current flag [Herald online, 1 Sep 2015]). However, opinions expressed in the media often express support for change: in opinion articles identified from the Herald online website (part of the New Zealand Media and Entertainment group of news media) from 26 February 2015 (when the flag consideration panel was constituted) to 20 November 2015 (when the first referendum began), 20 articles expressed support for change versus 11 expressing support for keeping the current flag. In stuff.co.nz (part of the Fairfax media group of news media), the ratio was 34 to 10 over the same period (see Appendix). The question becomes, then, whose views are being over-represented in the media? What are the characteristics of people who want to change the flag and what are the characteristics of those who want to keep it? This research makes use of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2015 survey run in New Zealand beginning in July 2015, which includes questions on demographic and socio-economic questions, citizenship, political views and actions, and identity. To these questions a single question was added on the flag debate: There is a referendum planned for later this year on changing the New Zealand flag. Do you think New Zealand should change its flag? (1) No, I do not support changing the flag (2) Possibly, depending on the design of the new flag (3) Yes, I support changing the flag (9) Can’t choose. Note, that because the survey began in July 2015, it was not possible to include questions on different flag designs, as these had yet to be released, nor was it possible to focus on the final design chosen, which at the time of writing had just been announced as the Silver Fern (Black, White and Blue). The question could, however, distinguish those definitely for change, those against, and those considering it, based on the final design chosen. This article describes answers to the flag question cross-tabulated with questions from the survey. Of particular interest are questions around (i) ethnic and immigrant communities: Are Māori more or less likely to want to change the flag? What about other ethnic groups? Are foreign born more likely to want change?; (ii) geography: Is there an urban, rural divide?; (iii) socio-economics: Does socio-economic positioning have an effect on views on flag change?; (iv):

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political beliefs: Do voting patterns and political spectrum positioning affect flag change preference?; What other political beliefs and actions impact on wanting flag change; and (v) Identity: Do beliefs about identity affect flag change preference? Methods Sample. A sample (n=2500) was randomly selected from the New Zealand electoral roll (ages 18 years and older) to be sent the survey. A total of n=901 participants returned the survey, a response rate of 36%. Compared to the electoral roll sample, the sample of respondents was older, contained fewer individuals of Māori descent, under-represented those from Auckland, over-represented those in rural areas, under-represented those living in deprived areas, and overrepresented those in professional occupations. To account for this pattern of over- and under-representation, weights were computed based on the inverse probability of responding, estimated using a logistic regression model. Applying these weights produces a sample that is representative of the electoral roll, at least for the factors assessed (age, gender, Māori descent, region of country, rurality, area level deprivation, and occupation). These survey weights will be used in all analyses reported in this article. Survey. The survey was part of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP, http://www.issp.org/index.php), which runs social science surveys annually across a number of participating countries, with a different topic (module) assessed each year, rotated on a 8-10 year cycle. The modules for 2014 and 2015 were Citizenship and Work Orientation, respectively. However, as no ISSP survey was run in New Zealand in 2014, both the Citizenship and Work orientation modules were assessed in the 2015 survey. The current investigation will focus on the Citizenship module along with various demographic and socio-economic questions that are routinely assessed as part of each survey. The Citizenship module contains questions on: (i) Opinions on what it takes to be a good citizen (9 items); (ii) Political and social actions undertaken (11 items); (iii) Affiliations with groups and associations (6 items); (iv) Views on democratic rights (10 items); (v) Perceptions of political efficacy (5 items);

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(vi) Interest and engagement in politics and consumption of political news (7 items); (vii) Opinions on the political process (3 items); (viii) Perceptions of corruption in New Zealand (4 items); (ix) Political party voting in the 2014 General Election, and selfreported position on the political spectrum (2 items); (x) Views of New Zealand identity (16 items); As well on the electoral roll demographic information on age, gender, Māori descent, region of country, rurality, area level deprivation (NZDep2013, Atkinson et al., 2014), and occupation (using the major group level of the Australian-New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations, Australian Bureau of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand, 2006), the questionnaire also asked about ethnicity, education-level, place of birth and income. In addition to these questions, a single item was added on the New Zealand flag (see p128). Procedure. The survey mail-out was undertaken by the Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences (COMPASS) at the University of Auckland. The survey was sent along with a cover sheet which described the survey and explained (i) that participation was optional and that the survey was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee (reference number 014807); (ii) that all respondents go into a draw to win one of four $100 gift cards (‘Prezzy’ Cards); and (iii) who funded the survey. The initial mail out took place on 8 July 2015. Participants were able to complete the survey either on the questionnaire provided or online via SurveyMonkey (2015). For those yet to complete the survey, a reminder postcard was sent on 1 August 2015, and a second questionnaire, along with a pen, was sent on 27 August 2015. A cut-off for returns was set for 30 November 2015, and the vast majority (all but n=15) were returned between 11 July and 30 September 2015. Statistical methods. Cross-tabulations were computed between the demographic and citizenship items and responses (1-3) to the flag question above (i.e., n=41 [4.6%] who either selected “Can’t choose” or did not answer were excluded from analyses). Measures of association were estimated using the chi-squared statistic. For simplicity of analysis and interpretation, citizenship items that were answered

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on Likert scales were converted into binary measures comparing one end of the scale to the remainder. How this was achieved for each item is explained in the results section. Scales for items measuring (or purporting to measure) the same construct are not reported as it was found that constructs for which internally consistent scales could be computed did not reveal anything not already apparent from analysis of the individual items. Moreover, showing associations for all items gives the fullest picture of the items that are – and are not –most strongly associated with flag change. Results 60% of the sample did not support changing the flag, 28% possibly support changing the flag depending on the design, while 12% were unconditionally in favour of changing the flag. Those who completed the survey online (20%) were no more or less likely to support changing the flag (p=0.62). Support for changing the flag did not differ between respondents who completed their surveys before the final four flags were announced on 1 September 2015 (62% against change; 27% possibly for change; 11% for change), compared to those who completed their surveys after the flags were announced (56%; 30%; 15%; p=0.25). Note that there were too few surveys returned after “Red Peak” was added as a fifth design (24 September 2015) to assess its effect. Demographic factors. Table 1 shows the effect of gender, age, ethnicity, and place of birth on opinions on flag change. There are clear effects of gender and age: males are less likely than females to want to keep the current flag (55% vs 65%), and support for keeping the current flag tended to decrease with age, e.g., while 73% of those 25 or younger want to keep the current flag, only 54% of those aged 46-65 shared this opinion. The only significant findings for ethnicity and place of birth were that those of Pacific ethnicity, and those who were born in the Pacific, were overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the current flag (90% and 93% support, respectively) though caution is advised when interpreting the findings on Pacific ethnicity and place of birth as they are based on relatively small numbers of observations. Geography Table 2 shows opinions on flag change stratified by region, island (north, south) and rurality (major urban, minor urban, rural). Support for keeping or changing the flag did not differ by either island, or rurality, and that only one region

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New Zealand Sociology Volume 30 Issue 4 2015 Table 1. Support for changing the New Zealand flag by gender, age, ethnicity, and place of birth. Significant associations are in bold.

Gender Male (n=412) Female (n=446) Age 18-25 (n=84) 26-35 (n=129) 36-45 (n=149) 46-65 (n=316) >65 (n=183) Ethnicity New Zealand European (n=494) Māori (n=87) Pasifika (n=20) Asian (n=50) Place of birth New Zealand (n=657) Australia (n=9) Pacific Islands (n=15) United Kingdom (n=57) Asia (n=29) Other (n=82) a Compares under 35s to over 35s

Do not support flag change

Possibly support change, depending on design

Support flag change

p

55% 65%

28% 27%

17% 8%