Dare to Dream a Justice System That Actually Heals

It’s time for another Dare dream! I have been lucky enough to be working with Pillars Ka Pou Whakahou - who support the children in families where a parent is in prison. Among other illustration work, I helped the children from Pillars families to visualise a Bill of Rights -  for Tamariki Impacted by Whānau (Family) Incarceration. I wove in their illustrations, and laid out their aspirations. I feel so grateful for the experience of coming to understand their experiences and what they want the world to know about them. Hearing their stories has changed me and my sense of what Justice means. 

It is patently clear to me, we don’t have a justice system. We have vengeance in drag.

When harm is done, we put the individual on trial – but never the system that helped shape them. We point the finger, heap on blame, and call it accountability. The court of public opinion has no room for context or healing.

On the Right, we double down on punishment, as if locking someone away forever will make us safer. On the Left, we often hide behind toxic righteousness – shaming without listening, certain we’re right, but unwilling to admit what hasn’t worked. Both sides are stuck in ideological bunkers…. 

So here comes my dare dream. 

What if we lit a campfire between them instead? It would be a place where we can sit shoulder to shoulder to ask harder questions of ourselves and our society. To burn the stories that no longer serve and imagine a justice system that actually heals. 

When a crime happens In our current system, both the person and the system are implicated but only one ever stands trial.

We need a dual intervention – one that holds people accountable and calls the system into accountability too. We need a justice system that believes in the possibility of change.

Like the Dr Timoti, the Māori doctor who began life in gangs, spent years inside, and now heals people daily. He didn’t ‘beat the odds’ - he is the reason we must change them.

Aotearoa deserves a justice system that sees beyond punishment. One that believes in rehabilitation not as a soft option, but as a brave one. One that heals individuals and whānau and transforms the structures that keep cycling harm.

This isn’t naïve, It’s necessary. Aotearoa NZ needs people to do better – so that we are all better off.

This is not naïve, it is necessary.

Norway shows us what is possible. Bastøy Prison is not really a prison at all, but a secure wellness community. On this island, 115 inmates farm, cook, recycle, and even run their own ferry. They eat with guards, ski, watch films, and play in the Bastøy Blues Band. Life there is designed around responsibility, community, and humanity. The cost is high, about NZ$200k a year per inmate, yet the return is remarkable. Only 15 percent are back behind bars within two years. In New Zealand, we spend about the same, NZ$555 a day, yet more than a third of people are re-imprisoned. The spend is similar, but the intent could not be further apart.

Instead of punitive “Corrections” facilities, we need spaces that rehumanise, restore, and recover potential, breaking the cycles of intergenerational harm that drain us all. For some perspective, our prison system costs NZ$2 billion every year. Over forty years, all of the Treaty of Waitangi settlements* combined have cost less than double that.

So… what story are you ready to throw on the fire and dare dream about?

Feel free to share back your dare-dream, our collective gaze is lifted up by each other's radical dreaming. Come and share it with others in the Facebook Group! x

X Megan

P.S No pretty pictures from me today ☹️ I had a cold this week and a lot of travel so I am a bit behind the 8 ball.

*Treaty of Waitangi settlements are agreements between the Crown and iwi and hapū (Indigenous Tribes) to address historic breaches of Te Tiriti, providing redress for land, resources, and rights unjustly taken, and aiming to restore relationships and create a foundation for future partnership.