'No one will be able to meet parole without NCEA Level 2 Maths and English'.

71% of prisoners have significant literacy problems. Around 60% of prisoners (and 75% of Māori prisoners) have had a traumatic brain injury. https://twitter.com/rnz_news/status/1199383415243460608

In countries similar to Aotearoa, around 30-50% of people have a cognitive or learning disability (last I checked, we haven't collected this info).

People in prison often wait months just to get the most basic physical or mental healthcare. How the hell would THIS work?

It wouldn't.

They're not going to hire the dozens of teachers and teacher aides to work with prisoners to do this. Forcing people who are functionally illiterate to do Level 2 by correspondence is a failure.

This is absolute naked classism and racism.

If a kid gets kicked out of school at 12 and no other school will take them, if they have a learning disability, if they have had little to no public support before getting incarcerated, how the hell are they going to get Level 2 English IN PRISON? Our average sentence is 2 years

This is totally out the gate. Stacks up with Nationals other cruel and useless policies like fining parents if their child drops out of school though. They're really trying to laser focus target their racist and poor-hating voters.

Prisoners are usually eligible for parole when they've served half of their sentence of two years or longer. So if someone has been sentenced to 5 yrs best case scenario they would be up for parole at 2.5 years served time.

This policy is nothing but heaping on more punishment.

Our justice system just ruthlessly beats down people who are poor, brown, and disabled. People who have already been terribly let down by our austere public services like education, health, disability support, and mental health. This is just ramping that up even further.