There is much that is similar. There are significant things that are different, but much that is similar in terms of the nature of the problems, and I think those are problems with offenders, drugs in prisons internationally. We have similar prevalence rates for drug misuse in New Zealand prisons, not quite the same drugs as here. Alcohol and cannabis are big ones. There's much less crack in New Zealand, much more methamphetamine as a major driver of crime and a major problem in terms of gangs bringing drugs into prisons. We were not too bad at screening for problems, and with quite good focus areas for drug and alcohol treatment within prisons that were quite effective.
The other model that is strong in New Zealand, and is relatively less so here, is culture-based, Maori-based programming using indigenous models of well-being creating.... Maori are the indigenous people, the first people of New Zealand. For them, running treatment services, or more properly for them setting the cultural context in which treatment services occur, both for sexual offender treatment and drug and alcohol and non-violence treatment within the prisons was a very effective thing in rebuilding healthy cultural structures around people. It relates to some of the things we were talking about earlier about families as well, and some of those things, particularly where there are large numbers of first nations people, I think have a number of successful models that could be valuable for Canada to learn from.
The other experience is that we in New Zealand imprison about twice the number of people per capita that Canada does. We're at about 200 per 100,000; Canada is just over 100 per 100,000 now. So the New Zealand fondness, and increasing fondness, for incarceration was leading us to quite difficult positions as well, and major problems with keeping up with the health needs of our rapidly rising prison population. It's a problem that's clearly been anticipated here, and much has been written about it at the moment.