I don’t think we should judge by the small turn out to a protest outside Serco today that the issue of private prisons is not important. I’ve been fighting this since National mooted prison privatisation in 2008 and I had no idea this protest was even on.
Poor organisation and little promotion of a protest shouldn’t doom the issue to the fringes.
Serco’s global reputation for corruption and abuse cuts to the very heart of the issue of the privatisation of social services. Stories of fight clubs, abuse, riots, cooking the stats and a death that wasn’t reported can’t go away and now prisoners are aware that there are voices outside of the prison wall prepared to help publicise the violence, it won’t go away.
Not that we should limit the debate to the private prisons. Public prisons are just as damaged through decades of underfunding and an electorate so filled with hate that sensible sentencing in this country is a euphemism for a lynch mob.
Anne Tolley has said she is happy for Serco to apply for contracts to work with children in welfare, which when you compare how they have treated prisoners suggests a ‘Lord of the Flies’ styled kindergarten.
Nothing highlights how this momentum is enabled so effectively than Duncan Garner’s column today where he uses ‘evil’ and ‘monster’ to describe Tony Robertson and almost mouth waters over the fantasy of reimplementing the death penalty…
This child kidnapper may have been at a delicate age – but this man was no boy deserving of another chance at freedom.
He was a hunter. He was a killer in waiting. How did a bunch of supposed “experts” assessing him get it so badly wrong?
Despite the judge’s faith, Robertson made no effort to rehabilitate in prison. Corrections staff never wanted him released. They knew he was a ticking time bomb.
… the media’s love of crime as a headline is because it rates. Demonising criminals helps sensationalise the story, the media would have called ‘The Beast of Blenheim’, the ‘Vampire Monster from Mars’ if they could have gotten away with it. The solutions to crime are far more complex than Duncan Garner can articulate and his red flag waving is part of the problem, not the solution.
The only ones who benefit from Garner’s lock em up and throw away the key mentality are the Private Prisons paid to incarcerate them.
Private prisons, especially ones where the Government are 30% shareholders in like NZ are a cancer, our underfunded public prison system is a plague and a media more interested in chasing anger fuelled ratings simply speeds this cancer and plague along.
“Public prisons are just as damaged through decades of underfunding and an electorate so filled with hate that sensible sentencing in this country is a euphemism for a lynch mob.”
So, Bomber, you SERIOUSLY think spending $91,000 PER PRISONER PER YEAR is “underfunded”??? How much, pray tell, should we be spending? My eyes are already watering in anticipation of your reply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Corrections_(New_Zealand)
Well he obviously means poorly funded, genius. Like a charter school which receives more per student to deliver poorer outcomes (or better outcomes on paper than in reality).
We could be spending a bit more on making crime uneconomic, then we’d all win.
Spoke today with an insider with a security guard who has been involved and said the gang culture mostly runs the jails now, so why is this NatZ allowing this?
Are they setting up their own jailbird gang to protect them when everything turns to custard?
Garner has signed a contract with the devil, a long time ago. He loves to shoot from the hip at times, and present himself as the “mate” from next door, speaking for the Kiwi battler.
He has recently signed up with Westpac, and is complicit in selling banking services via his “Drive Show” on Radio Live(ing Dead). They pay his master, who pays him, and they all have a merry go round of a great rort going, all earning money on the expense of the ignorant.
I do not even need to read the nonsense he writes, it is emotive stirring, nothing else, he does it quite often on his radio show, and he has NO integrity. It is about him, his show and ratings, none else, and that will be the “standard” for that new show coming on TV3 shortly on week nights.
Henry signed up with AMP, Garner is with Westpac, and the Herald has various advertisers sponsor articles they write now. This is how much we have sunk into the gutter with the MSM in NZ, it is at best called “shiny shite”.
Westpac sponsored my short regional tour for two weeks last month. I no longer have any connection with them. Nor did they specify anything around content. Nor did I get one cent out of it. But let’s not let facts get in the way of your bias and prejudice.
The notion that we should lock up people for punishment is ridiculous. When children are put in time out does their behavior improve – you just get resentment and a child who will try to work out how to continue with the behavior. You need to change the attitude or change the circumstance. If a person is delving into drugs normally it is because their reality is so shit that they are trying to change it. So we need as a society to change the realities. We also need to deal effectively with mental illnesses. Then we would be like Finland and only locking up monsters not our poor and oppressed!
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