You could call the Private Prison ‘the healing magical place of care bears’ and it would still be an abomination

I love this news story for two reasons…

Poetic name for private Wiri prison slammed as ‘potty’
A decision to name New Zealand’s biggest new private prison a place to “move out of the mist” is being called “potty” by justice campaigners.

The $300 million, 850-bed men’s facility at Wiri, South Auckland, is due to open next May.

The medium security prison will have two names, after prison operator Serco consulted with community groups and Corrections Minister Anne Tolley had the final say.

Its formal title is Auckland South Correctional Facility – but it will also be known locally as Kohuora, translated as “coming out of the mist into the new world of the living”, a name recommended by Mana Whenua iwi, Te Akitai Waiohua.

“Our community partners considered this resonates well with our focus on helping to prepare prisoners to lead constructive lives post-release and to reduce reoffending,” a Serco spokeswoman said.

…the first reason why I love this news story is the response from the angry lynch mob glee club of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, ACT and of course the angry grieving partner of a terrible crime who all say…

The Sensible Sentencing Trust dubbed the move “political correctness gone mad”.

“We would like inmates to be reminded they are serving their sentences in a prison, not some kind of spiritual retreat,” spokeswoman Ruth Money said.

Law and order hardliner Kenneth Wang, deputy leader of the Act Party, said the idea was “bizarre”.

“The authorities have already tried to reinvent prisons as ‘correctional facilities’ and now they are trying to give them another makeover. It is senseless.”

Brian Brown, whose 24-year-old daughter Natasha Hayden was strangled by double killer Michael Curran in 2005, was appalled to hear of the new names for the prison.

“So, when someone asks a criminal ‘where have you been bro?’ they can say “I have been spending a few months at Kohuora, bro,” which sounds a lot better than ‘I have been in prison the last few months, bro’. It is disgusting.”

…they are angry at the name, not what the private prison represents, oh no, it’s the name that they have a problem with.  You get the feeling they wouldn’t be happy until it was called “The torture palace of a thousand tears’.

The second thing I love about this news story is how the framing of it around it’s name has become the focus rather than what the bloody hell are we doing building massive private prisons as the crime rate drops? Why are we shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars into a company whose contract is secret?

SERCO have told the London Stock Exchange in September of 2012 more about their contract than they have with told NZers.

SERCO stated to the LSE they will make £15m per year from private prisons in NZ. Over a 25 year period that’s £375 million for the life of the contract on top of the $900m for building the private prison.

When Wiri is finished it’ll mean we will have one of the highest proportion of prisoners being held by private prisons than anywhere else in the world, and we’ll have shelled out this $1.5+ Billion in corporate welfare and made such a massive leap to privatise our prison system with bugger all public discussion about the ramifications of incarceration for profit.

Oh and National removed the right for Prisoners to vote so they’ll be no means whatsoever for those impacted by this to have any say in the direction.

But don’t worry, SERCO would never lie to us about how things are running. Or would they…

Serco gave NHS false data about its GP service 252 times
Serco, the leading private contractor to the government, has admitted that it presented false data to the NHS 252 times on the performance of its out-of-hours GP service in Cornwall.

Let’s ignore all these questions and moan and whine about the name. Good on ya NZ, that’s one hell of a standard of public debate.