The media need to stop creating mythical $100 000 bottles of wine that don’t exist, $15 000 books that don’t exist and $150 000 donations that don’t exist and start focusing in actual National Party political corruption and not the Labour Party ones they just make up.
The staggering revelation that the Police have manipulated their crime stats is made more remarkable when it turns out Judith Collins was aware of the claims but didn’t do anything about them.
As the ever brilliant Gordon Campbell points out…
“…we now know, that 36.7 per cent drop in burglaries was a statistical mirage, and Collins knew that was the case before she began publicly bragging about the bogus outcomes. On RNZ this morning, the Police position is that this incident was an isolated “misunderstanding”, the problem was picked up, the officers concerned were sanctioned, and the numbers involved were only a small part of the overall crime picture. Those arguments would be more reassuring (a) if the Police “ misunderstanding” had not always been in one direction ie, crimes were systematically downgraded, not upgraded and (b) if the Police had come clean and publicized the Counties-Manakau situation and their response to it. They didn’t, though. Labour’s Jacinda Ardern revealed it. And – outrageously in the light of Judith Collins’ prior actions – Ardern has been slagged for making political capital out of the revelations.
The public now has only the Police’s assurance that bogus, Police-concocted good news in the fight against crime is not a more widespread problem. So long as politicians keep on beating the law and order drum, its healthy for public to stay skeptical about any claims that these measures are working.”
…so while Collins knew the stats had been manipulated, she was still trumpeting them as a great success??? How can a Minister get away with that, admit it in public and the mainstream media decide to focus instead on a bullshit story regarding Labour forcing all children to learn Maori?
So while the mainstream media grapple with any attempt at balance and proportional reporting let’s add another set of questions into the mix about this Government pressuring departments to lower bad stats.
Is the same corrupt practise occurring in Corrections?
Corrections under National have reduced re-offending by not breaching prisoners released from prison. Instead of applying a breach, Corrections now apply 1 of 5 interventions which creates a dramatic drop in the re-offending rates. Breaches are the single biggest re-offending offence so introducing a new set of thresholds creates the illusion of great results.
Tragically this new way to make the numbers look good may have had some tragic consequences. Recently I am told several murders have been committed within the last 12 months where offenders were released from Prison despite breaching conditions but because of the new intervention thresholds they weren’t sent back to prison and have gone on to kill people.
The Government should want to lower reoffending, but instead of investing the money into better quality public prisons with a strong rehabilitation program, they have chosen to privatise prisons for profit and fiddle the way reoffending rates get counted to make the situation look far better than it actually is.
If this has led to lives being lost, the Government must be held to account.
It used to be in New Zealand that even if you didn’t trust what the government told you, at least you could rely on official information and statistics from the government departments as they were seen as the business of government rather than the politics of government. National has now blurred the distinction between the two. They have been caught out cooking crime statistics for political purposes and are strongly suspected of doing the same to educational statistics. It must be asked how many more government figures are dodgy? National will go to any length to deceive New Zealanders in their frantic efforts to cling onto power.
Once again Mike – you can put it down to the corporatisation of the public service. I’m beginning to sound like a stuck record, but its an environment where CEO’s and senior management operate their little feifdoms and concern themselves with cost-accounting techniques and KPIs whilst the vast amount of public servants under them operate in spite of them rather than because of them. Instead of Douglas and Co promising more efficiency and effectiveness, de-politicisation and all the buzz words of the time – exactly the OPPOSITE has occured. Indeed the whole culture of public service has change. It’ll take a while to roll back but it could be done.
This dangerous little game our government is playing has dire long term consequences!
Corrections have taken quite a hit in to their budgets too under National but somehow there’s fewer problems. That does not make any logical sense
Where once Corrections would have charged/recorded a breach which generally shows a former prisoner is not adhering to their release conditions I assume they will now take an “Alternative” action to make the breach go away. How would the public ever know?
Is this how people are murdered or harmed by ex prisoners because Corrections should have done something when all the warning signs were there but didn’t? God knows negative human behaviour thrives on taking a mile when an inch is given.
If a cop catches a person committing an offence but warns them or walks away after a finger wagging exercise or simply ignores what they see in front of them altogether how would the public ever know? Even better there’s no paper trail. I am aware of substantial drops in other types of offences though this method.
The short term results are wonderful for National, a false assurance that everything is just dandy. Crime has ceased to be an issue for the voting public and the government is doing a fine job.
But sadly the way we are finding out is through much more extreme crime along with a general unease and intimidation on the streets as the kind of people with a criminal bent realise very quickly that the polices bark is far more impressive than their bite.
This of course is the absolute opposite to the utter shit we’ve been fed from National, that they were going to get tough on crime.
The example in government is led from the top. If the PM is scrupulously honest and ethical then woe betide any government MP’s who are not. Clearly this is not the case in NZ at this time.
The only thing that National was ever going to get tough on was the taxes on the rich. And to do that they were, and have, cut and cut and cut.
When are you going to be honest and publish the actual % impact of the data change? It is peanuts. Crime is dropping, and rapidly. Get over it, you’ve lost this debate already.
Well, when the crime is no longer reported as crime we can no longer be sure that crime is actually dropping. Hell, it could be going up and we wouldn’t know.
That’s what happens when the people who are supposed to be making accurate reports stop doing so and the local MP doesn’t do anything about it because it makes her look good.
Crime IS reported as crime. This data set is a tiny % of the total crime figures. It’s a beat up, and even the lame MSM realise that.
When is the National government going to give us the true figures, rather than the pre-election spin figures?
The National Gvt? Do you not realise this miscoding has been going on since deep into the previous Labour Govt? We have the correct statistics, within a very narrow margin of error.
Ah yes, the usual response from the right. Admit that you bullsed up but claim that the bullsing up started before you were in power so that absolves you of any blame.
So what do we have in Aotearoa now?:
bullshit statistics
feel-good fluff
scripted corrupt MSM
whistle-blower clauses
It’s no wonder the truth will be an elusive grail to set us free.
” EXCLUSIVE: Has the Government manipulated Corrections statistics as well? ”
The last 100 years of NZ Government Statistics have been manipulated . Where’s the news in that again ?
How else do we find ourselves tits deep in financial shit on a land richer than all most every other country in the world and with a land area the size of the UK yet has the population of a smaller Australian city ?
@ Once was Tim ? You go ahead and sound like a stuck record . If that’s what it takes .
Drive out of any NZ town or city . Park the car . Get out . Look around . What do you see ?
And we are how deeply in debt ? And we have how many people in prisons ? And we have a waiting list , how long at public hospitals ? And how much of YOUR money is ACC sitting on ? And who has the purse strings for ACC ? Who now owns our assets ? And how much of your money does micky fay have salted away ? And where is roger douglas right now ? He’s not in prison so we’re no closer to understanding The Great New Zealand Institutionalised Lie .
Until the courts are remanding the political crooks and swindlers into prisons and asset stripping those massive personal fortunes made from that fraud we Kiwis will continue to suffer in Paradise .
Ask yourself this simple question ?
If judith collins held a press conference tonight and said . ” Ok . You got me . I’m a liar and I lie to stay in control because I like it . I like it a lot . I like my salary , I like my entitlements and I like the power . So what ? What’re you going to do about it ? I’m staying where I am and you can all go fuck yourselves ! ”
It’s a good question . What would we do about it ? What could we do about it ? Is not the answer ” Nothing at all . ” ?
That’s what we should be worrying about . Not that some fat cunt like collins is stuffing her bloated arse into our chair in our parliament . We should be very , very worried that when all things are considered , we’re powerless to do anything about it .
We can vote them out , did I hear someone say ?
If every voter in NZ voted for a Labour / Green / Mana / Internet coalition ?
We’d still have the same regime . Nothing would change . We’d just be ruled by a different Lord with the same whip . There’s not one politician game enough to broach the subject of corruption because once even those with the very best intentions get into that club , they become corrupted . Like a P addict . One little hit and they spend a lifetime yearning to repeat the buzz . Money , privilege , entitlements … And the harder they had to work to get there the harder they’ll try and stay there once they’re in . That’s human nature though . It’s also human nature to fight for ones rights but what do we do ? Nothing . Yet . collins and her cronies need their cages rattled .
Speaking of human nature . I pose this situation .
As early humans became nomadic and could move away from their static food sources . like migrating animals and fishing to use the new fangled notion of growing foods and managing animals to give us far greater range to be able to move about and multiply on lands previously uninhabitable , would they have sat back and watched as another tribe wandered in and started helping themselves to your foods , partners and children ? Then moved into your camps and coerced you by promises they never intended to keep into the bushes while they bedded down in your tents while they plot on how to trick us into believing that their behaviour was somehow our fault ?
Did they hold back because there was some dick head prancing about with a police uniform on keeping another dick head wearing a pinstripe suite with a law degree safe from our spears and arrows ? I fucking doubt it somehow . We sit back and watch on , numbed by psychological witch craft as our very own tribespeople sell us out to richer others . How is that right ?
My humble advice ? Build a mob . Make your conserns known . Before the parasites kill the host .
Love it Countryboy…you preaching to the choir
Concocting statistics and fudging facts… all the hallmarks of an authoritarian, undemocratic government that has control as it’s top priority.
We’ve seen this in totalitarian Left and Right wing governments.
Now it it becoming a tool of choice by governments in supposed pluralistic democracies.
Here’s a statistic Frank. 3 Chinese banks have opened up in NZ. Dame Jenny Shipley is involved in one. Don Brash is involved with another.
Bye bye housing for kiwis.
What a good and valid point you raise, they are SELLING THEIR OWN COUNTRY and people out, this rotten government. I was looking for a place to comment on this, I simply could not believe it, but that is what goes on, and thanks for pointing it out here, which is a post all about selling out and lies and manipulations, and this government is “expert” in it.
Throw the damned traitors out, thanks!
Revelation after revelation of the Nats using doctored inaccurate statistics to present a false favorable picture of themselves shows just what a deceitful low standards government they truly are.
And when the stats are just so bad that they still stink after going through the National party spin cycle washing process ……….. then they cease collecting them:
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/more-statistical-censorship-from.html
Bullshit stats and continual lies ………….. the nats brighter future.
This government is in the business of 24/7 lying, nothing else. They are manipulating in corrections, welfare, health and more, all the time, I know it and have proof of it.
While I remembered the death of a Fiji man, for whom family and others donated thousands for a kidney transplant, and to get treatment here, and stay and work here, I just learned of another friend from Brazil, who had to leave NZ a few years ago, due to health issues not addressed and treated by the local health board here, although she was legally here, and was actually entitled to free health care.
They were happy for her to leave then, and she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in her country, got operated there, and wanted to return here, but they refused her re-entry, even lying that she “owed” New Zealand 50 thousand dollars in health care, which she never got, and never had the value of what they claimed.
She was sent back to her country, after not being able to see a lawyer, and was thus kicked out, for no valid reason at all.
New Zealand governments are dishonest, full of lies, disgusting, and inhumane, no different to the Abbott government in Australia, and they only “care” about such that come here, work their guts out and make profits for New Zealand, once any “issues” arise, you are KICKED OUT.
So corrections is just one area to look at the, lies are all over the place, and in humanitarian respects, this government is having a shameful record. Now we have Filipino workers employed on slave like conditions in Christchurch, watch 3rd Degree on TV3 for that!
Shame on all this, where is justice and the true Kiwi spirit, I ask?
Think about this …….. Judith Collins was police minister and she starts using bullshit dodgy stats to pretend she’s a proper or good police minister.
Now she’s minister of Justice and we find bullshit false stats being released by the justice department ( correct me if Im wrong but the ministry of justice runs the department of corrections ).
Are we seeing a serial offender at work here ?.
Q: When collins takes over a ministry is the first thing that happens is the stats get juked to help make her look good ?.
A: Yes but its standard national party policy for the other ministers too, that or cancel them altogether.
Hi Martyn
To keep our communities safe Corrections is working towards reducing re-offending by 25% by 2015.
Administrative offences, such as breaches of release orders are not included in our reducing re-offending statistics, as these offences are generally not related to public safety.
How we measure our rate of re-offending is available on our website at;
http://www.corrections.govt.nz/data/assets/pdf_file/0011/736265/COR-Practice-Journal-Vol2-Iss1-April14-v4lowres.pdf
It’s therefore incorrect to attribute a reduction of our response to breaches to the reduction in re-offending results as even if we reduced those prosecutions for breaches to zero, it would have no impact whatsoever on our reconviction figures and therefore our reducing reoffending rate.
To achieve our reducing re-offending objective we are placing more prisoners into work where they can earn credits for qualifications to help them into jobs upon release, as prisoners who work re-offend less.
We have also introduced drug and alcohol interventions into our prisons to help prisoners’ lead more productive lives.
Achieving our goal will see 600 fewer people going back to prison and 4,000 fewer people being reconvicted on community offences. But more than anything else, achieving this goal will mean there are 18,500 fewer victims of crime.
ENDS
Hi again,
Corrections aims to reduce re-offending by 25% by 2017, not 2015, as we just responded.
Apologies.
[…] police have been cooking the crime stats in Papakura. Now The Daily Blog is asking the question: Has the Government manipulated Corrections statistics as well? The answer is yes. But this is not being done by a few rogue Corrections officers. This is a […]
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