New Zealand’s burgeoning prison industry is a political crime that has been aided and abetted by successive governments, according to The Opportunities Party.
What is more, leader Gareth Morgan said today in launching the party’s criminal justice policy, the economic cost of incarcerating thousands of offenders is only going to grow as long as political parties try to outbid each other on who can offer the most $273.00 a night beds.
TOP has an innovative nine-point plan to reduce our prison muster and catch young offenders before they become part of the criminal population. We’re not planning to combat crime by putting more police on the street but by putting fewer criminals into society.
“There’s no good reason why New Zealand should continue to enjoy the dubious distinction of caging more people per head of population than any other western industrialised nation this side of the States,” Dr Morgan says.
“Even the current government accepts our prison growth is an abject moral failure,” Dr Morgan says, “yet to appease redneck voters National is now planning to open a boot camp detention facility in Waiouru to further harden our most challenging young offenders”.
TOP aims to reduce the prison muster by around 40%, down from the current level of 210 inmates per hundred thousand Kiwis, to the OECD average, by 2027. That alone would save $4.5bn.
This vision turns on new strategies to deal with at risk young people, and extending the more progressive and less punitive jurisdiction of the Youth Court to all offenders under 20 years old. The role of restorative justice will be expanded, drug addiction and substance abuse will be properly dealt with, and political gimmicks like the three strikes law will be dumped.
“The situation we are in now isn’t a result of having the world’s worst offenders,” Dr Morgan says, “It has come about because New Zealand has some of the world’s worst and most outdated criminal justice policies.
