Mainstream media catching up with TDBs criticism again as they stumble across the point that the Waikeria prison will be double bunked…
Double-bunking booed in Waikeria Prison expansion plan
Double-bunking in cells could increase the risk of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and reduce rehabilitation opportunities at Waikeria Prison, a cabinet paper says.Room sharing badly impacts inmates’ health, reduces rehabilitation opportunities, moves prisoners away from normalisation and can mean upping staff ratios, according to a paper Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis presented to cabinet before the Waikeria Prison plan was signed off.
Yet half of the cells at the new Waikeria Prison facility will be double-bunked – in other words, two thirds of prisoners will share a cell.
…you can either read it here first or wait 3 weeks for the mainstream media to catch up.
If the double bunked element is shocking the media, wait util someone in the news room stops following their twitter account for news stories and realises that we are getting 500 beds for $750m when the original plan was a billion for 2500 beds.
Here is the naked truth.
We have thrown a lot of men and women into a barely functioning, violent, over crowded, double bunked prison system that results in 60% of those released reoffending within 2 years.
Our punitive law and order approach is counterproductive, it is eye-wateringly expensive while being grotesquely under-resourced and it can’t create environments where damaged men and woman can be healed, fixed and become functioning members of our society.
The anger within NZ culture at criminals, an anger whipped up by those harvesting victim pain and manipulated by politicians peddling get tough on crime rhetoric, doesn’t want to hear about creating healing environments, they want suffering. So blinded by fear and fury, many forget the loss of liberty is the punishment.
Labour are attempting to reform the prison industry and if they had built the mega prison, they would have made much of that reform talk look bankrupt to their activist base. The new Government are already finding a lack of traction in getting policy implemented is making them look bad in the eyes of their own voting block so decision rather than hesitancy is becoming the deciding factor.
To minimise the prison, the new Government are committing to a build that will still cost $750m rather than 1billion for only a quarter of the beds.
What the new Government should have done, and what I recommended, was a 21st century prison, one that took into account the need for an environment that is safe and healing rather than punitive.
That would have taken courage and vision.
This 500 double bunked mini prison will become over crowded and with a mere 100 beds for mental health, it’s not nearly big enough to do anything meaningful.
So at almost the same cost as the original mega prison, we have a mini one that won’t and can’t do anything to change the culture.
Labour should have thought big rather than this frightened minimisation.
Another home goal by a Government who seem to think their problem is a lack of ‘gender intelligence‘ in selling their ideas, and not basic strategic competence. Isn’t it time someone called back in Matt McCarten? Hasn’t he been punished enough and isn’t this incompetence starting to hurt?
I’m calling it: Jessica Williams, Giovanni Tiso & their comrades have Bradbury about two-thirds redpilled into our corner on the shitlord left.
“up to 87% of prisoners are unemployed before prison”
Another reason for the reinstatement of a 21st Century MoW before any more prisons are built. I am sure Matt would agree.
“if they had built the mega prison, they would have made much of that reform talk look bankrupt to their activist base”…but i doubt any of this is being done in the name of the ‘activist base’.
The activist base realises these policies mean double bunking, they also realise that the cells are too small.
These policies and announcements, like many Labour policies, are designed to keep Labours targeted voter the, ‘middle nzer’, feel like ‘something’s being done’ to help the great unwashed, and that ‘things are better than under National’, thereby assuaging any guilt or concerns over a failing social and economic system.
Meanwhile Ma and Pa voter can keep focused on their renovations, property values, their rental income and free study for young Thomas and Olivia.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/104702569/governments-new-doublebunked-prison-cells-at-waikeria-do-not-meet-international-standards
A FULL EMPLOYMENT policy doesn’t mean, a 4.5% unemployment rate is called full employment. A Full Employment Policy means every last person needing a job is given a job with reasonable pay.
Then when the Minister of Employment (why not Labour?) is asked how many unemployed people in the country he can proudly state the figure. It would be 163 or some figure like that.
Watch the crime and incarceration rates fall with a Real Full Employment Policy.
who you bunk up with has nothing to do with what is in your heart and if you are filled with evil then nothing will stop re-offending. get off the grass bomber.
If it feels true then it must be true right?
What do researchers know about this subject anyway?
There is another unanswered question.
The most recent prison built was at Wiri where approximately 1000 men are housed in a largely high security environment. It was also funded via a PPP. The capital cost was approximately $250m so how is the new Waikeria prison costing $750m?
I acknowledge being totally unqualified to judge one way or another on this issue, regarding what works best for inmates’ safety and general psychology. I’m inclined to consider the possibility that sharing a living space may in at least some cases be beneficial to their state of mind and social rehabilitation, but I expect the conclusion that its more likely detrimental to the desired outcome is presumably based on empirical data. Seemed to work well on Porridge though.
We are being fleeced. The true criminals apparently built the place.
Yes Martyn/TDB do a great job raising important issues confronting us. Pity MCMURPHY’s savage approach to incarceration is still held by many.
There is obviously a correlation with imprisonment and unemployment, therein lies your answer ?
I done lags in Waikeria back in the days and the high medium area was rife with violence as the yards that they stuck you in were savage on the human mind and spirit which breeds animosity and hatred on a level that unacceptable to the human soul. It still did not reduce the reoffending rates and prison population increased even when we are told that the crime rate is decreasing??
Am I head injured? Because I think I have an idea!
Prisons, in otherwise polite and civilised societies, serve several functions.
You be naughty and get caught you may go to prison.
When you’re released from that societal torture chamber,AKA prison, and re offend, you will be re caught and re sent back to where you will be re damaged and better trained to be a better naughty person who, with that new training, may be a better naughty person… who will certainly get caught again… and you will be sent back to the torture factory while the blue rinsers and the Old Big White Sneaker People tut-tut. Repeat as above.
The other reason for bigger prisons is because they’re meant to be seen to be there.
They are there as a mute reminder to everyone that we’d best keep our noses clean or fuckin’ else.
Lets swing the absurd notion of the holy ‘Job’ into that script.
Some of you believe that the All Great and Righteous ‘Job’ will magically transform society into a wondrous Harvey Norman Plastic Paradise. It will be all Kaloo and Kallay ! As we make perfectly bleached, shaved and waxed ‘love’ luv, on the square armed sofa as we watch TV tell us that we’ve ‘made it’ out of the corner of our eye. Finally, earthly valhalla! No. Sorry. Back to the drawing board, I’m afraid.
We have our iPhone, iPad, Android TV, a machine that’s not much more than a plastic ghost lurking, taking commands obsequiously as it listens then reports back to Satan as to your progress down the road to Hell. We have the massive black V8 4×4 with dual everything’s and lined in animal skins ready to take the plasti-kids to their places of indoctrination, past the adult prisons, to be readied for tomorrows wonderful ‘Jobs’ to which they will trudge for forty years to achieve a brief period of retired confusion before they die of cancer, likely from being to close to their iPhone, iPad, Android TV, the machine that’s not much more than a plastic ghost lurking, taking commands obsequiously as it reports back to Satan.
Listen dumbasses. You’re being fooled. Sure, prisons are needed to lock up nutters in. But why torture them. Why not, instead, make them places of kindness, security and rehabilitation? Show prisoners some comfort and enlightenment? Two fundamental elements missing in their lives that’ve tripped [them] up into oblivion?
Thusly, the reason for prisons in a polite society is as a that of a threat to good ( non antisocial ) people. Prisons have nothing to do with keeping our society safe from zany crims leaping fences and stealing our stuff or smoking weed or P or etc.
NZ prisons are there to say to good Kiwi people; “ Keep you heads down and keep your mouths shut of fuckin’ else”.
And who is behind such a thing? ( If that such a thing is indeed what it is? )
The banks. The Banksters want us to have ‘Jobs’, to work our days away, to make them ever more rich. And powerful.
You write at me about ‘Jobs’ ? First, you’d better write at me about re nationalising our assets and running the scum banksters off our lands. Otherwise, you’re wasting my eyeball-time reading your pro-job gibberish while your taxes build bigger prisons to be used to keep your mouths shut and your heads bowed. I think that’s called irony?
How?
Those qualities are curiously lacking in the wider community so where would we find the role models and practitioners?
Could we start with WINZ, ACC, and IRD – just to get warmed up? Or, if they’re in the Too Hard Basket – perhaps the gang-masters and bosses paying below adult minimum wages and demanding ridiculous compliance.
We’re talking widespread societal spalting here, not just a spot of rot.
Haha, ‘free speech’?
Not that much here on TDB, given my objective comment on Matt was not published.
Until there are practical and comprehensive answers to some very basic questions this is going to stay sticky.
Which system of education will effectively deal with migratory families so the kids get continuity?
Have we yet arrived at a working approximation of a NATIONAL culture – values, morals, stance – regardless of ethnicity? So that everyone is free to honour and use the culture of forebears and ancestors while still abiding by the ways of the land. What you give and what you gain as a citizen.
Providing work training (and family-making training) for ALL young people – and ensuring that only a vanishly-small number of people under the age of twenty five is unemployed. That includes people with physical, mental and social disabilities.
Sticking with the fizzy kids – the risk takers, the bubblies, the rebellious – so there’s someone to go home to. Someone who’ll listen and provide other ways to ‘let the pup off the lead’.
Make it easy to have a second, third, fifth, tenth chance to learn, settle, contribute.
Make better gangs. Much better gangs. They’re a useful construct and they work when prisons, boot camps, social pressures haven’t a hope.
Can we? Maybe.
[…] Prisons make people worse […]
Comments are closed.