The Prison population is dropping, fewer prisoners are in rehabilitation, more are committing violence in prison and recidivism rates are still above 50%.
The only trick Labour adopted when they took over was existing legislation National had simply ignored that allowed low level prisoners to serve their sentences at home under home detention rules.
The problem was under National, they didn’t bother actively helping prisoners fill in the paperwork to apply for it. The first thing Labour did was force Corrections to help the prisoners fill in the paperwork, and that is the only reason the prison muster fell.
It’s still the same old underfunded violent and corrupt prison system it always was with the same counterproductive policies.
Prisoners still have to admit guilt before they can access rehabilitation, which leads t fewer accessing it.
The prison environment is still too toxic to heal.
We are spending $1.7b on a prison system that is producing men more damaged than when they went in.
Sadly there are no votes in healing damaged men, only punishing them.
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To stop and reduce the prison population NZ needs to create better systems to protect people.
Start by looking after kids and educating them properly as a society.
Then make sure (like Cuba) you have massive literacy and numeracy.
You don’t need massive money to train doctors and nurses (aka Cuba) and have more primary health workers.
Don’t allow monopolies and near monopolies and exploiters to take over NZ as a small country and control the pricing of everything and make everything too expensive (while pretending to be the ‘good guys’, from power to construction materials to food.
Don’t allow your wages to drop and cash workers to increase, NZ already had 40 per cent – receiving more in tax credits and other benefits than they pay in tax. Thousands more are neutral contributors, or are close to it. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/81429047/small-number-of-taxpayers-bear-the-brunt-of-new-zealand-tax-bill (to stop this you need higher paid jobs, not LOWER paid jobs, DOH!).
Don’t think that by exporting raw products from NZ, they will come back to NZ cheaper, they don’t and you lose not just jobs but also skills in the process of out sourcing everything and in times of Covid the ability to keep going without parts of essential items.
If you don’t give access to fair jobs, people join gangs. Gang recruitment is up 13%
Don’t import in criminals from overseas and give them and their families easy residency because it can quickly overpower your country if you only used to have a 3 million population and now have 5 million but more turned criminals or exploiters of labour and materials in NZ (both legal and illegal) .
Then the next generation of crims from overseas can also access your country and start making counterfeit passports and drivers licenses.
Don’t allow next generation jobs and industries to be hijacked and led by the status quo who are trying to disrupt it to keep their profits, Next generation industries seem very open to fraud and corruption, ripping off people and be derailed with current laws that don’t protect people …. (IT, Green jobs).
Next generation jobs are the future and sadly all around the world being hijacked by ignorant governments and bureaucrats who take the easy road with their networked cohorts enriching themselves while controlling the discourses. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/28/deeply-concerning-government-consultant-made-millions-from-nsw-environmental-offsets https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crimson-consulting-the-court-file-they-fought-for-a-year-to-keep-hidden/73S2FXAUS5QCPWZJUQHNGUW2LY/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-two-other-secret-lawsuits-against-education-firm-crimson/WW7257QIB55CC3GS5J4OCWSOJ4/ https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/118087133/crimson-education-accused-of-using-untrained-tutors-and-operating-ghost-offices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-big-oils-last-grand-scam-alex-grant/
The problem is in there haste (Labours) to reduce prison numbers many prisoners are being released before they can attend decent rehab programs. There are some excellent rehabilitation programs now for our Maori men and these programs are by Maori for Maori. Of course the person has to want to genuinely change but if they are released before doing a program some think they no longer need to do one when in fact they do. And I say this because I have seen this firsthand, it is not easy when one has been incarcerated for a long time to get out and fit in and them not to be tempted to slip back into there old habits and the same old lifestyle that got them in prison in the first place.
Don’t worry Bomber, according to the recently released He Puapua document (page 91) prisons won’t exist by 2040
“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.228).
I can imagine the American for-big-profit prison owners are likely banking on the child-abuse/neglect-as-the-#1-public-health-problem to continue indefinitely.
Trauma from unhindered toxic child abuse/neglect typically results in the helpless child’s brain improperly developing. If allowed to continue for a prolonged period, it acts as his/her starting point into an adolescence and (in particular) an adulthood in which its brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. In short, it can make every day an emotional/psychological ordeal, unless the mental turmoil is doused with some form of self-medicating. Committing crimes, not surprisingly, seems to be a typical outcome of such childhood trauma.
There are really two failures.
Failure One; Society. Our determination to avoid acknowledging that our entire current political framework is a fervent adherent to capitalism is an extremely dangerous ignorance. We have a buckled capitalist democracy when we must have a socialist democracy.
You lazy riche wankers want to drive by the homeless in your Rangies? Great! But pay your taxes first. And if you don’t want to pay taxes then go and live in a country where they don’t have taxation and see how long you last? Poverty builds criminals. Poverty is a factory for making street crims who inevitably end up in SERCO’s prisons. Good coin for SERCO and the self-legitimising white collar criminals in offices but a fucking nightmare for the rest of us.
Failure Two; Of course you’re going to be fucked up when you get out of prison. We should be amazed if prisoners were anything else but. AO/NZ’s prison system’s warped towards torture and cruelties to satisfy the perverse and unhinged general public who enjoy the frisson of reading about yet another grisly murder or robbery with violence in the pornography that pretends to be the News.
Despite what the cruelties the benign psychopaths in the general populace gag for we should treat prisoners as patients who need respite and care. Not give them more of the same which made them who they are.
Of course, underneath the prison systems and the exploitable commodities that prisoners are there are the insurers, the banks, the legal systems with its lawyers, cops and court officials who’s very livelihoods depend on criminals as a resource which must keep on giving.
When I think of it, our systems of politics, economics and law and order need an entire re-write from start to finish which can be done, of course. It was done in a corrupt and bias fashion to begin with so lets do it again and this time properly and without the influence of the lunatic-fringe money fetishist freaks and their hangers on?
Justice in NZ is built upon racist and protection lines.
For example recently a pakeha lady shot her partner dead with the excuse she was protecting their drug stash, and gets home detention for the murder. Meanwhile a Maori man poaches some trout and gets jail time.
Chinese business man received $33,000 worth of stolen honey and was repackaging it, but only fined $17,500 – sounds like he was still $15,500 better off after being caught.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12077932
Chinese man who ‘tweaked’ boy’s penis blames ‘cultural mistake’, escapes criminal conviction. His daughter wrote the ‘cultural assessment’ used by the courts which was apparently allowed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-49093697
Millions is cash in garbage bags in NZ, millions in cigarettes, but name suppression for ‘hardship’ granted by NZ courts.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/115014183/cigarette-smuggling-case-defendants-keep-names-secret-to-protect-children-employees
No police prosecution for the illegal cash worker Chinese death on a NZ construction site, but ACC pays out to the cash worker widow in China. No employer or anybody prosecuted for the cash worker’s death by NZ police.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/illegally-working-overstayer-dies-on-the-job-acc-payment-made-to-widow-in-china/OWADEJMGCUYM36WLF6YNKUA2SE/
No work safe fines during these deaths.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/112696703/inquest-hears-that-sensor-may-have-saved-girl-killed-by-rubbish-truck
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300291037/truck-drivers-tablet-use-may-have-caused-auckland-crash-that-killed-woman
Its pretty much impossible to be rehabilitated when you are in 23 hour lockdown .
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