How ACT wants to end ‘tag-and-release game’ of juvenile offending
ACT is calling for tougher consequences to tackle New Zealand’s youth crime problem, saying criminals feel invincible due to the lack of punishments.
The party announced on Monday it want to spend half a billion dollars on building youth detention centres, including 200 new beds, that would be run by the Department of Corrections if elected into Government at this year’s election.
You know it’s election year because every week there’s a new group of poor people David Seymour wants to bash.
Last week he wanted to stop welfare to working parents and beneficiaries who hadn’t filled in their census forms and this week he shocked the nation with a demand to spend $1billion on locking up more kiwis in our dangerous, underfunded, under staffed, corrupt counter productive Prison Industrial Complex.
I think it’s especially charming that David wants detention camps built to imprison children, who is he going to contract for that?
The Chinese? They build cheap gulags.
ACT have claimed this draconian lynch mob nonsense policy will merely replace the crims in prison that the soft-on-crime-socialist-gang-
Labour have succeeded in lowering the prison muster using National’s home detention application policy because they instructed prison staff to help illiterate prisoners fill in the forms – what exactly is the rights beef with that? The helping illiterate people fill in forms or that Labour made a National Party prison policy work?
Tough on crime rhetoric is always a vote winner, David could promise to chain gang children in orange jumpsuits on the harbour bridge breaking rocks with pix axes while singing gospel hymns barefoot on hot coals and ACT would still win!
Why is it always the stick and the bash with ACT?
ACT love to give poor people a kicking when they are down, did a homeless person punch you as a child David?
Who hurt you Mr Seymour?
Why must the ACT the Freedom Party always revel in using the jackboot of the state on everyone weaker than them?
When ACT demanded to put ankle bracelets on 11 year old Children, National followed it up by demanding ankle bracelets on 10 year old children, how will Luxon top a billion into prisons to lock up more people? Will National propose an Island fight club prison where prisoners fight each other to the death simulcast with live gambling and caffeinated sports drink sponsorship?
Promising to expand the counter productive prison industrial complex and put more people in prison while building youth detention gulags isn’t social policy, it’s performative art for fascists.
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Soft on crime bullshit has seen ramraids skyrocket, violent crime up 30 percent, shootings a regular occurrence.
How about locking up the crims instead of turning them loose?
What a revolutionary idea!
Extra long sentences for gang members.
The opposite of what the current clown show have inflicted on us sounds like a great idea.
I don’t necessarily see the ram raid correlation between being ‘lock‘em up’ and stopping crime. Aren’t the ram raids being done by those that would not go to prison due to their age but might be wearing charm bracelets provided by ACT?
Keep calm
David Seymour needs to take stock of reality and understand that he can implement all these punitive polices to attract voters but getting them actually into law is another thing.
Let’s have a look at the famous “Three Strikes law”, a classic example of a failed Act policy, destined to fail from the day it was introduced.
My reasoning and comments are really quite simple. To implement a law in Aotearoa, you need a judiciary to implement it and as we all saw with three strikes it was only used to its full extent twice because the judiciary repeatedly kept using the words “manifestly unjust”.
So David my suggestion to you is, in relation to youth offending, why don’t you sit awhile, take a few deep breaths and understand why our youth are out of control? Currently I would suggest you are putting the cart way before the horse which will never do Aotearoa any good at all.
Jackie Foster
CEO
Social Justice Aotearoa.
and this is the guy who bangs on about cutting government spending. The $ will come from health, education, and welfare … oh, and don’t forget all the money saved from shutting down a number of government departments/agencies – e.g., Ministries for Pacific, Maori, Disability, Human Rights … and so on.
And then of course he’ll use tax payers money to reintroduce private Carter schools. I wonder what the hard righties think of that.
Taxpayers subsidizing private business?
$1billion on locking up more kiwis will only be the tip of the iceberg if nothing is done to address the drivers of crime.
Locking up all the criminals is useful, but in isolation it is hopeless. He won’t be able to build the jails fast enough.
Their only solution to the coming economic collapse is austerity, and more bailouts for Wall Street. He will never have enough cops to arrest all the angry, starving peasants — but I suppose his Old Etonian friends will get to exploit all the free labour inside the private prison.
Yes, I thought the figure was on the low side too. Hopefully just a starting point.
Trouble is, ACT are developing policies that will result in further widening of the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ – seems to be part of this policy that accepts prison building as a national priority and is part and parcel of further enhancing the wealth of those with more than they will ever need already.
Absolutely correct.
This was always going to be the consequence of Labours laissez faire prison emptying law and order policy, the pendulum swinging so far off the scale, criminals realising that being a criminal has never been a more lucrative consequence free career option.
Its an expected reaction to gratuitous violence, the near on 600 ramraids this year in Auckland alone, businesses and people ruined, cars written off, etc, etc that ends up in the revolving door of the pointless youth court, where everyone knows, there are virtually no consequences.
Its a consequence of the improper use of home detention for this horrendous violence and the lack of monitoring for those on some kind of electronic detention.
Want to blame anyone? Blame Labour!
Everyone misses the point. ACT is a reactionary party with an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. What can ACT do with half a billion that will stop crime from occurring? That’s right they haven’t the intellect to start that discussion. Simple, crime starts in the home.
So no more cuddles but maybe the next thing they introduce after detention centre’s, to go alongside their gun policies are firing squads.
Trouble is NASC, that a lot of the RW commentators on here suffer the inability to grasp the concept that the breakdown of society is the result of 30 years of the neoliberal experiment that ACt champions. A quick comparison with the social conditions in Paris in 1769 may help them realise that they are now reaping the consequences.
By a lot, you mean Bob.
Free Peach, I can’t see Cuddles Coster signing off on that policy.
Despot David will though!
I wouldn’t trust ACT with one character of my census data. Weaponizing someone’s personal records for political gain is not only unethical and disgusting, it is illegal (Privacy Act 2020, 4(49)). This is on par with the Labour government apartheid and segregation of citizens based on health status.
I can only speak about the situation in Chch but many older people will not use public transport that requires transfer at the city Depot due to gangs of young children looking to rob or hurt people for no reason . Yesterday the Press had pictures of 6 shop owners who had been ram raided the young offenders face little consequence but those offended against face increased costs like insurance and repairs . The soft on crime appoach has not worked and while tough appoach may not be the whole answer those who suffer crime need to see some action against the offenders.
I thought a fair whack of the funding was to vastly increase rehabilitation? That’s got to be good hasn’t it?
Personally I prefer youth military camps. They do work well as stated by the man who did them last time. But in essence they also failed badly because once they finished them there was no follow up in the community and then the cycle started again.
But we need to discuss this a lot more openly and listen.
One thing is for sure – this government has no handle on how bad crime has become in New Zealand.
Hate and punching down is the new normal for far to many commentators on this site.
To many act supporters who fulfill their life with Avarice, Wrath, Envy, and Vainglory.
I favour 21st C military schools. You get a handful of great leaders and instructors from the forces and you set up a boarding school based on achievement and taking responsibility, pride in yourself and your culture. You let them home in the holidays but not too much at any one time and better still, you try and get some of the siblings in there as well before they go off the rails. Zero tolerance for bullying.
No floggings and 20C humiliations but discipline, focus, lots of sport and plenty of pride. Home is what is primarily failing these youngsters and they will only have a future if they get onto the straight and narrow.
You want successful young people to come out of some of the most deprived homes and this is the only way to do it. Remove them from the destructive influence and put them somewhere constructive and welcoming and organised.
BTW – not a boarding school for one or two years but one for the duration until they are 17 preferably. (But depends on the kid)
Building more & modern prisons can also be viewed as a human rights issue – unless Labour thinks double bunking is OK?
But throwing crims in jail is only a short-term solution. The long-term solution is to tackle the circumstances that create criminals in the first place. Luckily there is a wealth of evidence showing us what those circumstances are: Solo mothers on long-term welfare.
If National/ACT win the election, they need to think far more creatively about this issue. At the moment our taxes are being used to promote not just criminality but a long list of other stains on our society including child abuse, youth suicide, addiction & gang membership.
As long as we treat white collar criminals and pedophiles the same.
Covid, why do you keep bringing Bob the first up?
“Will National propose an Island fight club prison where prisoners fight each other to the death simulcast with live gambling and caffeinated sports drink sponsorship?”
Nact is dystopia so yeah I can see them balancing the TVNZ budget with this reality programming. Martyn enough with the suggestions!
Axe democracy needs a leader with a moustache to give it gravitas with gravy on it, beef the image up a little. (Come back Roger and Adolf.) A lot of the supposed haut ton mistake being tidy and not having wine stains on your tie as distinction.
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