ACT’s Industrial Prison Complex nightmare – $1b to lock up more kids in prison!

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
136
1729

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-hugging-Labour Party have fecklessly let out of jail, but they do understand don’t they that Labour have achieved that lower prison muster because more Prisoners are applying for home detention once they are jailed, and they do know that home detention application policy was a National Party policy right?

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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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136 COMMENTS

  1. 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?

    • 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.

    • Well, ACT has presented an alterative budget that aims to cut $7B in wasteful spending (their words) without reducing core services. It’s on the ACT site if you want to read it.

      I see it as more of a discussion document, these things are rarely as simple as they seem.

      At least ACT is putting up ideas for debate, we need more of that IMO.

      • CeeJ. “… debate, we need more of that IMO.” Agree. For many of us, the Kelly-Jay Keen debacle at Albert Park, was a watershed when the violent intimidating miscreants were not kids, but were apparently fully grown adult persons, and the attending police allegedly said that it wasn’t their job to protect women. That does require some sort of explanation. It’s an unsatisfactory message to be sending out to young people, and a frightening one for women. MSM failure to report the full facts about what happened that day suggests some sort of censorship at play, which, at the very least, precludes debate just on that issue alone. Debate on all issues affecting community wellbeing can help to bring about solutions, the most important of which are alternatives or constructive deterrents to stop youth offending in the first place.

    • David B B T M G Seymour wants to splash out on more billion dollar prisons, at a time when nz finances are tight, inflation is still high, there has just been a severe cyclone, and tax revenue has reduced. I’m not saying he is wrong, because it just depends on what his priorities are.

      If I was him, my response to ram raids would be to change the building code, so shop fronts do not have windows from ground level, but the bottom metre is concrete wall, and the front window has a metal grill behind it.

      But David may prefer more prisons, just as he prefers poor people to be colder in winter by getting rid of the winter energy payment. David-bring-back-the-machine-guns-Seymour could simply tell people feeling the cold, that he can generously arrange a nice warm cell for them.

      • “I am not saying he is wrong.”
        On winter payments he said assistance should be better targeted.

        So what you say he said is wrong!

      • Seymour will build private prisons he will invest in. That’s how he sees the market working. Sadly he should be inside them.

    • $3 billion so far on 3 or 5 Waters, and it’s not done anything yet.

      The way Grant spends money $1 billion is chump change.

        • And they went into the election telling everyone about it did they?

          I don’t recall that. I do recall the memo leaked from the prime minister’s office telling it’s members not to talk about any policy and just repeat “we saved your granny from Covid”

          Or He Puapua
          Or Entrenchment
          Or local body voting laws changes

          BTW so we’re clear, if the Nats and Act get in, they’re free to write out of history the Treaty.. well they have the mandate?

          • Oh BG you Big Guffaw, you have so much to learn. Keystone cop sold off assets because he won an election and because of that he proclaimed he was mandated to be able do so. He told everyone AFTER he won the election. Did you not recall that or was that just your right wing selective memory?

            So lets be clear, your granny was saved from Covid by the government or was that after the anti vax said that covid was a hoax and as for leaks, have Nationals stopped yet?

            Or boundary changes to entrench National party MP’s on the North Shore?

            Don’t come to a gun fight armed with a knife young lad.

    • Simple really. Reduce benefits, increase poverty & crime, then use your taxes and the funds from the sale of you public assets to line the pockets of their rich prison owner mates.

  3. 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?

        • “It that creates better outcomes for NZers, then why not?”
          Quote, quote, quote of the day,
          OMG, thanks for the laugh – charter schools are a failure globally they help no one except the corporations who get our tax money to serve up this mess.
          Read some books on education , or did you go to a charter school and can hardly read?
          How dumb can libertarians get, it’s the ann randy inner 10 year old smut they have never got over.

          • That is not entirely true Iggy. There have been some brilliant successes with Charter schools as much as dismal failures. I think a combo of public and charter schools is a good idea with greater scrutiny or criteria from the Ministry of Education (Assuming we throw out the bunch we have now)

            As a parent of a neuro typical child I would have willingly paid to send my kid to one of the schools operating in Auckland like the 3 Alwyn Poole was involved with. The state has nothing for those children (about 5% of kids) and more often than not, they are also miserably bullied and excluded. It is the quality of the educationalists that count and the relationship between parents, families and schools. This can be done in any setting, public or private. One of NZ’s most successful schools is a low decile Maori school (Not KK) and the difference is in the leadership and quality of the educationalists. Having Charter schools simply gives more choice but it is incumbent on the Govt to make sure that schools are performing and that they have the right people leading and teaching.

        • It doesn’t though does it Johan. It returns a dividend to the shareholders but not the government. Where will tax payers money be taken from, the education portfolio and how many will then suffer to gain better outcomes because those” priviledged” are advantaged?
          So to answer your question, no.
          However I’m sure Seymour with his wealthy backers have enough to invest in their own private schools, after all, they are massive on personal responsibility.

      • Private Charter Schools are cheaper for the tax payers as are private schools.
        The parents pay fees thus less money from the Government.

  4. $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.

    • 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.

      • No, he will close the wealth gap.

        He is planning to build the prisons closer to the wealthy suburbs.

        He has been in parliament for far too long, he is starting to think like labour acts.

  5. Maybe ‘Rimmer’ Seymour has been triggered by ACT’s shady history?
    Like former ACT leader Rodney “perk buster” Hide, who hypocritically took his girlfriend on a taxpayer funded trip to London and Hawaii.
    Or ACT’s former Law and Order spokesman, David Garrett, the convicted drink-driver who used the identity of a deceased child to obtain a passport.
    Or former ACT MP Donna Awatere Huata who stole $80,000 from the Pipi Foundation, a government-funded trust she set up for underprivileged children, to get herself stomach stapling surgery.
    And look at all the tax-dodging white collar criminals madly throwing $$$ at ACT this election.
    This party was founded by the notorious Roger Douglas, and has faithfully continued it’s tradition of crooked behaviour to this day.
    Careful David, or you might end up in one of your Stalags yourself.
    ACT = Association of Thieves & Criminals.

    • I believe at last count a few years ago that 12% of ACT politicials had criminal convictions. Wonder what it is now?

    • I believe at last count a few years ago that 12% of ACT politicials had criminal convictions. Wonder what it is now?
      Perhaps David is right-we do need more prisons, to contain the act politicians with criminal convictions.

      • Facts are silly, are they Bob?
        Sounds about right, coming from you.

        Lot of mention of ACT on TDB lately, with little acknowledging the truth behind ACT’s antisocial privatisation agenda and their crooked modus operandi.
        Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and these far right nutters need exposing for what they really are.

  6. Martyn – In South Auckland, where I live, we have 3 more established gangs from Australia in the last 10 years, via our 501s…Rebels, Mongols, and Comancheros…with about 1,000 patched members all together… feeding off the South Auckland community, built that prison!

  7. Will it not be safer for the kids to go and fight inside a facility rather than on the streets.

    Our streets are just not safe for those who want to have a fair fight.

    One can assume that there will be better aftercare inside a facility so that those who want to bash others can get fit again and share ideas with other likeminded bashers to improve their skills.

  10. 1 Billion…easy. get rid of consultants who got paid one billion. As for the drivers of crime, they’ll be out of commission and in prison for driving cars into shops.

  11. 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!

      • No idea what you’re trying to say here, Robert 1st.
        Your misuse of punctuation gets in the way of illegibility.
        For a start, you may use a space after your commas to make yourself understood. However, I get the impression you do not know when to use commas.
        Back to school, boy!

        Actually, don’t bother too much because I don’t think you have that much of interest to contribute.

  12. 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.

    • NSC current Labour Government have made the poorest more poor hence the explosion in crime.
      Act Party members have a much higher level of education than Labour,so the intellect is not missing.
      Education in New Zealand is at an all time low after over 5 years of a Labour Government with Chippy the Minister of Education through much of that.
      I think your beef should be with the Labour Government.

      • Act Party members have a much higher level of education than Labour,so the intellect is not missing.

        Please post your evidence to back your uneducated opinion.

      • “Act Party members have a much higher level of education than Labour, so the intellect is not missing.”

        David Parker…Before entering politics, Parker worked as a litigation partner in the law firm Anderson Lloyd Caudwell. He later had a business career in the agri-biotechnology field, including with Blis Technologies, where he was a manager.[4][5]

        David Seymour…
        Seymour worked in Canada as a policy analyst for five years for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the Manning Centre

        Bob, you truly are the Donald Trump of TDB, lies and childlike, you really are.

  13. Then come up with a solution that works. Seriously, agree or disagree with ACT as much as you like, but what should be done about the kids that don’t walk the line? We just let them grow up, and then when they get apprehended again but this time instead of Juvi they do to the prison for grown ups, and then for long times. That the solution? We just wait for them to age into the adult prison population?

    There is a saying, ‘hate me if you can not love me’, and to me that is the issue, the family ignores these kids, their community ignore these kids, the state ignores these kids, why on earth would we believe that that can lead to a good outcome, and these kids are acting out, as there are no adults around that would try and stop them.

    Other then a closed facility – boarding school run by competent people, that keeps these kids of the street for a time and maybe gets them back on the straight and narrow, or prison when they do real stupid stuff, repeatedly and with more and more violence, what should / could be done.
    What we are doing right now, apprehend, release, apprehend, release, rinse repeat, is not working.

    • As I said reactionary, what are we doing at the top of the cliff? As Martyn said the kids grew up under a Nact government.

    • Reminds me of talking to an old rugby coach I met in the pub the other day,

      “keep them in sport, to keep them out of court”

      • I agree. kids need to get something to do that is positive, allows to run of extra steam, maybe learn a skill…..we could invest in that, but we don’t do that either. We expect them to show up to school to tick boxes in order to pass, then go home to nothing or not much, and rinse repeat the next day. Unless one is completely ideologically driven even the unseeing can see that this can not work.

  14. Why is the cost of maintaining prisoners greater the the average wage / salary

    The whole system needs to change. With this in mind, I would propose a prison farm system.
    In the middle of nowhere. Well away from urban and town centres.
    Prisoners would be kept behind an electrified fence, sectored off according to their sentence.
    No prison cells required, they can live in tents.
    Less guards and personnel – prisoners can look after themselves.

    No parole. Prisoners to serve their full sentences

    Easy. Job done

  15. Seymour’s mentally unwell. His penchant for being cruel and exploitative to the already damaged and at risk is surely an indication of that.
    Never, ever, ever, let a narcissistic, egomaniacal sociopath anywhere near the already at risk from the aforementioned. He’s seeing human beings criminalised by rogers 39 years of neoliberal tyranny as a cheap resource to exploit. There’s not much about some humans that’s lower than that.
    When I think of Seymour, I think of George Santos.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/10/george-santos-court-federal-charges
    When I think of roger douglas I think of … what is it that I think of…? Well, Gothic things definitely, but also justice. I think of us getting justice for what he’s done to us in the interests of greed. For taking advantage of us. For exploiting us. For perverting and mangling us, for creating damaged souls who must roam about in terrible pain for the rest of their lives. Calling roger a sadistic psychopath sounds more like a compliment.
    He and Seymour are boring, perhaps that’s it. They’re dull, boring, exploitative little males of the human species. They should be chipped and there should be an ap we can down load into our phones that can alert us to their proximity.

  17. It’s not necessarily a bad idea? It’s just not very well thought through.

    Locking up a person costs more than $150k per person per year. What are the alternatives and are they cheaper?

    If you look at the MSD budget, there’s over $800m annually spent on this very thing. Trying to keep Yoofs out of the legal, criminal justice system and into some kind of employment. NEETS they’re called, remember.

    If you also look at the MSD quarterly reports you’ll see ‘real’ unemployment is at 11.2%.

    Who can figure out what is wrong with all of this expenditure and the end result(s)? Something isn’t working? Can you spot what it is?

    • Can you imagine the boarding school for little offenders that could be build and staffed if we were to actually invest in kids, rather then ‘work producing’ programmes such as prisons.

  18. 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 wouldn’t trust Labour or the Police with my personal & firearms details. Fortunately ACT will throw out the firearms registry next year.

  19. I’m in favour of tougher sentencing and people serving the FULL SENTENCE..but borstals (and that’s what he’s talking about.. let’s get that out in the open) were a failure…once again ACT dig into the old failed rightwing policy manual for some raw meat to throw to their redneck fanclub.

    • Where do crims serve out your tougher full sentences? Say the word prison and the leftosphere goes apeshit. I’ll say it: Fucking prison! Build more and make them tougher.

      • cabbage hut why do you assume people are seeking revenge on crims? incarceration is fine and quite frankly milder regimes that encourage preperation for release are much more successful, I know the punitive US system makes you moist in the trouser dept…but it doesn’t work

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  23. 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.

  24. 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)

    • Well Fantail we all know what happens to children who are incarcerated with adults in charge. We have just seen an inquiry into sexual abuse in care. Youth prisons are care. David Seymour is setting up another generation of children to abuse.Many of these children are already damaged through no fault of their own, many will be at the mercy of hardened adults and older youth prisoners. We will end up like the mega prisons we see overseas. We are supposed to be a progressive country who with a bit of dialogue should be able to help most of these children who get themselves into trouble at a young age. We all know who has caused these deep seated problems in this country, none other than Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, Ruth Richardson et. al. and all their regressive neoliberal policies which have come to bite us in the bum. Nact is taking us back to the future with their historical half baked failed policies and unfortunately many of these right wing policies will hurt the poorest and downtrodden in our society, people who in the scheme of things don’t matter to ACT or national. “Freedom for some is a life in chains for others” David Seymour only wants freedom for himself and bugger every body else who doesn’t fit his wealthy mates.

      • Yes, Queeny Seemore is a hypocrite, he said rich people should not be able to use their money to get what they want yet he is taking millions of his wealthy mates to do just that (give them what they want)

      • We are warped – we know that from babyhood to 5 are important years yet don’t have serious classes for mother and baby. They should be doing an internship which will give them a diploma and high level work and pay. But todays dainties m/f/? are only interested in machines and making money honey. and ‘doing my own thing, finding myself’. (Very 70’s acshually.)

  25. 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.

  27. “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!

  28. 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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