The Right are manipulating the Prison and Crime narrative.
They say the soft-on-crime-cuddle-a-crim Labour Party are fecklessly letting out 4000 prisoners while the crime rate soars.
They are not only confusing correlation as cause, they are ignoring how and why Labour gained those numbers in the first place.
When the National Party tightened Prison policy they allowed for non violent offenders to apply for home detention while in prison. All Labour did was provide assistance to the Prisoners eligible for that process to fill in the forms, because most of the prisoners are illiterate.
They aren’t skipping out the front gate and ram raiding Michael Hill Jewellers, they are on home detention and we put them on home detention because we know being inside prison is the best indication you are going to go back to prison!
70% reoffend after being released for two years!
They do that because Prison is a brutal, violent, corrupt, understaffed nightmare that is deeply traumatising and damaging for those who don’t pose a violent threat.
Only the worst are being kept in there, people whose actions are deeply damaging and all we are gaining is time inside where they can’t hurt the general public.
Our prison system is damaging, it takes angry hurt men and turns them into angrier monsters.
That’s why you want them out of prison!
So why is our crime rate soaring?
Let’s be honest, some certainly are sawing off their ankle bracelet and joining the Frey, but that is a single digit minority, not anywhere near what is generating the current crime wave.
What is generating the current crime wave is the same thing that is generating crime waves throughout the post-covid Western World.
The same is happening in Australia, UK, Canada and America.
Post covid societal and economic stresses causing crime waves at the same time there is 12.4% food inflation and a cost of living crisis while surviving the ongoing economic, cultural and social impacts of climate crisis storms and geopolitical shockwaves is as predictable as National having to walk something back 24 hours after Luxon says it!
Of course crime is exploding everywhere because the covid sacrifice was felt unevenly across our unequal society, pretending building more fucking prisons is a solution to all of that is sophistry at its most intellectually bankrupt.
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Thank you Martyn, at least/at last an admission that we have a problem.
Ginny’s been saying it’s all good but now Chris H has admitted the truth: that business owners “have reason” to be “fearful” and the “spike” in retail crime is “undeniable”.
No solutions though, of course.
More desperate people will turn to crime if the failing, backward economy is not turned around.
But regardless, if 70% will re-offend, letting them out is insane. You can really only let them out once they’re too old to cause any trouble.
Very long sentences with continuous, useful penal labour can help to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure.
Internal exile following release can further boost the economy, while ensuring public safety. Released convicts can build new productive settlements in undeveloped remote areas such as islands, under heavy policing.
You could launch a large operation to arrest all known members of organised crime syndicates, as has now started in El Salvador.
Between home and work I regularly go to three dairies all have been robbed or ram raided. Dairy 1 the owners have left the business. Dairy 2 the woman owner no longer works in the shop after being stabbed. Dairy 3 the owner and family now work inside a cage.
The covid/economic factors are a major cause but so to is raising a couple of generations on Grand Theft Auto instead of Sunday School and then having TikTok amplify peer pressure.
There is also a case for keeping people safe in NZ. If a person is going to offend while on probation then they are creating new victims and if the penalties for crime are less than the rewards then more people will be encouraged to commit crime. That is what is happening in NZ.
A lot of the crime is also linked to our neoliberal approach to schooling in NZ, and now NZ is at a new low, where political interference to the kids in terms of identity is denying kids a non secular, non woke, education and creating anxiety of whether the kids are the right ‘identity’.
Kids in NZ have to pay for their tertiary education (unless they are in the identity brigade) whether trade or professional and standards are dropping in the actual courses which are becoming more political than vocationally driven to get foreign student money, while NZ spends copious amounts bringing in other workers who fail to stay in the jobs and bring dependants that need more workers to provide for them. Thus the Ponzi continues.
NZ has been bringing in poverty and criminals for 30 years – because many of the so called workers are on well known scams to get into NZ and then offend on top of the NZ criminals also at it.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12254105
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12254105
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/121302846/colour-drained-from-real-estate-agents-face-as-he-realised-hed-been-defrauded-of-120k-in-sim-hijacking-scam
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/118329341/migrant-worker-speaks-out-against-exploitation-at-rural-reporoa-holiday-park
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/365583/punjabi-singer-gets-home-detention-for-drivers-licences-bribes
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/112128450/bakery-owner-to-pay-back-33800-illegally-deducted-from-workers-wages
If the problem is in the prisons then let’s fix the prison system not try and do without it. Along with a better system let’s try and stop the rot by improving schools . A better educated person will get a better job so break the circle of despair that drives people into crime . A reduction in numbers would mean more money could be spent on each criminal to help them not reoffend without blowing the budget.
If the problem is in the prisons then let’s fix the prison system not try and do without it. Along with a better system let’s try and stop the rot by improving schools . A better educated person will get a better job so break the circle of despair that drives people into crime . A reduction in numbers would mean more money could be spent on each criminal to help them not reoffend without blowing the budget.
We’re here…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/132123637/national-using-ai-for-attack-ads-the-ai-political-campaign-has-arrived
Ah yes! The ol’ either/or argument.
Simple answers for simple folk.
No nuance, no logic and above all, no science.
We no longer solve problems, we simply bulldoze them to the side.
The one thing we are not allowed to address is the neoliberal greedfest that got us here in the first place.
Total inequality and no sense of community.
This is now what we are.
Oh and tax the rich!
It is election year. What else would we expect from the Opposition.
Crime policies are a vote winner, I see Winnie at Winston First is starting on the Crime Narrative and trying to blame the Labour Government. All as bad as each other at trying to solve the problem ???
Agree Cuddles is not working with the current Crims.
Obviously we are all unhappy with the current situation; what is not obvious is a ‘real’ solution. Many quick-fixes only amplify the problem. I think locking people up in the past is one of the causes leading to gang membership, along with society inequality at record levels. Also loss of the ability for people to have stable housing and jobs; along with inability to deal with truancy would also have to be high on the causes list.
None of these have quick fixes, but all require huge investment.
Cant help wondering how thankful all the women and kids living with violent men are for those ankle bracelets?
A prison stretch is probably the only break they get.
David Latele has come out and said our Justice system needs an overhaul, he refers to Nate Nauers getting sentenced to two years and nine months for money laundering. I say how come Ian Wilson Dilworth’s ex Assistant Principal got three years and seven months for indecently assaulting five boys and now he is coming up for nineteen fresh charges for similar offences. Something is seriously wrong with our justice system; it is sick and needs to be put to sleep or euthanized.
Ask Bob the first the Dulwich question, he was a proud pupil.
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