How the Right are manipulating the Prison and Crime narrative

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
80
1303

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.

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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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80 COMMENTS

  1. Martyn – I get the points you are making…however, until you are on the receiving end of serious violence…you will never understand why many Kiwis are deeply unhappy with crime within New Zealand.

    • If they are unhappy with crime then they should be unhappy at the causes of crime. The Christian religion is built on & actually multiplied with power when it was based on loving your enemy but selfishness is the major driver within society & religion most of the time which is why we have the current problems. I have been burgled (home & work van) multiple times in the past & it does make you angry but while prison needs to be there for the worst people I would rather live in a society that gave people a fair go so that less crime happens.

    • Let’s face it Nathan the majority of people who are understandably are unhappy with crime are not on the receiving end either.

      • Wheel – True…how about if their family member, or friends are impacted by it…the knock on effect is deeply felt

    • If they are unhappy with crime then they should be unhappy at the causes of crime. The Christian religion is built on & actually multiplied with power when it was based on loving your enemy but selfishness is the major driver within society & religion most of the time which is why we have the current problems. I have been burgled (home & work van) multiple times in the past & it does make you angry but while prison needs to be there for the worst people I would rather live in a society that gave people a fair go so that less crime happens.

    • ” until you are on the receiving end of serious violence”.. So what you are saying is that one must experience violence first hand before one can comment, or be able to fix the imbalance that is the driver of this adolescent trait running through most adult males in NZ as a result of the degradation of our education system, and the shameful neglect of the mentoring of our youth in ways that actually arm them with the knowledge, and self worth, to be able to make a life for themselves that isn’t just treading water until the tories get back in, and steal the rest of their birth right… The stupidity and arrogant racism that underpins the majority of NZ’s “political debate” is utterly vacant, and shameful to those of us who still remember what this country was only 40 years ago.. Nearly all the massive progress afforded us by the actions of the first Labour govt have been destroyed, and our societal structure has fallen into a self defeating array of hamster wheels…
      But hey, revenge is the tories most favored weapon, and don’t they do well to inject it into everything they do…. The Colonial power structure doesn’t forgive being messed with… Especially by dirty commoners!! And so, we shouldn’t be surprised when they take what is “theirs” back, with menace and the sheer bloody mindedness that only tories can muster..

  2. It is not the right that is ramraiding shops, bashing people, stabbing them, shooting them and causing general mayhem. That would be the criminals.

    • So your pinpoint accurate poll conducted on violent recidivist offenders concluded that they were all Green party voters? And that the majority were left leaning?

      The only criminals that vote are white collared crims.

        • Gee Bob let’s see. Because they if anything will exacerbate the drivers not improve them, and introduce failed policies like boot camps. Be honest, not blind, and tell me what they have said that will make crime rates better? Don’t give me Acts prison build, you still have to actually commit crime to end up there. These criminals are not all repeat offenders at all. You could spend years committing crime before you are actually caught.

      • Maybe not, but it is harder to commit crime if you are in prison or bleeding out with a police bullet in your chest.

  5. Now do a write up about the cost of crime on society, the people that have been harmed, the people that have been killed, raped, and otherwise maimed. C’mon, do a wee write up on the costs to society, the cost of rehabilitation of these people, the cost via ACC, the cost via insurance pay outs, the costs via closed businesses….can anyone of the so called ‘caring, social minded’ left just for once write up something – anything, a one liner even just, about the people that have to live with the criminals that our government/police/corrections people don’t want to deal with, the fact that they are also attack police officers, the fact that working for corrections is an unsafe job, and the fact that we are currently living a sort of dystopian novella called’ can’t give a fuck, and here have some anarcho tyranny’. Vote left. Comrade. Vote left. Tell us again how the right is gonna fuck up what the majority labour government has left to fester like and open puss infected sore cause they really really can’t be bothered governing for all and not just a select few.

  6. Prison is such a bad place that society is better off not incarcerating criminals?

    How about reforming prisons into institutions where criminals are transformed into good productive citizens. Oops. That is what they are supposed to do but we fail society by not ensuring that Correction Services are funded to create the outcomes that we desire.

    Subsidising wealthy industrialists creates opportunities for workers so that they do not go out and steal. (Great initiative with the added bonus that they can show their care for the climate – so the business case stacks up?)

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. If anything crime has been encountered by the Labour Government.
    No recrimination,huge donations to gangs.
    The statistics are in plain sight,to ignore them is irresponsible.

  11. 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

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

      • Good choice of words even though grammatically you have them in the wrong order.Good effort nonetheless.
        Improvement showing.

  16. @ MB. You’re absolutely correct in my opinion. It’s also my opinion that many AO/NZ’ers have succomoned to a greed psychosis dropped onto them by advertisers working for the foreign owned banks to benefit themselves, of course, but also the now nine multi-billionaires who’s influence and greed are unmissable and unavoidable, and lets not forget, those same advertisers also lobby our politicians. Criminals who are victims of a corrupted society are people and people are not robots, they will react. It’s just that some people react differently to the same problem and the same problem we’re experiencing is the unbridled greed of a fe operating within the neo-liberal mandate they helped to design. roger douglas should be investigated then hopefully would go to prison and many of the billionaires and millionaires should be in prison also, if, for no other reason than irony. We need a public, royal commission of inquiry urgently because I don’t think we, as a people of AO/NZ can take the task of repairing our systems and our societies on by ourselves.
    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: To paraphrase the feller.
    Criminals are the product of their society.
    Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (Russian: Александр Иса́евич Солженицын) was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system—particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works.
    Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn was the father of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist.

    • he also said this, and it is very apt in our times:
      “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.

  17. 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!

  20. Martyn
    Get this please. NZ was always a safe crime free paradise. You could leave you doors open or even your bikes on the lawn. It was the posterchild for a great place to live!
    These days NZ is all over the world news for crime and more crime. DAILY! More so since Labour has been in power. I know you don’t get it, but try to instead of making up big excuses. NZ is on its way to being Venezuela! To sort this serious problem, some political party needs to look at El Salvador. Do that and the election is in the bag for the next 5 terms!

    • KH agree 100% a Government who actually addresses this problem will be in Power for the next 5 terms, the general public have had a gutsful of this nonsense and it is a wonder vigilante groups aren’t out there hunting down these ram raiders.

  22. The statistics prove beyond doubt crime in New Zealand is out of control.
    To say otherwise is silly.

  23. 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 ???

  25. Not doing anything about a problem, is not a solution. Cuddles for crims is definitely not a solution.

      • I don’t know how to say it but most of the money laundering is backed by Chinese drug king pins, sex traffickers and are supported by the Chinese Government. I don’t have any direct evidence except to say you can’t do anything in China without the support of the Chinese government. Y’know the government can’t be all fire and brimstone on our own criminals while kicking back with plausible deniability watching it all play out across the 5eyes network.

        Just fucken legalise weed.

  28. 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.

    • But unemployment has never been so low, there’s jobs for Africa if you want them.

      Crime has exploded because of the division in our society and that division has been driven by Labour. Divide and conquer had been their motto. They’ve tried to add division between nearly every fabric of society, and used it to offset any blame to themselves.

      ‘two sectors in society’ J Ardern on the mandates. The blaming of farmers to pit against non farmers. Landlords vs renters. Ramming Maori down the throats of every NZer to pit Maori vs non-Maori. Hanging the businesses out to dry during lockdowns, pitting the public sector vs the private sector. Leaving Auckland in lockdown, while wellington was living the life of riely. Prices are too high? “No not us for driving inflation, it’s those greedy supermarkets…now let’s all hate them”

      I’ve never known a govt who has attempted to use division like this to cover their own shortcomings.

      • BG, their shortcomings or those of the ‘profit at all cost’ economy, (that Labour also pursues).

  29. Prison statistics are encased in colonial injustice, and any nuanced conversation will be flattened by the right. The de-colonised mind recognises that Gang Leading Cult Leaders like Brian Tamaki can build fantastic religious fervour based on the ingrained racism in our system. Destiny and Hannah are far scarier prospect than Seymour and Act, but all are very scary, particularly given they embrace guns, violence, and intimidation. Only through education will we create better outcomes, but from where might we educate ourselves, and others? The blindness of the neoliberal fascist mind is astonishing when living in such an enlightened time, but then again the Baby Jesus will still save most of us, according to some of those other cultish doctrines. That AI is being used in the right’s advertising just shows how little they care about “the people”. No one is sure about what AI will mean for us humanoids, but who cares when you own seven houses and are guaranteed a place in seventh day adventurer heaven? May atheist evolution actually allow some of us to survive armageddon in order that only the truly evolved will go forth, as the history of time has previously allowed!

    • Agree Mathew. Maybe the reason National have to use AI is that they can’t find any REAL health workers who actually support their policy!

  30. 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.

  32. 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.

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