Election 2023: Prison numbers will balloon if ACT elected at cost of $1 billion, David Seymour says
ACT leader David Seymour says the prison population will rise if his party is elected to power in October.
Appearing on AM on Thursday, Seymour said New Zealand had “descended into lawlessness” and locking people up was the unfortunate answer.
“I’d just make the point that, if it keeps the streets safe, it may be the best money you ever spend.”
ACT is promising to roll back Labour’s 2017 plan to reduce prison numbers by 30 percent over 15 years. Part of that involved spending $1 billion on building another 500 prison beds to “ensure there is sufficient capacity for dangerous people to be locked away from law-abiding New Zealanders”.
Ummmmm.
ACT wants to stack prisoners into THIS underfunded, corrupt and violent prison system?
‘Disconnection at all levels’: Ombudsman’s scathing review of Corrections
Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier has issued a blistering critique of the Department of Corrections’ top brass, who he says are failing to drive meaningful progress.
Boshier started an investigation into management at Corrections, after the 2020 Waikeria Prison riot. He said it became clear that previous recommendations for change at Corrections had not been actioned, and so investigated management and culture within the department.
“Waikeria was one of many prisons I had inspected over a number of years where despite countless recommendations for change by both me and other oversight agencies, the same issues kept coming up, again and again,” he said.
He said Corrections’ senior leaders knew what needed to be done, but had not ensured any improvements were made to the conditions of prisons.
…look, I appreciate that many of you are frightened and angry by the post covid crime wave that is hitting us, just as it is in Australia, UK, Canada and America. The sacrifice of Covid was unequally shared in an unequal society and those distortions are manifesting now.
The Chief Ombudsman is warning that the current prison system is so busted and so broken that the basics of living inside the prison are in critical meltdown.
Do you understand what he’s saying here?
He said there needed to be a greater focus on ensuring basic human rights for prisoners, with poor conditions in the prisons making it more dangerous for staff and prisoners as tensions rose.
The living conditions become so squalid that the prisoners will revolt and you will spark prison riots!
That’s what happened at the Waikeria prison riot! The living conditions, even for a prison, became so run down and inoperable that it collapsed.
He said the riot at Waikeria prison was fuelled, in part, due to the poor living conditions and human rights abuses at prison…
“Those issues included unreasonable lock up hours, a lack of privacy in toilet and shower areas, and, in the case of Waikeria, decrepit conditions in its high security areas,” he said.
In previous reports about Waikeria, Boshier said he had highlighted those concerns and they had been accepted by Corrections. Yet he said there hadn’t been much, if any, progress to addressing these issues.
“This troubled me so much that I felt a deep dive was necessary to understand why the department hasn’t been able to make meaningful and long-lasting change,” he said.
…National and ACT if elected want to plough thousands more people into our broken and dysfunctional Prison Empire with zero costings and no way to fund the enormous spike in the Prison population they are about to embark us upon.
Watch for the calls to privatise the prison system.
An underfunded, violent and corrupt prison system will only produce more damaged men. ACT’s claim they are open to rehabilitation misses the reason why it’s not happening in the first place!
You can only get rehabilitation in NZ if you admit your guilt. Many men refuse to admit their guilt so are never eligible for parole, so they serve their entire sentence with no rehabilitation whatsoever and come out and explode in society.
All National and ACT are promising is a tsunami of broken men being released more damaged into society than when they went into prison.
Is our need for vengeance so blinding that we will honestly embark upon this vast mistake?
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Martyn – How else do we deal with the more dangerous 501s from Aussie?
Cuddles? Maybe they just need a hug.
Labour tried that Rat.
Rat in a cage – Great reply!
You do know that the 501 issue has been resolved with a proper government in Australia, now that they have gotten rid of the pseudo christian tory incompetents.. don’t you? Or am I giving you too much credit for brains and morals?
Your whining about the problems your heros infesting positions within the opposition that should be for people who actually represent NZers, utterly ignored, as it gave them the opportunity to create a hugely profitable prison industry, is nothing more than a symptom of the ignorance, bigotry, and rank stupidity the underpins tory politics in the modern age..
Morons that make MAGA republicans look rational… Anyone who listens to, and takes the “news media” in NZ seriously can be easily identified as bereft of any useful intellect whatsoever, and are the reason why this country is losing it’s smartest, and most competent to anyone who will give them the opportunity to escape this rabbit hutch full of delusional and pretentious nothings…
I only came back here to bury my mother, got trapped in the lockdown, and am now saving as hard as I can to get the hell out of this utter joke of a country, full of idiots who have yet to understand the most basic rules of how a “civilised” and “realistic” people behave… We may as well still be calling NZ a British Colony, as the same stupidity, and bigotry are central to how societal decisions are being forced upon the “proletariat”… The respect NZ used to be regarded with has become pity, or disgust, depending on which country one happens to be in… That is, those that even know the country exists any more…
The NewZealand Public Service is incapable imcompetent, and is simply unable to perform its job.
More money won’t help – it’ll just buy more of the same slop and dribble.
In the current climate of jail emptying and judicial sentencing that sees people who most definitely should be going to jail not, all deliberately part of the progressive lefts action on law and order, we’ve got a crime wave problem that I’ve never seen in this country. Criminals acting with impunity because state have their back. This crime encouragement model has to stop.
No one wants to see another human caged up but more of us even more hate seeing victims of crime especially those who are treated like some afterthought like a disgarded pie wrapper, and worse good law abiding people become victims repeatedly. Sadly the progressive left don’t feel their pain, they see the criminal as a victim who needs to be cuddled. And the intangible thing called prevention really does exist and when criminals realise there is serious time for their crimes, it’s turns some off, and that saves lives. But that prevention factor has severely diminished.
Labour Green, unfortunately but predictably, have blood on their hands for this naive pathetic kindness to crime experiment they practised. It’s time it stopped. Another well intentioned but disastrously flawed policy that will cost this government it grip on power.
100%
You can write as much as you want but until you provide examples to back up your allegations it is just your opinion probably based on some urban myths you heard 4th hand.
How’s all those Ramraids going Bonnie, or the blatant retail thefts, just for openers? Auckland has become Gotham City!
Bonnie When a government minister like Kelvin Davis tells the Parliamentary opposition that their ancestors were land thieves, he’s lying for no discernibly good purpose. When, as a school teacher, he says this sort of thing to impressionable children, he’s being divisive as well as dishonest and sowing the seeds of discontent which can breed criminals, and even justify them. He probably shouldn’t be Minister of Prisons, or whatever he is, with such a simplistic outlook, but this being so, one would expect him to do his damndest to help rectify the situations that may have put miscreants in the clink, and to want to help rehabilitate them and better their lives, but this doesn’t seem to be being done either.
These politicians are all as bad as each other, and ACT signalling creating more job opportunities for Serco or various immigrants, as usual avoids addressing the circumstances and conditions which can lead to lives of crime. Few would literally want to cuddle criminals, but putting them into places which makes them worse is downright idiotic, ergo more constructive approaches have to continue to be both considered, and implemented.
Labour policy: give them an ankle bracelet and a shotgun.
ACT: criminals go to prison & you keep your shotgun.
Keepcalmcarryon would like to give them access to military style assault weapons ….
… oh sorry he just wants them for law abiding citizens who need them …for ‘pests’ :0
National and Acts track record on white collar crime is to legalise it and provide cover for it.
ie, “New Zealand had 11,645 trusts in April last (2016) year but fewer than 3000 have registered with Inland Revenue under the law changes.” ….
The law changes were NActs bare minimum changes after being named and shamed in ‘the Panama Papers’ tax fraud leaks ….
….. ““Revenue Minister Judith Collins said the drop in trust numbers was not surprising and it shouldn’t be assumed that was because many had been handling the proceeds of illegitimate activities.”
yeah right ,,,, total bullshit from National/Act ,,,, who support white collar crime, fraud by the rich and corporate corruption.
They are just ‘tough on crime’ for the poor and average people,,, which is not being tough on crime at all.
ACTS policy, give them all AK 47s
Outstanding Post.
“Worse” for whom?
Probably for all of us Ada. All this sensational rhetoric about emptying prisons. So may be the settings need tweaking, but with crime rates (for certain crime) seemingly up in a lot of countries you can’t tell me that it’s all about reoffending rates or people serving time outside of prison. I won’t feel any safer if some snotty nosed little youth goes from theft to becoming a loaded weapon after a few years in a Seymour hotel.
Guess who’s fault all the unpalatable policies that we will have to swallow for the next 6-9 years?
Hint. Its not ACT or National.
What goes around comes around. Besides, undoing what this disastrous Government has inflicted on NZ can’t be done without some negative consequences, so it is correct to blame them for it.
Lady Justice has a sword in one hand, for good reason.
You can bet that banging up just a handful of these feral scum for long sentences will send a message to the rest.
I’m ideologically opposed to contracting out of public services but at this stage, one would have to ask – why not privatise it out if corrections is so fundamentally flawed. Yes we could poor tons into it but Corrections was a well known dog 20 years ago and it still is today apparently. Also suggest this because we need solutions quickly and not in ten years time.
I read an interesting article about the justice debate this week. The writer suggested that seeking Justice was an outmoded idea as we all know that in the world we live in there is no justice. Crime and punishment does not fit and wealth almost always wins out in some way. The suggestion was that we do away with Justice as a concept around imprisonment and we change that with a focus on Public Safety/ Safe communities.
Cultural reports that say someone has had a hard life would be turned on their head to say: Lets look at the offenders history and ask how likely to reoffend they are and how much of a danger to the community they are and then sentence accordingly. With the main area of consideration being both youth and particulars of the crime (the battered woman who killed her husband after 20 years of abuse?)
They also discussed rehabilitation with the conclusion that only about 20% of them can be rehabilitated and from what I know this is likely to be true.
Anyway long story short, they supported a 3 tier prison system. Minimum, medium and maximum with most opportunities for rehabilitation available in minimum prisons and I would suggest ability to learn trades and skills maybe through prison industries where both the state and inmates can earn money while they learn and become skilled (ideally) or as a minimum (experienced).
Many crims would go into medium prisons and those whose behaviour and in house evaluation suggested good chances of rehabilitation would be moved to minimum. Similarly those who were bad would move up to Maximum.
Few maximums would make their way to medium etc but it would still be possible for those who really wanted to turn their lives around. Rehab services would be available at all levels but mainly concentrated in the medium and minimum levels.
Bracelets would still be available as appropriate. I know that people will say profiting from prisoners is slavery but I dont think it would be if people could opt in. 1/2 the money could go towards the cost of maintaining the prisoner and the other 1/2 to the prisoner themselves so they could support a better lifestyle (within prison) or potentially give money to the wife and kids.
In the States where they routinely make prisoners work, the work that some of the prisoners do is fantastic. One prison is known nationwide for it’s hand crafted furniture for example. What better way of ensuring a future for someoone outside of prison than to give them a desirable skill they can use in their own right or even be seen as a cachet in employment. You no longer come out of prison as ‘just some crim’ but you come out as recognised artists and craftsmen or skilled chefs or whatever.
I do think it could work. The baddies get locked away but if they want to change, they can work their way out but generally they are in there and mostly stay in there. Long sentences for bad crimes committed by the worst people.
On the button Nitrium.
I’d also like to see gangs named as terrorist organisations and any crime committed as part of a gang come with a compulsory all of life sentence.
Add to that non association orders that involve 1 year imprisonment for any former gang members associating with each other, even if they are blood relations.