Prison reforms: Government ditches reduction targets and cultural reports
The government confirmed today it is scrapping the prison reduction target and will no longer fund the cultural reports used in sentencing.
It says it is “making good on its promise to restore law and order” in New Zealand, but the Green Party says the decision will cause “significant harm” to Māori in particular.
The moves were earlier announced as part of National’s 100-day plan, but were confirmed by the government after a Cabinet meeting today.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said the Section 27 cultural reports cost taxpayers more than $7 million in the last financial year and led to shorter sentences.
Goldsmith said the reports had become a “cottage industry costing taxpayers millions and doing nothing for the victims of crime”.
The government will introduce a bill in the next Parliamentary session – which starts next week – to exclude the reports from legal aid.
Speaking to media after today’s Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said there was still the opportunity for anyone to bring someone who can speak to their past into the courtroom, but there would not be funding for written reports.
Further legislation will also cap jail sentence discounts at 40 percent, with the previous government’s target to reduce the prison population by 30 percent also being scrapped.
Look, if someone hurt my family our friends, I’d want 5 minutes alone with the person and a baseball bat, I get that terrible harm inflicted on innocent people drives a thirst for righteous revenge, and I acknowledge that, but we are talking about actual social policy here and because of the overwhelming power of the State over the individual in a prison environment, we must demand checks and balances and quantifiable outcomes over a thirst for vengeance.
Remember – the prisoner losing their liberty IS the punishment, making prisoners suffer additionally to that punishment is a recipe for social disaster and that’s why we see a 70% re-offense rate within 2 years of prison release!
We don’t want people in prison because the greatest determinate of whether or not a person will go to prison – IS BEING SENT TO PRISON!
We want our Judges to pass justice, not revenge, and giving them more background understanding of the person they are judging plus the flexibility to focus on attempting to find a way for the prisoner to be punished by losing their liberty AND attempting to rehabilitate them so that violent criminality isn’t an ongoing feature of their character.
Judges having the much maligned ‘Cultural Reports’ is exactly the kind of background understanding we want from Judges so that mercy is what the Court is focused on. You can’t get Justice without using mercy, look our underfunded, over crowded, violent and corrupt prison system only manufactures men more damaged than when they went in!
We don’t allow any rehabilitation to any prisoner unless they admit their guilt – seeing as many of those prisoners are on remand and haven’t had their trial yet, why would they admit guilt?
National placed that rule so as to smear dog shit in the prisoners faces before they could gain access to rehabilitation, it was a needless cruelty and ‘respect my authritah’ big dick virtue signalling by National that has created a massive counter productive backlash that sees prisoners serve their entire sentence never admitting their guilt and getting no rehab!
In terms of our overcrowded, violent, underfunded prison system, this is extremely grim reading…
‘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.
…we have all the ingredients for a prison riot.
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.
National, ACT ands NZ First 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.
All the ingredients for a Prison Riot are now in place.
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The Pennsylvania System had largely solved the problem of prison riots.
The groundbreaking design, promoted by the Quakers and other prison reform campaigners, had personal facilities for every prisoner, including his own exercise yard. This made it the first ‘silent system’ in which prisoners could not communicate with each other, thus destroying the prison gangs completely.
The prisoners would work alone in their cell making items such as shoes and textiles. The main reason it didn’t remain the preferred prison model in Europe and the U.S. is that telephones, radio and television did not yet exist at the time — and thus there wasn’t a method to deliver the daily education and therapy required to prevent isolation-related psychosis.
Culture reports were a rort!
‘Came from a dysfunctional family’
‘Was abused physically as a child’
‘No male role model in his formative yrs’
Soooo this is why it’s not really his fault for the GBH/Rape/Murder/meth dealing, so please give him a slap on the wrist sentence and he promises to be a good boy from now on! Pfffttt
What is really a rort Im Right is sending people into a justice system that is proven to do more harm than good. Until those issues you identify are addressed, no amount of locking up in our current penal system will change the highway we are on.
The name Im Right is dripping with irony, if it is interpreted to be remotely associated with being ‘correct’. It shouldn’t be.
And Wheel is sooo progressive a name lol…goes round in circles and ends up going no where!
Just like your posts….go nowhere.
Bitch, bitch, whine, whine, moan, moan, another day in the life of Im right troll.
What comes to mind is Scott Watson who has been locked up almost 26 years because he maintains his innocence. If he’d confessed to the Marlborough sounds murders he would have been paroled 10 years ago.
What ever he’s a broken institutionalised shell and should be paroled. But no! Is that because the Police and lawyers are covering their butts? The “evidence” convicting him was shoddy at best.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/marlborough-sounds-murderer-scott-watson-allowed-to-challenge-crucial-witness-evidence-at-appeal/UKTPZL7ODT4XGJ5324X4KWPRTU/
Goldsmith interviews this morning was another train wreck from our new train wreck of a government, with no clues. Goldsmith interview on RNZ was of poor quality he was mumbling shite out of his mouth we all know legal aide in NZ is already pathetic extremely targeted. No cultural reports are just another kick in the guts for Māori and shows our legal system is unfair and inaccessible for many Nzers. Why are we paying taxes when we are getting fuck all back.
Ok PA, please explain WHY a culture report in needed for Maori?
So the judge can here they had a bad upbringing and reduce the sentence…that is a maori internal problem with raising their kids NOT an excuse for a lighter sentence.
You are aware the average conviction list is about 30 convictions of prisoners now in jail (excluding rape/murder prisoners), that’s been caught approx 30 times, probably dbl/triple that total when not caught.
How the hell will a ‘culture report’ help the convicted to lead a better life?
It doesn’t, it’s just a way for a ‘fingers crossed’ lighter sentence.
Also…do we know how much each report costs? This is tax payer money as the convicted person certainly ain’t paying for one!
Yet again we see the further embedding of a two tier level of justice, being justified soley by cost savings. The government needs to do more than justify this change on savings, it needs to show us that nothing is being achieved by this reporting. What analysis of the programme has been conducted, and where are the results of the analysis to justify scrapping the programme.
If Cultural Reports are still admissable in court, why are those not wealthy enough to obtain one being disadvantaged?
The priority of any system of criminal justice, paid for by the taxpayer, surely is public safety above all else. Any rehabilitation of the prisoner is of course welcome, as long as it is not prioritised over public safety. Where on the one hand you have a choice between public safety and the well being or rehabilitation of the prisoner, we should always choose public safety.
That women and children should be able to safely walk our streets is a matter of basic human rights.
Yes Mark, but the question is how that is achieved in ‘real’ terms. Knowing our current prisons turn out angry people I don’t see locking them up is helping in making us safer – could we try a Scandnavian approach with an Aotearoa flavour?
Locking people up in USA certainly hasn’t made their society any safer.
I accept that some people are so angry that having them in prison is safer for us and them, but locking people up is not a long term solution.
Mark’s a paid up PRC shill, hence the anodyne comments that could have been written by Chatgpt. See if you can go back into his comments history and find the one where he asserted that ACT was the only left-wing political party, or that all Asians are Chinese, and it is not possible to be Asian but not Chinese.
“knowing our current prisons turn out angry people I don’t see locking them up is helping in making us safer – could we try a Scandnavian approach with an Aotearoa flavour?”
No, because our demographics are different. I posit the Scandinavian low crime rate has a lot to do with the general civilised behaviour and culture of those countries.
We have Asians and Polynesians. The Asians get into drugs and fraud, the Polynesians into general thuggery. A Singaporean or Chinese approach to crime would work wonders.
Harsh punishments in the US have indeed worked. Crime has been in general decline over the past few decades, trending in the opposite direction of imprisonment rates and length of imprisonment. New York is a case in point where strong policing has brought down the rate of crime.
Other countries to point to are Philippines (under Duterte) and more recently El Salvador.
“I posit the Scandinavian low crime rate has a lot to do with the general civilised behaviour and culture of those countries.”
How about we work towards achieving that?
I’m surprised you didn’t mention North Korea in countries with low crime rates.
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