Bhahaha – facts contradict Kiwi love affair with tough on crime hysteria

I fucking love the way this NZ Herald article starts…

NZ youth offenders report reveals insight into Kiwi kids’ ‘crimewave’

It’s no surprise New Zealanders think there is a major youth crime epidemic in New Zealand.

…will stop you right there NZ Herald, the reason why so many Kiwis are terrified and furious at crime is because news organisations like the NZ Herald flood people with crime porn clickbait and people react emotionally to that.

Hard right politicians then come along and harvest that emotion with ‘get tough on crime’ rhetoric.

The Truth, I say the TRUTH the TRUTH is the despite the get tough on crime bullshit, youth crime is already dropping and continues…

But a Ministry of Justice report released this week shows that across the board, youth offending is steadily decreasing in New Zealand and there is less reoffending by young people.

…We had a spike with the Ram Raids because that was a release of Covid Lockdown pressures.

We have a unique class/race dimension with crime.

Alienated Māori and Pacifica youth stealing and causing violence to exploited Migrant Chinese and Indian dairies while the white suburbs clutch their pearls and cry, ‘something must be done’.

That ‘something’ is a legal system designed to punish rather than heal.

Voters are so whipped up by crime porn clickbait pushed through the ‘if it belles it leads’ mainstream media, they don’t just want incarceration, they want suffering.

We don’t care about the appalling conditions inside our prisons because we want prisoners to suffer.

Not rehabilitation, not earn redemption, not simply serve their sentence, no, in NZ we have a thirst for them to suffer driven by our wall to wall crime coverage.

The facts show us that youth crime has fallen DESPITE the tough on crime stuff, not because of it.

Look, you would not be human if you didn’t see the violence meted out to innocent victims and become immediately angry.

That’s normal and an acceptable response, but we are asked as citizens of a liberal progressive democracy to step back and consider the issue rationally and logically, not emotionally.

We never do that, we demand policy when we are angry and frightened.

I think we have to focus on 3 things when it comes to crime.

1: Our first focus has got to be ensuring the victim is returned as best we can to a place they were before the violence or theft occurred to them. Be that through free counselling, free physio, time off work to recuperate, full funding of any costs related to participating in the justice process. We have to step up for the victim and insulate them from the judicial process alongside providing whatever mental health and physical services are required to help the victim regain their dignity and repair the wrong done to them.

2: The safety of the wider community is paramount before any release. We must tie the prisoners inclusion in rehabilitation programmes inside prison to enable early parole. The prisoner must learn to self regulate themselves if they want to leave prison. They have to have been through rehabilitation programmes and talking therapy programmes before they are even considered for parole, but access to these programmes must be opened to all as opposed to the very small amount of prisoners who are eligible. We can not allow prisoners to be released into society if they haven’t had the opportunity to confront and face their issues inside rehab programmes.

And thirdly, and this is the most important, we have to heal these broken and damaged men. The incarceration and loss of one’s own liberty is the punishment, not the violence or corruption or underfunded shitty run down prison. If you want longer sentences, fine, but why on earth treat them like animals inside the prison? Why not spend that long sentence understanding themselves and the pain they’ve caused and give them the tools to pull themselves out?

We allow the damage to occur because we want them to suffer.

There are of course professional criminals and genuine sadistic psychopaths, but their crimes tend to highlight who they are and they get longer sentences in tougher prisons, but you can’t pretend the 20 000 prisoners National are planning to have as a prison muster in 2 years, many for much lesser crimes,  are all professional criminals and genuine sadistic psychopaths.

I wonder if we are even capable of having a discussion about crime that isn’t more of the same failed counter-productive get tough on crime knuckle dragging mob justice rhetoric.

 

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