GUEST BLOG: Jackie Foster – SOCIAL JUSTICE AOTEAROA CORRECTIONS POLICY
Social Justice Aotearoa will advocate for a Corrections system that will be focused on rehabilitating people who come into the care of corrections. We will advocate for a corrections system that is family friendly, supportive of whanau involvement of any inmate’s rehabilitation.
Currently the reoffending rate in New Zealand is sitting at 70%, clearly showing us the rehabilitation, if there is any, is not working.
2022-2023 saw $12 billion dollars spent in the department of corrections but the taxpayer is getting no return on that investment, and this must change.
Vision
A corrections system that mirrors Sweden, a system where people live like normal citizens in an environment learning the skills they need to reintegrate back into society and a system that will see reoffending reduce.
Sweden is a great example of a corrections system that is working and reducing reoffending so drastically that Sweden is closing prisons down where in New Zealand our politicians are wanting to build more. Sweden’s population is similar to that of Aotearoa so we know this can be achieved.
Currently our Prison System is graded as in maximum security, High Security, medium and Low security. Sweden is the same where they have different facilities that different security classification prisoners are sent to like maximum, medium, or low risk, but the important thing is that they are being rehabilitated and educated and taught to live like normal citizens would.
Once again, I refer to Sweden because their system is world class and world leading.
Values and Principles
Every inmate should be treated with respect.
Every inmate should receive the rehabilitation support they need as soon as they are imprisoned.
Double bunking must end.
Jackie Foster, CEO, Social Justice Aotearoa
Jackie it is clear that you and SJA are wanting to see the Norwegian corrections system introduced in Aotearoa and I can not say “Hurry it up” any quicker.
I have just had a look at the corrections website and here is a quote from their own website
” Many recidivists appear almost endlessly to cycle through a sequence of offending, conviction, imprisonment, release, and rapid return to further offending” almost like they are proud of of what they aren’t achieving.
$12 billion and for what ? A system that is failing!!
If only this country was populated by Swedes and Norwegians! LOL
The basic data tells us a lot about offending in this country: Those put before the court as adults mostly already have long criminal records extending back into their youth so even in their early 20’s are effectively already recidivist criminals incapable of being properly socialized. Most are illiterate and innumerate, have an addiction and were physically abused and neglected as children. You wish to rehabilitate them with the help of their whanau but generally the whanau is the original source of their problems.
Our first priority must be to protect innocent citizens from these people and the only way to reliably do that is to take them out of society.
Comments and thinking like this are exactly why our country is in the shit like it is.
Do you even know what the word whanau means? Whanau is one of the most important part of life’s journeys and without whanau people would never go anywhere or achieve anything.
Whanau, or for the less educated, family doe not mean mum, dad, sister or brother it means wider extended family, even the community.
Yes there are certain people, or offenders that need taking out of society, but what Jackie and SJA are saying and advocating for is rehabilitation while they are out of society.
i think as does a lot of people including our ex prime minister, Hon Helen Clark, think that the Norwegian corrections system is a world leading system and i applaud Jackie for advocating for it in our country.
Go live there for a while get arrested and then you can tell us all about it while you learn something.
“Andrew it’s your sort of uneducated comments that keep Martyn and Daily Blog in business”
Hehe
The last debate, how fucked the aduicator fucked it up.
Wit, if these win this, kiwi, us Aotearoa, care grasp, what flag, Aoatearoa, our human care,of not your uncaring care, of who are we.
John Key, his cronies i hope lose, if they not, they will wake us up.
Engel.