The current crime wave and why filling prisons won’t work
We are a nation of fatherless children raised by solo mothers and we are seeing an appalling spike in violence.
The top 5% of NZers own roughly 50% of NZs wealth, while the bottom 50% of NZers own a miserable 5%!
People being shot for mere driving infractions, people being beaten in broad day light in our largest cities, vile acts of murder by people who are supposed to be protectors, our headlines compete for our outraged attention.
Each crime more sickening than the previous.
Each crime only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the thousands of domestic violence call outs that never make the news and only sit as a Government statistic that barely hints at the metastasising social cancer they truly represent.
Little of this should surprise us.
The Covid lockdown was a universal experience. These are incredibly rare events that impact everyone and what we see splatter onto our screens as naked violence is the predictable societal post traumatic trauma of that universal experience.
The sacrifice of Covid has impacted us all differently.
The stresses are rupturing the fabric of society in bloody stains that anger us as we cope with holding our own shit together.
Into this cauldron of boiling rage come the Politicians harvesting our fury with promises of retribution.
ACT have called for a billion dollars to be spent on our Prison Industrial Complex by claiming this draconian lynch mob nonsense policy of their’s will merely replace the crims in prison that the soft-on-crime-socialist-gang-hugging-Labour Party have fecklessly let out of jail.
Labour have succeeded in lowering the prison muster using National’s home detention application policy because they instructed prison staff to help illiterate prisoners fill in the forms – what exactly is the rights beef with that? The helping illiterate people fill in forms or that Labour made a National Party prison policy work?
Tough on crime rhetoric is always a vote winner, ACT could promise to chain gang children in orange jumpsuits on the harbour bridge breaking rocks with pic axes while singing gospel hymns barefoot on hot coals and David Seymour would be elected Prime Minister.
When ACT demanded to put ankle bracelets on 11 year old Children, National followed it up by demanding ankle bracelets on 10 year old children, how will Luxon top a billion into prisons to lock up more people?
Will National propose an Island fight club prison where prisoners battle each other to death simulcast with live gambling and caffeinated sports drink sponsorship?
Only if Fonterra gain branding rights.
Prisons for the worst amongst us protect us from them, and most civilised people appreciate that, but the reason why the threshold has to be the worst amongst us as opposed to just dumb or bad people is because the experience of prison tends to take damaged men and turn them into monsters.
Around 70% of people with previous convictions are reconvicted within 2 years following release from prison. Around 49% are re-imprisoned after 2 years following release from prison.
Prison makes more damaged angry men, not less.
It must be reserved for the worst and not just a knee jerk response to the cruelty and malice we see in News Headlines.
We must go beyond our contempt and righteous wrath and demand social policy that isn’t counter productive even when that righteous wrath and contempt are perfectly reasonable responses to the ugliness we keep seeing.
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“ Prison makes more damaged angry men, not less.”
New Zealand needs better prisons, that’s obvious. Whose ideas to steal, that’s the question.
Not a lot of rehabilitation or retraining done in NZ Prison’s, just upgrading their crime skills and making new connections when they get out again, furthering their criminal careers.
Rehabilitation not Incarceration ????
unfortunately, human nature demands revenge not restitution. if only we could all lose our lizard brains.
It seems rather pointless sometimes putting the case for a more humane prison system when a more humane society for the majority has not yet been won either! Thanks to Capitalism, Rogernomics, Climate Disaster, post colonial fallout, farmer arseholes, and general online madness we have a world teetering on the edge of self destruction. NZ with its small population could be so much better.
But let’s not give up, respect the memories of Peter Williams and many others that have fought for penal reform and those that still do.
The NZ “hang ’em high” brigade are tightly bound by their confirmation bias to vengeance rather than problem solving. Those on the receiving end of NZ Corrections do not spend a similar amount of time blogging one suspects.
Scandinavian prisons are a good place to start for an alternative. Private Capital set up jails serving beans on paper plates are an abuse of not just the incarcerated, but the rest of us taxpayers too.
Does stealing Māori land count Henry the filth or is that merely confiscation utilizing the laws made up at the time to assimilate for example the Rebellious Act used to take most of Tainui land.
unfortunately, revenge is still the prime motivating factor in dealing with injustice. it takes a civilized mind to look past the act and into the motivations. of course , some people are just mentally incapable of determining right from wrong and should be locked up until they get it – or don’t. It’s the price we pay for a functioning society.