NZ has one of the highest incarceration rates in the western world. Grant Robertson has posted on the topic today. He wants numbers to drop.
Meanwhile Bill English has revealed that government is planning to have corrections as the biggest government agency.
What do you think ?
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Locking up criminals, or funding belly dancing classes in ECE? I think Ill go with locking up the baddies thanks.
Lol Trevor
Hmm. Spending money on problem youth before they end up in prison or spending money on prisons. ECE is Early Childhood Education Chris, I’d doubt if my 2 year old boy would be belly dancing in preschool LOL.
Marie – Sorry – I was thinking of the ACE funding – so I stand corrected there.
Although Im sure that most on this blog would prefer that the money was spent on that before prisons etc as well.
Sorry but I am voting for a logical use. While I would definitely prefer a focus on other areas National’s criminal policy will not have severely effected the amount of the prison population by the time corrections becomes the largest department this is the result of all political parties kowtowing to a vengeful public. Once we have this large prison population as a result of decades of imprisonment it makes sense to employ a large number of staff to manage them and in particular to ensure rehabilitation. The fact that our criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul to make sentences more fair (lower) is irrelevant to this question they cannot simply let all the people currently in prison go because the law at the time they were incarcerated was bad. That would cost more to the taxpayer to review everyone’s sentences.
So do we have a higher crime rate to go with the lock up rate?
Hey they could introduce belly dancing as a form of rehab.
Spend the money on your Kiwibank capital injection plan Trevor…
Trevor, I think that saying the government plans to have Corrections become its biggest department is somewhat disingenuous. If that does happen it is a by-product of the three yearly attempts by Labour and National to out-bid each other in the ‘tough on crime’ stakes.
I have pointed it out to you before on this blog that your current leader was one of the biggest cheerleaders for getting tough on crime during your last term in government, but it is a point that you conveniently ignore.
If you think that locking more and more people up is not a good thing then that’s fine (I agree), but National is only half the problem. The Labour party is the other half. This is because both parties would rather pander to the law and order sabre rattlers every three years in return for a few precious votes.
Don’t bother pointing the finger Trevor. Take a principled stand, back off from the three-yearly vote-grabbing brinkmanship and tell us what you would do to solve (or at least partially fix)the problem. If you do have at least a partial solution I would be willing to bet that it would be worth more votes than just promising to lock more people up.
I won’t hold my breath though. All those children that were two, three and four years old living in broken homes sodden with alcohol and drugs and struck with the curses of domestic violence and unemployment when you came to power in 1999 are now 13, 14 and 15 and for the majority of them it is now too late. They have experienced how they and theirs live their lives and they will replicate that.
To break that cycle somebody will have to do something drastic with those kids when they are still very young. Is Labour capable of doing that?
Did you bother to read Grant’s post sean14 – I work on the assumption you would be bright enough to use the links before commenting and therefore didn’t bother repeating. My bad. Trevor
Speaking of polls, has anyone living in Epsom got a call from a survey research firm in the last few days? My brother-in-law was phoned and asked several questions about who he would vote for in 2011 compared to 2008.
Trevor – I read the article in the Dom Post and I read Grant’s post.
I stand by my point that you are pointlessly taking a cheap shot at the government when your party played as big a part in the current situation as they did (and probably a bigger part).
To reference Lianne Dalziel from that article:
“She says the 1999 referendum gave Labour little choice but to campaign on the mantra “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. Public feeling meant the choice was between hard and harder. There followed the Bail Act 2000, Sentencing Act 2002 and Parole Act 2002, all resulting in more and longer sentences.
I voted against that very stupid referendum, and I don’t recall any principled argument from Labour at the time that we needed to do something else rather than simply locking people up for longer.
Posting on a blog is easy Trevor. You can do it, Grant can do it, even someone like me who isn’t very bright can do it. However, if it’s only talk, which it is at this stage, then it isn’t worth much.
If you have some real solutions that will work, let’s hear them.
Didn’t think so.
I miss ianmac