Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, August 16th, 2011 - 68 comments
The private operators of the new Mt Eden remand prison are using desserts as a reward for good behaviour. It seems to work. But the Right doesn’t know quite how to react: on one hand, it’s mollycoddling prisoners, on the other hand it’s a private operator being innovative. Imagine how they would have reacted if the public prisons started doing this.
Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, August 9th, 2011 - 40 comments
A report in the Financial Times, that hotbed of socialism, says that PFI’s as PPP’s are known in Britain cost an extra 20 billion pounds in “extra borrowing costs” over the 53 billion pounds of the projects’ actual cost. Not only that, 4 billion pounds will go to consultants. Enough said. Another dumb idea from those who gave us collateralised debt instruments, self-correcting markets and “there is no alternative”.
Written By: - Date published: 6:37 am, June 9th, 2011 - 54 comments
So, that’s National’s great big plan: get rid of our electricity assets and use the cash to build more prisons. Not much of a brighter future there. National still hasn’t come up with a convincing reason why we would sell highly profitable monopolistic companies. Instead, we’ve seen a series of weak excuses. Now, English has revealed the truth.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, June 6th, 2011 - 68 comments
All of a sudden National and ACT are sounding vaguely sensible on crime and prisons. There seems to be a golden opportunity to reach a cross party consensus, and get some evidence driven policy and practice in this area. Who is going to make the first move?
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, April 20th, 2011 - 33 comments
Rex Widerstrom has been a commentator and occassional guest poster here for a while. He has a unique point of view on the political process and its place in society. In this guest post he looks at the never ending “War on Drugs”.
Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, March 21st, 2011 - 41 comments
There was already going to be too little money in Budget 2011 for maintenance of public services. Now what little there was is being further slashed in the name of Christchurch. An Earthquake Levy is not an option, rather we’ll all pay through increased borrowing and 25% cuts in services like police, transport, justice and social services.
Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, January 17th, 2011 - 36 comments
The government is to introduce a new Courts and Criminal Matters Bill, much of which is sensible. But sending fine-evaders to prison because they can’t afford to pay seems madness. The ridiculous cost of building and maintaining ever more prisons as unsustainable. Minor offences like unpaid fines should not result in the taxpayer spending vast sums to lock the offender up.
Written By: - Date published: 1:33 pm, January 11th, 2011 - 34 comments
As has been amply demonstrated by comments on The Standard in recent days, there are many who believe that the answer to an ineffective deterrent is more deterrent; that leaving in place the likelihood that fleeing from a police car will result in your death is somehow discouraging an unknown number of drivers from fleeing. Increasingly, though, people who respond with their critical faculties as opposed to their knees are realising that the present model of law enforcement and incarceration is a failure.
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, December 15th, 2010 - 28 comments
3 under the radar stories yesterday. All linked by ideology. Kiwirail to buy 300 wagons from China because its cheaper than building them here. Not allowed to consider wider economic gains. Collins outsources her new prison to a multi-national with a history of prisoner abuse. English wants more ‘value’ from public assets. Value for whom? The likes of Serco?
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 9th, 2010 - 44 comments
Paul Quinn’s appalling Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act passed last night with the support of just two parties – ACT and National. We’ve talked about why this law is so bad in the past. The Attorney-General agreed it is an unjustified breach of our human rights. Why did ACT, the supposed ‘Liberal Party’ vote for it?
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, November 26th, 2010 - 224 comments
It’s pretty bloody late in his tenure to be saying it, but Police Commissioner Howard Broad has joined with every expert in telling politicians that their braindead, populist policy of increasing the number of crimes and ramping up prison sentences has to stop. It’s not a solution to crime, it’s making it worse.
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, November 4th, 2010 - 24 comments
National are continuing their privatisation by stealth. Hospitals services and a new prison are the current targets. Tony Ryall, Judith Collins and Bill English are the ministers currently pushing their ideology in their respective areas.
Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, October 2nd, 2010 - 18 comments
This question is something that has been on my mind for some time. In this article, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton, sets out four examples of current policy that he believes those in the future will look back and say “What were people thinking?”
Written By: - Date published: 1:07 pm, August 15th, 2010 - 41 comments
Prison doesn’t work. It keeps people off the streets, but, as psychiatrist James Gilligan says:
The most effective way to turn a non-violent person into a violent one is to send him to prison.1
Written By: - Date published: 4:42 pm, August 13th, 2010 - 16 comments
We’ve already seen criticism of the move by National to introduce private prisons (eg. NZ Herald editorial). Now the soon-to-depart prison boss, Barry Matthews has indicated that he too has his doubts.
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, August 5th, 2010 - 33 comments
Pita Sharples wants Maori flag to fly over prisons to raise prisoners’ morale. What a bizarre and useless suggestion. Instead, how about alleviating the poverty that is the main driver of crime?
Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, July 31st, 2010 - 14 comments
The Economist has a great article looking at the American propensity to deprive their citizens of their liberty for trivial offenses. We have the same stupid political ratcheting here that causes it. A large part of that is fueled by groups like the Sensible Sentencing Trust. There needs to be a broad agreement across the political spectrum about such hysterical groups before they cause more damage.
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, July 14th, 2010 - 28 comments
The NZ Herald editorial criticising National’s pursuit of a private prison in Auckland should make Judith Collins and her cabinet colleagues sit up and rethink.
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, June 29th, 2010 - 72 comments
When National get their ideological wish to get a prison privately run here, the most likely candidate will be Australian/UK prison company G4S. In the ‘care’ of these crime profiteers, an Aboriginal man died in a Western Australian prison van, during a four hour ride without ventilation in 50 degree plus temperatures that gave him 3rd degree burns. And that’s far from the only abuse.
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 pm, June 28th, 2010 - 61 comments
I’m supportive of the government’s move to end smoking in prisons. I think the real winners will actually be the two thirds of prisoners who smoke. They will be forced to break their addiction. I don’t think there’s any serious justification for concerns that banning smokes could lead to more trouble in jails or that the prospect of not getting any ciggies will be enough to deter crime.
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, May 11th, 2010 - 15 comments
The argument against privatising prisons isn’t high principle (only the state should imprison people) or that this is an attempt at cost-cutting. No, the reason private prisons suck is they cost more. The last time Auckland Remand was privatised it didn’t save money. It cost $66,000 a year to imprison someone in Auckland remand vs $49,000 for a publicly-run equivalent.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, May 5th, 2010 - 12 comments
This is a crime bill that is not expected to deter or reduce crime and may increase murders. That’s not acceptable. It’s not even really a crime bill, it’s a stupid PR stunt that puts lives at risk. No responsible government would pass it. But this is not a responsible government. It is willing to cause more murders for the sake of appearing tough on crime.
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, May 2nd, 2010 - 7 comments
In Florida, a legislative plan to close as many as five state prisons and ship inmates to a private prison run by GEO Group was scaled back last month.
The feds may be searching to see if former state House Speaker Sansom received any kickbacks from the company. The GEO group are also contenders for running private prisons here.
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, April 16th, 2010 - 44 comments
It’s time to renew the questions about links between the leading advocates of harsher prison sentences in New Zealand, the Sensible Sentencing Trust and GEO Group, a US private prison operation whose former name, Wackenhut Corrections, became a byword for corruption and abuse. Who is really behind this privatisation and longer sentences agenda?
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, April 16th, 2010 - 37 comments
Kelvin Davis: It goes to show how high the aspirations of some of our Maori leaders are. We now aspire to bung the bros in the hinaki and watch the dollars roll in. The longer and more often we can put them away, the sooner we will be able to afford to expand the prison and lock even more away. With the soaring crime rate and high Maori unemployment everything is coming together nicely.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, April 15th, 2010 - 55 comments
National’s apologists say we should let private corporations run our prisons because it will save money. But do Public Private Partnerships (privatisation in drag) really save money? The experience here and abroad says no. To put it bluntly, when you rely on someone else to deliver something you need they’ve got you by the balls and the profit motive gives them plenty of incentive to squeeze.
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, March 11th, 2010 - 30 comments
When a guy who was imprisoned and tortured by Idi Amin calls the conditions in which prisoners are kept in New Zealand “a source of shame and disgrace” you know we have problems. Unfortunately, it has become acceptable in this modern political environment to view prisoners as less than human
Written By: - Date published: 12:20 am, March 5th, 2010 - 16 comments
For just $2.4 million a year, the Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society and its 500 volunteers help 25,000 inmates and ex-inmates with rehabilitation and readjustment each year. Their efforts help turn people away from crime. But the Nats cancelled the funding. All they believe in is putting the boot in harder even though it doesn’t stop crime.
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, January 20th, 2010 - 89 comments
The ’3 strikes’ policy is the kind of policy you put in place when you want to look tough on crime but you have no idea how to actually reduce it, in the same way a cycleway is the jobs plan you have when you don’t have a plan. We know locking people up longer doesn’t …
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, September 18th, 2009 - 2 comments
In the second part of our double header for Drinking Liberally this month we’ve got director of Rethinking Crime & Punishment Kim Workman to come and talk about justice policy. When: 7pm TUESDAY 22 September – (not our normal Wednesday night) Where: Galatos – 17 Galatos Street, Newton (just off K road) – free entry …
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, August 27th, 2009 - 10 comments
Excellent piece by Patrick Gower in the Herald today on Judith Collins’ attempt to smear Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon. Collins has leaked part of an OIA (which she’s so far refused to release to Labour) which she says shows “union bosses” are “living a jet-set lifestyle” on the taxpayer after they received $127,000 in …
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