Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, May 6th, 2008 - 75 comments
Categories: crime -
Tags: crime, national, sensible sentencing
No doubt, there will be hollow cries of outrage from Simon Power and Sensible Sentencing over Bailey Kurariki being transferred from jail to home detention for the last months of his sentence.
Kurariki has been in jail for five years, since he was 12. His sentence expires in six months. By moving Kurariki to a community-based sentence, the authorities are allowing a period of reintegration to get underway while still having the legal power to place limits on Kurariki’s behaviour and freedom.
Some seem to think it’s sensible to keep a young man who has been in jail during his formative years locked up as long as possible, then chuck him out on the street with no period of controlled reintegration. That might satisfy some primal urge for revenge over what Kurariki did but it is stupid and short-sighted. Kurariki is going to be out in the community either way, the important things are that he does not re-offend and can start to make a positive contribution to society. If Kurariki is locked up until the end and then released without any controlled reintegration he will find himself in a situation where re-offending is very likely, controlled reintegration will lessen the risk of that.
The likes of National and Sensible Sentencing appeal to our urge for revenge but they do us a great disservice and increase the likelihood of future offending when they oppose community sentences and advocate releasing prisoners straight from jail back into the community.
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Brett Dale
dvds: Don’t have them
playstations: no longer in prisons
tennis courts: Are you joking?
coke machines: How are prisoners supposed to use these coke machines – they aren’t allowed to have cash?
As for Sheriff Arpaio:
In his second term of office alone, he bought a howitzer with $15,000 tires, a $70,000 armored car, spent $3 million to move to a penthouse office with big-screen TVs and other luxuries, and spent more than a million dollars on take-home vehicles for his favorite staffers. By 2001, some $16 million had already been paid to plaintiffs in successful lawsuits against the Sheriffs Department in relation to inmate deaths.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0707/S00325.htm
There’s certainly no evidence that any of this guy’s policies have any effect on reducing reoffending… and plenty that they have none.
http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?l=1&t=150&id=16570
Sorry, but if she’s going to dish it out then she and you (as a supporter) had better be prepared to take it.
Fine, fersure, but don’t persistently play that game and then also bleat about “attacking the messenger”, because that’s just hypocrisy.
r0b – you’re sure about that? Because Clark and Cullen have made silly/nasty comments you’re accepting it’s fine to have them directed at you because you’re a supporter?
Say a player in your favourite football team makes a bad tackle and breaks another player’s ankle. That player was on my favourite team – so it’s ok for me to have a crack at your ankle? I think not.
Matthew – Good call. I personally don’t give a round rats arse what trolls call me on a blog. But you are quite right that in general it is not okay to direct abuse at supporters (or indeed in an ideal world, and anyone).
Matthew/Rob:
“Canceroud and corrosive” (easily the worst)
“Last cab of the rank” (so much for racial tolerance. I guess it’s because Turia ‘betrayed’ her)
“Chinless scarf wearers” (not Clark’s own words, but please direct me to a statement where she decried it. In fact all she did was demote the minister in question. And let’s face it, that’s not exactly a stunning suprise from a government which has Lianne Dalziel in charge of the portfolio she has, is it?)
“I think you’re defying human nature” (re the anto smacking bill. Surely, one of the biggest flip flops ever)
“By definition, I cannot leak” (biggest joke in the last 9 years)
Really guys. If you want to play semantics or your party is better than somebody else’s game, you’re going to have to suck it up. Because Clark has come out with some absolute clangers you guys just try and sweep under the carpet in the name of the greater common good.
“He is only guilty of trying to help people” re Taito Phillip Field. If you expect people to take the leadership of the Labour party at all seriously after that particular little piece of awesomeness then you’re just stupid, considering when Clark came into power she promised a new era of political accountability.
It’s time for the Labour party to be chucked out. They’ve clearly lost sight of what it is they’re supposed to be representing, and if you argue otherwise you’re just another sychophant who wants to pretend the sky will fall if National ever holds the treasury benches.