Chic, Glam and Crime

Herald Insights

Ditty D'Bonehead
Senior Herald Correspondent

Kim Workman, Rethinking Crime and Punishment lobby group director, has been doing a lot of hard rethinking on crime. Known throughout the country amongst the redneck constituency as a "bleeding heart liberal" Mr Workman has incarcerated that slur once-and-for-all, and thrown away the key. He shapes up to us as one hard headed advocate, serious about ridding the entire country of crime, thereby ending the need for punishment entirely.

We senior staff writers at The Herald have been gratified to see that Workman is not prone to criticise without offering positive and practical solutions. This means he is credible.  And being credible is no light thing--especially in the cynical eyes of top journalists like us. 

His most recent concern is the government's announcement that it is "going to get tough" on people who have amassed large fines and refuse to pay them. Getting tough in this context would mean putting them in prison.

Kim Workman is appalled. "It will lead to all sorts of pernicious unintended outcomes," this quietly spoken, calmly reasoned lobby group leader says. The "get tough on crime" brigade in his view is just posturing, trying to appeal to the ignorance of its electoral base. "It is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a nano-second that people don't pay fines because they are unable to. Being too poor to pay the fines, they don't pay them. Duh. Worse, if you put them in prison, they will end up being poorer still; it will be harder for them to get a job when they get out. They are more likely to be fined again. They will be even too poorer still to pay the fines. The whole vicious circle will just turn around again, " he says. It's hard to find a weakness in this argument--and we senior reporters are uber-skilled at seeing weaknesses in arguments at 100 paces. So, dear readers, you can therefore take it on faith that Mr Workman is quite right.

But the director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment has indeed done a lot of rethinking. He offers a much more constructive solution to the problem of unpaid fines. We all know--well, it's beyond dispute in the Senior Herald Correspondent caucus room, so you can take it dear reader as a virtual truth--we all know that crime is caused by poverty and social vulnerability. "Therefore," says Mr Workman, "the logical thing to do is the government, instead of wasting thousands and thousands of dollars sending these unfortunate victims to prison, should provide each with a grant to pay the outstanding fines." Mr Workman went on to observe that if the outstanding fines of these unfortunate folk were paid by the government for them, they would be less poor, and so would be less likely to offend and be fined again. "The vicious circle of crime will be cut in two like Alexander's Gordian Knot and the whole of New Zealand will lie at our feet. Peace and light will break out everywhere. Think of that! Just think of that!"

Once again the logic of Mr Workman's argument is hard to gainsay. ("Gainsay" is a technical term, dear readers, employed by Senior Herald Correspondents from time to time to assure you of our profundity, insight and general state of perpetual intellectual scintillation. We did not get to be where we are today, without scintillation.) Meanwhile, it's good to see such a noble soul as Mr Workman offering positive solutions to the problems of crime and punishment.

In conclusion, the Herald is pleased to announce today that it is starting a public campaign to oppose the government's intention to put recidivist finees into the slammer. We are going to highlight the Workman solution as a far better alternative workmanlike solution. (Hah, hah. Excuse the pun. That's just another example of reporter scintillation. Glad you were impressed.)

To return to the point: it is clear--at least to all who operate at our level of sophistication--that if the government were to provide grants to pay off the outstanding fines, crime would reduce.

We note in conclusion that Mr Workman is working on extending this radical principle to combat other forms of crime and punishment. He and his senior executives are commencing a cool, calm rational evaluation of a proposition that if MP's and bureaucrats were made to serve out the jail times in place of all those currently incarcerated in our prisons, and the criminals released, crime would reduce still more radically. We senior correspondents are not so sure about this--but we think it is definitely worth an explore.

We are even less sure about another Workman "rethink" to the effect that crime would reduce significantly if no-one knew about it. We certainly did not agree with his next idea that reporters and publicisers of crime should, therefore, be made to do the time because they actually encourage further criminal offending. But once again, it is hard to refute his logic. After all, we were all taught in journalism school that if you do not see evil and you do not hear of evil, no evil can exist.

And then again, "Ditty D'Bonehead, Career Criminal" has a certain ring of chic glam to it. Maybe the Women's Weekly would do a feature on me. Finally.