Here We Go Again

Crime and Punishment

Garth McVicar has written an opinion piece in the NZ Herald on crime and prisons in New Zealand. 

The saying, "We reap what we sow", highlights the farming experience that if you don't work in partnership with nature, you get a dud crop. It comes to mind when I think about the latest twist in the crime and punishment debate; the number of people in prisons.  The focus on the product of crime, prisoners and victims, gives little attention to the root causes of the problem. That is to say, we are worried by what we're reaping and not enough by what we're sowing.

Minister of Justice Andrew Little wants to find ways to reduce the prison population. Essentially, this will be achieved by softening bail legislation and making parole easier to get.  The result will be more offenders on the streets. The streets will become more dangerous and public safety will suffer as a consequence.

The inconvenient truth about high prison rates is that crime has fallen. New Zealand's homicides peaked at 176 a year but have now declined to around 80 per year and are still falling.  As New Zealand locked up its criminals for longer, the terrible crimes that resulted in the formation of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, such as those against Teresa Cormack, Kylie Smith and Karla Cardno, have declined. But locking people up is a response to criminals, not the complete answer to preventing the creation of criminals.

Violent crime rates are dropping substantially in New Zealand.  Prison numbers are rising.  McVicar argues that there is a causal connection between these two hard statistical measures.  In other words, the reason violent crime statistics are reducing is due to violent offenders being kept longer in prison. 

The extremely liberal Labour Government finds this offensive.  Labour denies McVicar's causal link. Its position appears to be this: when it reduces prison numbers as it plans to do, it will have no effect on the incidence of violent crime in New Zealand.  Rather, Labour's position appears to be that reducing prison numbers will create a virtuous circle whereby reducing the number of people in prisons will actually reduce criminal offending in New Zealand. 

That is an extremely bold position to hold.  But there it is.  Labour in all its glory. 

Actually, in order to get to Labour's naive position, they have to add in a couple of suppressed, or hidden, premises.  Their whole case turns upon these not-so-often-talked-about beliefs.
  The first is this: early release prisoners will be channelled through rehabilitation programmes, whereby they will be taught to read and write, develop work skills, and attend psychological-type courses.  These measures will give the tools necessary to prisoners  whereby they will be make their criminal behaviour a thing of the past.  The second suppressed premise is that these state indoctrination measures will be successful. 

These not-really-talked-about premises are the hard part.  They have been tried before and failed.  Prisoners do not rehabilitate or change easily.  Old habits and associations die hard.  Why?  For any number of reasons.  But let's just name one.  A large proportion of prisoners in New Zealand have deep loyalties and bonds to powerfully entrenched criminal gangs, operating both inside and outside the prisons.  They will exploit this "rehabilitation" stuff to the max.  It will enable gang members to get back out to the "bros" in the shortest possible time.  Gangs will be up front and centre in supporting every possible rehabilitative programme.  If Black Power can get two additional early releases for their members, the Mongrel Mob will be trying to get four. 

Assume, for a minute, that it were easy.  Let's say we could have a "civic righteousness pill" that we could give to all prisoners, which, once taken, would transform them instantly into productive, constructive, kind, caring, hard working, and responsible human beings.  Who, then, would oppose administering such a pill to every prisoner, and shutting prisons down?  No-one.

But the Labour Government is acting and talking as if it had just such a "civic righteousness pill"--a few courses and activities which would allow much reduced sentences.  Its faith is strong.  Sure--many have tried and failed before.  But we (say the Labour idealists and extremists) are different.  We know we can do this.  We are going to back ourselves.  We will clothe ourselves in sanctimonious self-righteousness.  We will surround ourselves with academic "experts" who will tell us just how right and wonderful we are.  Yes, it's true.  We are better than the average bloke.  We will assume our wondrous rehabilitative programmes will be effective in turning people from a life of crime.  And if we are wrong--well, there will always be something or someone else to blame. 

If the Labour Government gets its way on reducing prison numbers, we confidently predict that violent crime rates will again rocket upwards in New Zealand within a decade.  You can mark that up on your calendar. 

In the interests of keeping the record straight, we are not opposed to rehabilitation programmes for prisoners, including hard-core violent criminals.  Nor are we opposed in principle to "learn one--earn one" programmes of self-accountability and responsibility in prisons.  But making them a politically driven programme to reduce the prison population dooms them to exploitation and failure.  It has happened before, and it will do so again.  That, too, can be marked up on the calendar.