Stranger Than Fiction

Monty Python Would Have Had a Field Day

New Zealand prisons are going to become a laughing stock.  Needless to say, the mirth will be well deserved.  A new lexicon has been developed which (in effect) will require that prison staff  to refer to prisoners as "mate" and "mates", along with appropriate derivates.  Groups of prisons will be called, "maties".

Really.  Yes . . . or close enough to.  Give Kelvin Davis, the Minister of Corrections, enough time and he will stipulate prisoners must be addressed as, "Yo, bro . . . "  or something equally colloquial and friendly. 

Corrections to Call Prisoners 'Men In Our Care'

They Must be Referred To By Their First Names

George Block
Stuff

"Prisoners" is out, "men in our care" is in under a new directive from Corrections.  Corrections has begun calling prisoners "men in our care" in a move slammed by staff, according to well-placed sources.

Some officers are also being asked to address prisoners by their first names instead of their surnames, as was previously standard practice.  The raft of new terms also includes the te reo word paihere in lieu of prisoners, which in its noun form translates to "bundle".  Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis said the idea was to humanise people in prison and "uphold their mana".  

Kelvin Davis, the Minister of Corrections claims that the idea is to humanise prisoners and uphold their mana.  But what happens, pray, when one of their incarcerates beats another incarcerate to a pulp?
  Why, prison staff doubtless will doubtless uphold their mana, call them by the politically correct titles and names, so that they won't be embarrassed in any way.

One blogger received this startling development with a display of creative zeal:

The Government said it wanted to have a zero prison population. It’s now achieved it by relabelling all prisoners as “men/women in our care”

I look forward to further new definitions:

• Police to no longer label people as “suspects” but “friends we want to contact” and offenders as “friends in need”

• NZ Defence Force to now refer to enemy combatants as “estranged allies”

New Zealand--the first country in the world to have a zero prison population.  Well done, Kelvin Davis, Minister of Corrections.