Lillian
Hanly, Political reporter
The
Corrections Minister is looking at scrapping
short prison sentences in favour of longer ones, in the
hope of reducing reoffending.
Mark Mitchell said
people with longer sentences have more access to
rehabilitation and therefore more successfully re-enter
society.
The idea is only being looked into, but it’s
Mitchell’s preference if it led to fewer victims overall –
even if it required building more prisons due to an increase
in the prison
population.
“When violent offenders receive short
sentences or are released without proper rehabilitation, it
puts the public at risk. I have asked Corrections to look
into how short sentences relate to re-offending with a view
of gaining a better understanding,” Mitchell told
RNZ.
“We want to see offenders turn their lives around
and become meaningful, contributing members of
society.
“With that comes tough decisions to ensure
serious crime leads to serious consequences, alongside
investing in programmes that break the cycle of
reoffending,” Mitchell said.
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The Opposition is
scoffing at the idea though, with the Greens and Labour both
saying it goes against the evidence and would come at a
significant cost.
Labour’s
Justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said it was “depressing”
the government couldn’t come up with better
solutions.
“It’s the usual rhetoric about putting
people in prison for long periods of time.
“We know
that whilst imprisonment is necessary in some cases, in
terms of reducing crime in the long term, putting everyone
in prison simply doesn’t work.”
Webb said
rehabilitation was “absolutely” important, but said the
lowest reoffending rates came from those who were sentenced
to community sentences where they could access drug and
alcohol programmes and rehabilitation programmes in the
community.
“The correction system at the moment
doesn’t have the resources to deliver them. The community is
the best place for that.”
He said they had to address
offending and risks of offending at the “earliest possible
stage,” and by the time people were put in prison “you’ve
missed the boat.”
“Prisons are a waste of money…
they are unbelievably expensive to build and unbelievably
expensive to manage,” Webb said.
“We should be putting
money into where we can avoid crime, which is into
education, into health, into addiction and into mental
health and building more prisons is building a big concrete
ambulance.”
Mitchell, however, pushed back on the
previous government’s approach to corrections.
“For
too long, the balance in our justice system has shifted away
from accountability, and this government is taking action
that puts victims first, ahead of offenders.”
“My top
priority as Corrections Minister is keeping Corrections
staff and New Zealanders safe,” he said.
The
Greens justice spokesperson Tamatha Paul told RNZ longer and
harsher prison sentences do not lead to better
outcomes.
She said it was “extremely expensive and
costly”, not just financially, but the “human potential that
it will waste, and the families that will be torn them apart
for longer as a result of this policy.”
Paul pointed
to criminologists who considered the issue, and what
happened in prisons, and said it was “pretty clear” that
“sentencing is not a silver bullet.”
“The thing that
this government loves to do is they like to create this
assumption that every single person that is in prison has
done a violent, heinous, serious crime.
“That is
simply not the case.”
She said the idea of making
people stay in prison for longer because of “public safety”
didn’t match up with who was actually in prison, given
shorter sentences were due to more minor crimes like
burglary or theft.
Paul said the government seemed to
think they could “continue to just build prisons and prisons
and prisons and keep filling them up” and that was good
policy.
“The best policy decision would be actually
reducing the drivers of crime, things like poverty,
homelessness, mental health and addiction issues, the
presence of drugs in our communities, those are the kinds of
things that actually help to reduce crime.”
She said
researchers, criminologists, lawyers and judges had said
this over the years, but “we have a government that is
completely agnostic towards that
advice.”
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