Financial Review Debate — Ministry of Justice

The Government has been boasting proudly in recent times of its “tough on crime” approach. It has been telling the House about its ambition to increase the prison population by 20 percent over the next 7 years. It is a sad thing that that is the ambition of the Government for the country. It is a cause of shame for the Government and our country, rather than a source of pride.

I think the Government has made a mistake common to Governments, and it is a mistake that is often shared by the more extreme elements of the right wing of this House: it has the mistaken belief that putting more people in prison somehow means less crime, and that being tough on crime means locking people up for longer. I do not believe that the Government is naive, and I do not believe that, when the members of the Government think about it, they actually believe that putting people in prison is going to effectively reduce reoffending or offending. But somehow, collectively, they take that approach. They mistake being tough on criminals for being tough on crime. I have to say it is not the same thing, by any means. In fact, I do not think it is possible to argue that countries with a bigger prison population have less crime than countries with a small prison population; if anything, I suggest that the inverse would be the case. In fact, I believe that putting more people in prison is a backward step for this country and for this Government. As I say, it is nothing to boast about, but should be a cause of shame.

When we are looking at the financial performance of the Ministry of Justice, we should have an overriding concern that we often overlook in this House, and that is whether we are reducing offending or reoffending. The question is not how many people are in prison, or how long they have been put in prison for; the question is whether fewer people are reoffending under the present policies. That does not seem to be the case. We know that locking people in prison simply does not achieve that aim. It has often been said that prison is a university for crime. People go in for minor offences, unpaid fines, and the like; they come out with new-found expertise in burglary and assault. Of course, there are some people who do need to be locked up for the safety of the community; some people present a threat to the community, and they need to be kept out of circulation. That is why the Greens supported changes to the sentencing and parole legislation that focused on the safety of the community being the overriding concern when decisions on sentencing and parole are being made. But it is really important that members of this Committee remember that over 50 percent of the prison population is inside for minor, non-violent offences, and the idea that putting them in prison is somehow going to break them out of a life of crime is simply not borne out by the evidence.

Yet this Government is boasting that it intends to increase the prison population by 20 percent over the next 7 years. David Lange famously said that it was so expensive to keep people in prison for a year that it would be cheaper to keep them in the Hilton, and, what is more, they would not try to escape! He is absolutely right. We are not saying that people should not be in prisons; as I said, some people do need to be kept out of circulation. But we have to look at where we are spending the money. The Government has embarked on a prison-building programme, and in this country we seem to have an open chequebook for building prisons and locking people in prison. I hark back to the comments made by Judy Turner, of United Future, and Minister Ruth Dyson, who talked about support for the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services, and the under-resourcing of its services. We need to be putting our money into early prevention and early intervention strategies—strategies that are about keeping people out of prison and out of a life of crime—rather than restricting resources at that level, in the certain knowledge that some of those people will end up in prison, and having an open chequebook for locking them up once they have committed offences and have left a raft of victims behind them. It is an absolutely back-to-front, upside-down way of approaching the issue. Prisons are simply a way for offenders to abdicate responsibility. People do their time, and they never have to take responsibility or make amends for what they have done.

The Green Party is supporting some of the initiatives of the Government that are a start in attempting to address these issues. We are supporting the initiatives on restorative justice, and we think the comments in the financial review report are extremely important.

Report noted.

Ministry of Health