Opinion: Dealing with the prison problem – here we go again!

It is well accepted that we have a problem with our burgeoning prison population – it has grown by about 30% in just the last few years and is one of the highest per capita in the western world.  To give him credit Andrew Little seems determined to tackle this problem and a 3-day conference on corrections has just been completed.  By all accounts, all sorts of ideas came out of this and they will be considered by (yet another) advisory committee.  Whether an actual cure for the problem results remains to be seen.

In many respects, the problem is intractable for political reasons.  The New Zealand electorate is very conservative on imprisonment and the prevailing view is still “keep our homes and streets safe by locking away the criminals”.  And the other difficult if not intractable factor is that there is a strong ethnic/cultural element – in particular, Maori are substantially over-represented in the prison population.

There are certainly some things that can be and to some extent have been done, which help reduce the prison population.  In particular:

• Bail can be applied more liberally so that the prisons are not loaded with people awaiting trial. To a large extent, this is being done but the penalty for a mistake is large – if a prisoner on bail commits a crime, the immediate reactions is to use bail less often.
• The sentences provided for in the law could be reduced. However, there is a limit to how far this can be done while still providing meaningful sentences.
• Judges could be instructed to be more lenient in sentencing. However, it can be argued that sentencing is already lenient, in the public view, and again there is always a backlash if prisoners with lenient sentences immediately reoffend when released.
• More effort should go into rehabilitation. Well, it already is, but I think the results are mixed.  In some cases, lives have been significantly turned around and there are some really positive stories of that type – but there are what might be called “hardened” criminals who are beyond rehabilitation.
• More use should be made of sentences other than prison, eg home detention, community work programmes. Again the experience is mixed, and in many cases, offenders take advantage of the home detention option rather than using it in a positive sense.

An important issue too is the propensity for our system of justice to make occasional but persistent wrong convictions.  I think I have heard of a factor of 10% applying (that is 10% of all convictions), and clearly, if all those miscarriages of justice were corrected there would be a corresponding reduction in convictions, and potentially in the number of prison inmates.  The cause, in this case, is our adversary system of justice, inherited from the British system, which makes trials into contests rather than a search for truth.  At the very least we should have formal and independent means for reviewing suspect cases, and I fully support calls of that type that have been made.

And a comment on the “3 strikes” law which is on the table again.  The argument for this is that people will be less likely to offend if they know that on the third occasion of offending they will automatically go to prison if caught.   However, it can be argued that perversely the opposite might occur – if a criminal offends for the third time they may be inclined to offend more deeply and violently than would otherwise be the case because there is no incentive to do otherwise, ie they will go to prison regardless.

I think it likely that the results of the current review will be the further applications of partial solutions like those mentioned above, and no doubt others that I have not thought of.   They will all make some difference, but it will be a case of minor improvements around the edges of the system – not the game changer(s) that need to be looked for.

And it is not too hard to see the areas where the game changers need to be developed.

The first is the public attitude toward crime and public (and property) safety. For as long as the populations demand 100% protection from convicted criminals, the pressure to imprison rather than look for other solutions will continue to create huge political pressure.  Law and Order is an almost certain Vote grabber come the elections.  And the public is right in thinking that the only foolproof solution is to put convicted criminals in jail, and preferably keep them there.  But as a society, we need to think more widely about the issue and be prepared to accept and manage more risk from criminal activity than we currently do, by reducing the rate of imprisonment.  The key is that word “manage”.  We need to see the management of the response to crime as something for which we all take some responsibility – not just leave it to the Police.

There are some signs this is beginning to happen with programmes such as Neighbourhood Watch but more is needed.  We should not under-estimate the power of a community which bands together in being intolerant of crime.   However, this needs to be done as a joint approach with the Police – the danger is that of going too far into the realms of vigilante action.

The second game change area is that of dealing with the high rate of Maori (especially but not solely) imprisonment.  The reasons for this are complex and have both social and cultural elements.  But unless a genuine attempt is made to find and deal with root causes, this will continue to be a major part of the prison problem.

It will be interesting to see if the forthcoming review grapples with these game-changing areas.

By Bas Walker

This is another of Bas Walker’s posts on GrownUps.  Please look out for his articles, containing his Beachside Ponderings.