Kerre Woodham: Why don't we focus the headlines on the good news?

There is a common trope that if prisons worked, we wouldn't need them. And that if prison was a deterrent, people wouldn't commit crime. If prison was about rehabilitation then people would serve their term and then they would not reoffend.  

There's something incredibly depressing about prisons and the waste of human potential they represent – even brand-spanking new prisons. I did a fundraiser for Shine charity at the Mt Eden Remand Prison before it was opened for prisoners – before it was open for business, if you will. Brand spanking new, nobody had been in there and it was still one of the most depressing places I have ever been in.  

I've always thought that investing in young people and families to try and prevent them going to prison in the first place would be far preferable to spending hundreds of thousands per person keeping them locked up. But prisons aren't just about rehab, and they're not just about deterrence. They're also there to keep people away from other people. To keep people from committing violent assaults and rapes and manslaughters. They're there to stop people taking what doesn't belong to them. If you’re locked up, you can't go out ram-raiding. They're there to act as a punishment for those who have committed a grievous offence against society and against individuals. If you take a life, you have to pay for that, and that means the deprivation of your liberty and being locked away from society as a punishment.  

Law and order is always an election issue, and it's always a hot topic. Former Justice Minister Andrew Little, former Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis, wanted to reduce the prison population by 30% when they formed a coalition government with NZ First. NZ First who, of course, are big law and order campaigners, stymied them in part during the first three years when they were coalition partners, but by 2023, the prison population under Labour had reduced by 24%. Under Labour, incarceration rates plummeted from 213 people per 100,000 in 2018, which was nearly the highest in the OECD (which is nothing to be proud of), to 149 per 100,000.  

Now, that would be great if there was a commensurate fall in crime, but there wasn't. Victims of crime increased by 12% as the prison population reduced, victims of crime went up. Labour's reforms were part of an overall goal on their part to reduce the prison population by 30% by 2033, but it achieved that ten years earlier, and perhaps that's where it went wrong. When there aren't the rehabilitation services there, when there isn't the support there, when there isn't the intensive kind of help needed to either habilitate people into society or rehabilitate them, depending on how long term their offending has been, then what are these people going to do?

We all know how incredibly hard it is to break bad habits. We know what we should do. Do we do it? No. So imagine having been born into a life like that and then being told at the age of 24 to change your ways. Incredibly difficult to do it, especially without that kind of support. So typical of Labour, good ideas, good intentions - just no ability to deliver. The support wasn't there, the help wasn't there, the intensive support needed to help people turn their lives around wasn't there.  

So sensing which way the wind was blowing in the lead up to the ‘23 election, Chris Hipkins dumped the prison reduction targets. But it was all far too little, far too late with the dumpster fire. National, ACT, NZ First took advantage of the fact that victims of crime had gone up, that people's perceptions of crime were that we were living in a state of lawlessness and capitalised on that in their get tough on crime messages throughout the ‘23 election.  

Now we have the release of the fast-track projects and that's shown the Department of Corrections wants the ability to expand high security Auckland prison. They don't want to do it right now; they don't even want to do it next week or next year. They just say that should they need to increase capacity, they want to be able to get cracking and do so, so that they don't have to go through the whole resource consent process. Opponents are up in arms. The Government’s being accused of establishing a dangerous mega prison for staff and inmates. Wrong. It's not establishing anything, it just wants the capacity to do so, which makes sense.  

What also makes sense is the investment in the Social Investment Agency, and that isn't getting nearly the same headlines as the Department of Corrections wanting the capacity. What is happening is the Social Investment Agency being re-established. Bill English set it up, Labour took it over and made it a wellbeing agency, and now it's being taken back more under the vision that Bill English had, which is to use data, analytics, and evidence to work out how to intervene in the lives of the most vulnerable in society, those who are the root of all problems, and working with the providers of social services to get the best result for these people so it's not wasted human potential yet again, but also reduce the burden on the taxpayer. That's the way Bill English was able to sell it to his cabinet colleagues. He's a good old dry conservative when he needs to be, it'll save us money in the long run. And it will.  

If you invest in the most complex, prevent them going into prison in the first place, it is going to save us a heck of a lot of money. So I have absolutely no problem with Department of Corrections saying can we just keep this in our back pocket if we need it? Can we have the capacity to increase the prison population if we have to? Nicola Willis believes passionately in the social investment agency - she worked with Bill English, she's an acolyte, she's a disciple. She knows the cause and she believes in it.  

So while you have money going into the social investment agency to try and prevent people from getting into the system, why don't we focus the headlines on that? Why don't we look at the good news instead of having screaming headlines generated by activists who are furious about something that hasn't happened, doesn't look like it’s happening in the near future, and may never happen. How about that? 

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