Te Pāti Māori promise prison abolition in new justice policy
Te Pāti Māori promise prison abolition in new justice policy
The party's plan also includes investment in Māori Legal Aid, reinstating the right for all prisoners to vote, and decriminalisation of drug use and possession.
I don't think I understand. When someone mass murders people, what do we do with them if we don't have prisons?
My partner studies criminology, and a guest lecturer came to speak about prison abolition. I was curious about what should happen to serial killers, so she sent him and email and this was his response:
"Thanks for getting in touch - I'm glad you've been talking with your friends about abolition! Believe it or not, this is probably the most common question abolitionists get and I think it's an important one. Prison abolition isn't about opening the prison doors overnight. It's a long-term strategy that aims to prevent the creation of future 'serial killers' by creating a less violent society in the first place. However, even in more peaceful society without prisons, people will continue to hurt each other and sometimes quite seriously. For people who pose a serious and immediate threat to the lives of others, they would need to be securely detained and/or supervised. This would not need to be in a prison, however. A prison involves collecting up all those people. An abolitionist alternative would be for that small number of people to be managed in the communtiy, with pretty strong supervision so that they don't get the opportunity to commit the kind of violence you're talking about. They would also get consistent access to habilitation programmes that are consistently found to be more effective in reducing violence than in-prison programme.
Of course, this is a miniscule group of people and the group of people who cause far more death and destruction are on the boards of corporations that contribute to issues like pollution. An estimated 3,300 people die from pollution in NZ every year - compared to about 50 for murder. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/air-quality/health-effects-of-air-pollution/#more-than-3300-deaths-from-human-made-air-pollution-in-2016"
I thought this could answer your question as well. I hope you find it useful
Thanks for the explanation. While I definitely agree that offenses exist that should not result in prison time, I cannot agree with the above. This assumes that people are reasonable and can at least learn to be considerate of others.
For example, in the case of white-collar crime where psychopathic CEO/Shareholders/etc consistently find ways to increase profits at the expense of everyone else, I think prison is the only place they should ever be. There's a difference between a guy selling tinnies and a guy who offloads HIV infected blood to poorer countries and infects thousands of people.
Until we have a societal shift that eliminates the possibility of being solely profit (or selfishly) motivated, I would like to keep the prisons.
That last note on the larger group of people causing death & destruction is one I find really interesting. I watched a video a year or so ago from Philosophy Tube that among other things talked about what violence is, or can be. Which in a way flips the narrative on violent crime - at least the narrative you read in our major dailies or see on TV.
There's a lot of talk about the impact of violent crime, but if you start thinking about what violence is first, you realise violent crime is just a very narrow subset of violence that our system chooses to address. The same system ignores all sorts of other violence - or in some cases even supports it.
So then when you think, 'well why is this subset a crime, but all this other stuff isn't?', its not a long road to realising that a lot of stuff that isn't crime are activities that by design or not service to reinforce power & privilege. Which then starts to make you wonder about a whole bunch of other crime & justice issues in general, eg when a welfare recipient might get hounded for desperately grabbing some cash they weren't entitled to, but some rich person can fleece millions and get away with it.
That's fantastic, thanks! The original article doesn't really tackle the subject of prison abolition, just that TPM want it. That email tells me a lot about how the system would work.
It didn't take much to convince me, but now I'm a fan of this approach (ok, to be fair I was already keen on a better system than putting all the minor criminals in a big group together to reenforce the behavior). Unfortunately we wouldn't see societal results within a couple of election cycles so it's hard to see how this could actually become reality without the risk of getting cut at the next government change. But this is the kind of future-thinking policy I like to see.
Most people in this country are too stupid, too racist, too cruel and too venegeful to even listen to somebody say something like this let alone accept it as policy.
They simply want prisoners to be hurt as much as humanly possible. If you told them you were going to torture them by peeling their skin off they would vote for you.
Thanks for the answer it’s naïveté is astounding.
Sorrry Ma'am, we know your ex husband is trying to kill you but it would be inhumane to lock him in prison. We can offer you a place in our maximum security safehouse though, it has armed guards, windows barred and lockdown every night.
Have a read of this: https://lemmy.nz/comment/2326509
It's not about ruling out detaining people. It's that prison is a terrible answer to the problem. Some person thinks that crime is acceptable. Let's put them in a building full other other people who think that crime is acceptable, so the only people the associate with are criminals. It's a system that makes more criminals, and it will be seen as obviously a bad idea in 100 years.
Yeah, prisons are a waste of money. Better to compost criminals instead, thus they will be able to provide some benefit to the society.
No, you don't get it. We're going to rehabilitate them with the power of understanding, and something about decolonisation. And then keep a really close eye on them.
I mean, there's a argument to be made for better rehabilitation and training for prisoners, but this is ridiculous.
Your first sentence mocks and derides anybody who advocated for rehabilitation and training of prisoners. What a sleazy way to doublespeak.
Sounds good, I would want this to be available to everyone.
@Floofah looks like a catchy slogan for a policy essentially aimed at devolution of justice power to iwi.
Really though, I wonder if we would willingly invent prisons again if we didn't already have them?
I used to work in courts and it was crazy how many criminals were either fetal alcohol/intellectual disability or suffered head injury.
The latter always scared me, normal folk just a car crash or ladder fall away from a changed life.
Question, genuine. Looking for discussion.
What does it cost society to imprison a person? Including opportunity costs and recidivism costs.
What would it cost to have them monitored 24/7?
What I'm thinking is if a convicted violent offender had a police minder(s) effectively 24/7 what are the costs to society compared to maintaining prisons, prisoners of which tend to reoffend?
What kind of minding would be necessary? At least three officers within 100m at all times? Clever/smart braclets/tags? We already have community, home, and periodic detention. Is this so different?
IMHO these is still a need for physical incarceration of irredeemably violent crimes. That terrorist, rapists, murderers, etc.
A good question. The recidivism costs I guess are what most, me included, will view as a valid reason to continue imprisonment for serious offences.
Me too.
Society has a limit to how much of "crime X" they'll tolerate.
Some should be exactly one: murder, rape, toture, etc. I'd argue that provable attempts at those count as one, so the threshold is actually less than one.
I feel like pretty much everything else can be "civil" consequences:
- financial crimes: forbidden from holding a position with fiduciary responsibility, repayment, punitive damages.
- theft: restitution, punitive damages, restraining orders
What I'm really unsure about is, arguably, progenitors to violence:
- drink driving? Lose license, curfew? What happens when they do it again and hurt someone?
- harassment? Restraining orders? What happens when it escalates?
Just to throw a few into discussion.
This is actually the key reason I will likely be voting ACT this time around, this party cannot be allowed to be part of our government with these goals.
This is a by Māori, for Māori, according to Māori solution and we will not compromise."
They will not be allowed to divide this country.
I cannot support Act policies, no matter how much I dislike the other parties. Here are some scary Act policies:
- They want to abolish the Human Rights Commission
- Allow unregulated overseas investment from OECD countries
- Sell all or part of many state owned enterprises (e.g. sell 49% of KiwiRail).
- Sell public hospital buildings to private investors
- Water pollution would be managed by letting companies bid for the right to pollute up to the allowed pollution levels
- They want to repeal the zero carbon (by 2050) act
- They will abolish the building act, replacing it with mandatory insurance. The idea is if it's not built to a good standard then insurers won't insure.
And here are some others (some seem to overlap with National):
- They want to abolish fair pay agreements
- They want to abolish rules that protect valuable natural areas
- They want to decrease tax for higher earners, and increase tax for lower earners
- They would re-allow live exports of animals
- They oppose any laws banning hate speech
- They would abolish ministries for Pacific people, Ethnic communities, Women, Māori development, etc.
- Reduce the rate superannuation increases each year, and stop putting money in the super fund
- Remove the Matariki public holiday
- Reintroduce the 90 day fire at will period
- Remove or reduce government kiwisaver contributions for most workers
- They want to increase the prison population (see my other comment about private prisons)
- They want to introduce privately owned toll roads
- They want to pay emissions trading scheme revenue back to everyone as a tax credit, instead of spending it on reducing emissions
- They want to stop contractors from challenging their status, to allow employers to bully employees into being paid as a contractor to avoid paying leave entitlements and other protections
- Make a literacy test a requirement to get parole (again, private prisons want people to stay longer)
- Hold a referendum to introduce a rule that allows anyone to take the government to court if they think new laws don't fit a set of standards
- Abolish the climate emergency response fund
- I'm gonna quote this one: "This party says that the current government requires councils to review speed limits and reduce them in high-risk areas like school zones. This party believes that this is slowing people down and making society less productive."
- Create a new state owned enterprise to manage roads, being required to return a profit via charging people for the use of roads (no current plans stated to sell off 49% but I think it's implied)