KEY POINTS:
If one thing can be relied on in an election campaign, it is that the Opposition and the minor parties will scream that we need to get tough on crims.
National maintained the time-honoured tradition this week, announcing a "life-means-life" policy for murderers who had violent records before conviction, and an end to parole for violent offenders who had previously received a prison sentence of five years or more for a violent crime. The policy was released on the weekend before the Treasury's fiscal update showed the parlous state of the nation's finances and leader John Key has yet to say whether he will stick with a plan that would require him to find $314 million for a new prison and $43 million a year to run it. His hastily amended tax cut policy, which attacks KiwiSaver and cans a research-and-development tax credit for businesses, implies - at last - his admission that he cannot conjure up money from nowhere to increase workers' take-home pay and he may want to explain what spending he will cut to pay for that prison.
But the Nats' stance warrants scrutiny on more than economic grounds. Like much of what is said in an election year, the idea sounds much better than it is. No one would dispute that a psychopathic killer who shows no sign of remorse should remain locked up for what used to be called the term of his natural life. But National's own figures show that only 10 of the 144 murderers locked up since 2002 would warrant the "life-means-life" treatment.
And it is hard to sustain the argument that they are being leniently treated as it is: Panmure RSA killer William Bell must serve 33 years in prison before he becomes eligible to be considered for (and by no means necessarily granted) parole; for Bruce Howse, who killed his stepdaughters Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson, the stretch is 28 years; Graeme Burton, who went on a shooting rampage in the hills above Wainuiomata, will do 26 years. The current prison muster includes 239 inmates who are subject to preventive detention, meaning that, as matters stand, they have no automatic right ever to be considered for parole. The Nats' proposal will simply mean prison guards will have to become skilled in geriatric care.
Tub-thumping rhetoric sounds good on the hustings and demanding that we lock them up and throw away the key is always good for a few votes. But National's problem in mounting the law-and-order hobby-horse is that the Government's record in the matter is not precisely shoddy. Labour has toughened sentencing laws, and built four new prisons with space for 71 per cent more inmates. Apart from Poland and the US, we imprison our population with greater enthusiasm than any other OECD country.
The Americans, with imprisonment rates more than four times ours (and, in 37 of the 50 states, the death penalty) have been conspicuously unsuccessful in eradicating crime. But what is more interesting is that our crime rates are lower - or at least no higher - than those of comparable jurisdictions such as Australia, Canada and the UK where imprisonment rates are lower. Key's call for tougher treatment for crims is not just spurious; it is demonstrably unsound in terms of social policy.
The idea that we should withdraw eligibility to be considered for parole from second-time convicts with a violent record also sounds good, but it rests on a dispiritingly cynical view of human nature because it removes a prisoner's incentive to reform in the hope of early release. The evidence is anecdotal and widely disputed that prison rehabilitate prisoners more than it hardens them; but the evidence is scant indeed that the prospect of prison has any deterrent effect, and for National's idea to work, it would have to speak to potential criminals.
It does not do so, of course because it is designed to speak to voters and it appeals to the lowest in us. Crime is a result of social dysfunction: poverty, social disadvantage, alienation, unemployment and - most rampant in recent years - the scourge of methamphetamine. Politicians who ignore the causes of crime and call for tougher sentences do not care for all New Zealanders, but only for the ones whose votes such cynicism might buy.
