KEY POINTS:
I have often wondered about prison sentences. If the lawmakers decide a certain number of years in prison are appropriate for a particular crime, how come most get out after serving only two-thirds, sometimes one-third, of that time?
Thus, National's parole policy makes eminent sense - that for repeat violent offenders, life will mean life, and that such offenders will not have the privilege of parole.
All that will do, of course, is keep a few hardened criminals out of circulation. But in the light of the number of heinous offences perpetrated by parolees in recent years, that can only benefit society.
It will do nothing to solve the problem of crime in general, of our excessive prison population, or of efforts to rehabilitate wrongdoers.
What we need to do is look at the nature of prison itself. It is an institution almost as old as mankind. From time immemorial, societies have decided the best way to deal with those who threaten the safety and/or well-being of society is to lock them away.
Yet imprisonment has never worked, in spite of all sorts of reforms and variations tried out over the millennia. In fact, our crime figures and rosters of prisoners have continued to rise. So what's to be done?
No one should ever underestimate the effect that being removed from society can have on a man or a woman. But I can't see that doing much good if all we provide is a home from home, the most comfortable home some criminals have ever had.
The first thing we need to do is to make prison a place that no sane human being would ever want to return to. And the quickest way to do that is to get rid of the holiday camp atmosphere and return prisons to places that provide nothing but adequate shelter, food, healthcare and basic education, and plenty of tiring hard work - eight hours a day, six days a week.
All female staff should immediately be removed from male prisons and all male staff from female prisons. Equality of the sexes was never meant to go that far, and those who decided it could ought to be locked up in mental institutions for the rest of their lives.
Television, radio and other entertainments should be removed from all prisons, use of the telephone restricted to direst emergencies, and visitors permitted perhaps once a month, briefly and without physical contact. Gymnasiums should be closed and the physical needs of the prisoners supplied by hard, manual, useful work.
It's not as if there isn't plenty of that available all over the country - work that has not been done by state or local authorities, community groups and charitable organisations because they haven't the manpower or the money but which could be carried out by chain gangs, perhaps without the chains.
Younger wrongdoers, say in the 18 to 25 age group, should be sent to the Army, which would be directed to establish a penal battalion under seasoned officers and veteran noncoms to ensure that those under their supervision are taught discipline and self-reliance as only the armed services can.
Calisthenics and rifle drill on the parade ground and route marches at Waiouru or Burnham in the middle of winter should make even the most hardened young malefactor think twice before returning to a life of crime.
And those who took to the military life would provide an instant source of recruits for our undermanned Defence Force, which is always desperate for more troops.
As for parole, the real problem is not with parole itself, but with the people who decide who should and should not get it.
Civilians - principal among them psychiatrists and psychologists - should be removed from the parole system altogether. By all means have a senior judge as chairman, but the rest of the team should consist of such pragmatists as prison officers, policemen and military officers, who are immune to the sob story and can see through a contrived repentance instantly.
Women should play no part in the parole process for males; and men no part in the parole process for women. Under the strict and spartan regime that prison life would become, parole would have to be earned.
There are, of course, some criminals who should never be paroled - psychopaths on whom even the most concentrated rehabilitative measures will have not the least effect. For them a life sentence should mean a life sentence - with no parole.
National's parole policy, therefore, has much to commend it. Even the most hardened recidivist might be stopped in his tracks if he knows that a life sentence means just that - the rest of his life.
