Prisoner Aid criticises tougher penalty calls

A prisoner aid group has attacked the Sensible Sentencing Trust after its annual conference, saying the trust offers nothing more than a "moral workout" for the white middle-classes.

The national director of the Prisoner Aid and Rehabilitation Service, Lyanne Kerr said the Sensible Sentencing Trust was a select victims' club with policies which would do nothing to improve society.

Giving people longer, harsher sentences, and making parole and bail harder to get and keep resulted in more people in prisons, Mrs Kerr said.

Among other things, the trust has called for harsher sentences, no automatic parole, and supports proposals for a "three strikes" law.

The trust wanted the justice system's emphasis to be on victims, but often offenders were victims too, Mrs Kerr added.

"When they are 2 or 3, like James Whakaruru or Lillybing, we feel terrible if they are beaten to death, but when the kids that survive those beatings or the other hideous things that might happen to them, reach 17, we have no tolerance for them. We say, 'You're a little shit, off to jail you go."'

Saying things like "you do the crime, you do the time" was all well and good, but people did not realise the majority of people came out of prison.

"And they might live next door to you or me. So if you put them in cells and you treat them like animals, they're not going to be nice when they come out."

Mrs Kerr said the trust had gained so much popularity because it it was made up of white, middle-class people who said what people wanted to hear.

Trust spokesman Garth McVicar said he was used to such criticism, and welcomed the debate.

"It's the typical sort of knee-jerk reaction we expected from what we are proposing," he said.

"There are opponents everywhere people wanted to introduce these sorts of policies."

Mr McVicar said Mrs Kerr's comments were another example of an "excuse-driven mentality".

The argument that offenders were victims too was what got New Zealand into "this pickle" in the first place, he said.

"I don't really care if they had a bad background, or whatever. I feel sorry for them, but we can't rehabilitate some of them, people have got to accept that."

Mr McVicar said he had no problem with people like Prisoner Aid raising the issues as long as they were doing something to change the situation.

"What I do have a problem with is that they are so verbal and hateful of their criticism of us.

"I have a huge problem with that because all we are is a bunch of New Zealanders who are saying it's time we had a rethink about where we are going as a nation."

He accepted the policies the trust propounded would not change things instantly either.

"There's no magic pill to cure this thing ... we'll be part of the solution, the bigger part of the solution is for the country to have a debate around positive parenting, the role of mums and dads in this whole thing. I think that's a debate we are going to have to have. And we're quite happy to take the hiding that we get from people that oppose us because it has instigated a discussion that we always needed to have."

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES