Tough-on-crime platforms are an easy way to shore up votes, but the evidence shows crime is actually decreasing. Photo / Hayden Woodward.
Tough-on-crime platforms are an easy way to shore up votes, but the evidence shows crime is actually decreasing. Photo / Hayden Woodward.
Opinion by Lin Mussell
Comment:
One of the hot topics of this general election is law and order, but are political parties getting this right?
Tough-on-crime platforms are an easy way to shore up votes, but the evidence shows crime is actually decreasing.
People Against Prisons Aotearoa’s Care Not Cages campaign callsfor a rethink on our approach to justice, embracing recommendations in the Turuki! Turuki! report.
Recorded crime levels are at their lowest level since the end of the 1970s, yet New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the OCED, around 220 per 100,000 people, compared to an OECD average of 147 per 100,000.
This costs Aotearoa $1.8 billion in prison-operating expenditures each year. In the past 30 years, the prison population has risen considerably.
The costs are not only financial. Research shows Māori, Pacific peoples and other racialised peoples are more likely to be charged, to suffer the use of force, face imprisonment and experience negative stereotyped coverage in media. We have known about this for decades, including through Moana Jackson’s seminal He Whaipaanga Hou report.
It is connected to colonial disruption and institutions more readily targeting people who are brown, poor and disabled (including mental disability and substance dependency).
Māori constitute 17 per cent of the general population and are hyper-represented at every stage of the criminal justice system, particularly in prison, comprising 52.8 per cent of prisoners.
The media focuses on sensational cases. Ram raids, gang and interpersonal violence are happening, but tough-on-crime agendas will not stop this.
Tough-on-crime policies such as Three Strikes sentencing, dawn raids against Pacific peoples and zero tolerance and broken-windows policing have all been shown as policy failures.
Some of these ideas are transplanted from other places, particularly the United States, despite the lack of evidence to support them.
Political parties promise harsh punishments during election cycles, regardless of their ability to reduce crime. This is called penal populism, when politicians stir up and capitalise on concerns about crime to serve their own ends.
High imprisonment rates can be attributed to the introduction of various tough-on-crime policies, which have been heavily influenced by penal populism.
Imprisonment does not stop crime from happening, but it does cause harm: to young people, people with mental illness and tamariki and whānau left on the outside – not to mention everyone who feels unsafe under the current system.
This contributes to ongoing intergenerational disadvantage and harm.
Opposition leader Chris Luxon says National seeks to increase imprisonment numbers and prison sentences, and create more youth prisons. Photo / Mark Mitchell.
Tough-on-crime promises this election mostly involve rehashing failed policies of the past or from overseas.
Act is focused on reinstating Three Strikes sentencing and building more prison beds (increasing the capacity to imprison more people).
National also seeks to increase imprisonment numbers and prison sentences, and create more youth prisons.
Labour promises to work harder and smarter to keep communities safe, yet also views this as focusing on policing and rebuilding prison spaces.
The Greens and the Māori Party call for restorative and tikanga Māori-led justice.
The pathway forward is clear.
The Turuki! Turuki! report was written by Te Uepū Hāpai i Te Ora — the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group, comprised of people with practical working experience of the realities of the criminal justice system.
It makes 12 recommendations to transform the justice system into one that is community-led.
The 12 recommendations will help address the social causes of harm, healing those who have been harmed, and are grounded in principles and processes of restorative and transformative justice, consistent with the principles of Te Tiriti O Waitangi.
The current corrections-led approach, including the Corrections Department’s Hōkai Rangi strategy, has not done enough and been largely ineffective and alien to Māori thinking.
We cannot continue with the same approaches and expect different outcomes.
Political parties need to do better, and voters can demand fundamental change reflecting Turuki! Turuki! to prevent harm, address its causes and promote healing, restoration, and transformation.
Lin Mussell is a political science and international relations lecturer at the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha.
