We all want to cut prison numbers – but at what cost?
The impressive Justice Minister Andrew Little wants to reform the corrections and justice system.
One of his goals is to reduce the prison population and especially reduce the number of Ma¯ ori men behind bars. He wants to change bail laws and get rid of the three strikes law.
Most reasonable people would agree with Little that the present system is an abject failure at rehabilitating offenders.
Recidivism rates are very high, especially among young Ma¯ ori, although it would be wrong to think the Corrections Department doesn’t try, at times very hard, to change this.
Using prison as punishment does not in general produce a chastened offender or a productive member of society, or even a person deterred from offending again.
But jail does achieve the goal of punishment, for most inmates anyway, and it also does a good job of shutting off offenders from the rest of the community.
In these ways prison actually works very well.
Essentially, prison is a holding pen for screw-ups who have to be treated like dangerous and unruly children because they can’t follow rules.
That in itself should make inmates so ashamed and humiliated they don’t offend again but clearly it doesn’t do the trick.
The debate about whether the Government should be building bigger prisons such as Waikato’s Waikeria jail has mainly been around prisons being breeding grounds for more hardened criminals.
Enlightened reformers and the public will probably agree about prison’s failure at rehabilitation but they part company in one crucial area.
Reformers seem to be prepared to accept the collateral damage that a more lenient, less incarcerationfocused approach to offending will cause, in the hope that the approach causes less collateral damage down the track.
Ordinary people are less accepting of the risks and usually just need one offender to commit a brutal crime while on bail or parole to be even more adamant in their views. This is why a party like NZ First will always back the less enlightened but more risky approach.
Take the case of 32-year-old Taga David Keepa Adams, father of two children, who came up for sentencing in the High Court at Auckland last week.
Adams was adopted and his childhood was all about violence, alcohol and drug abuse.
His first taste of incarceration was as a 14-year-old, and he went on to collect a record containing many violent offences, including a stabbing. In 2011 he was sentenced to just over seven years’ jail for a home invasion in which he assaulted two women.
In February last year, when he was on parole for the home invasion, he saw a woman out walking, drove ahead and then lay in wait to ambush her. He grabbed her in a head lock and choked her so she was unable to scream.
Dragging her to the car, he shoved her head-first into the passenger foot-well, and in response to her screams, pushed his fingers into her eyes, causing her so much pain that she stopped screaming. He drove away, using his free hand to indecently assault her. ‘‘Please don’t kill me,’’ she said.
Later, Adams told police he intended to rape his victim. He didn’t get the chance. The woman opened the passenger door and rolled herself out of the moving car, incurring serious injuries.
In her victim impact report she told the court she continued to feel small, fearful and ‘‘insignificant in her own life’’. She said she was ‘‘tired’’ of feeling that way.
The court jailed Adams for six years and five months, of which he must serve 60 per cent before he is eligible for parole. He was given his first strike warning.
It will be said that if Adams had been handled in a different way from the time he began offending, things might have ended differently.
And maybe the mistakes of the past can eventually be corrected with a completely different approach to offenders and much earlier intervention.
But until Little or his successors can turn the ship around with prison reforms and social changes, New Zealand will need more prison beds.
Every time someone like Adams commits one of these random, cruel crimes, he makes the argument for prison and justice reform more urgent and yet more difficult.
There are many worse crimes than Adams’ latest effort. I hope he gets treated humanely in prison and he gets the help he needs.
But I care far more about his victim and other potential victims like her. I can’t help thinking of my daughter as I look at these crimes.
So I’m just glad Adams is locked up where he can’t do any harm for awhile. I believe he should have got longer. And if that costs, so be it.
If it means more prison beds, that is the price I’m prepared to pay. A government’s first priority must be to keep people safe.