'Ineffective, expensive, inequitable' - expert on Nats' crime policy
'Ineffective, expensive, inequitable' - expert on Nats' crime policy
AUT law dean and parole board member Khylee Quince said National's announcement "is fear-mongering".
"AUT law dean and parole board member Khylee Quince said National was proposing 'retrograde' steps."
Conservatives always look back to a fictional past where everything was better.
This is no different.
But we should always strive to be better.
Is the current path we’re on resulting in a better outcome for society as a whole?
Without any changes do we see crime going down?
Read the article. Crime has been going down steadily for 20 years. The media's awfully good at stirring up fear by concentrating on specific subsections of crime that are rising amidst an overall downward trend. They've been doing this for decades, and a very large chunk of the population swallow that narrative hook, line and sinker. People will actually say things like "you can tell crime is increasing" without considering how they came to that conclusion, or that the evidence shows the opposite.
So that's the path we're on - one towards lower crime, and a better outcome for everyone. But no one is proposing that we do nothing to make things better still. It's just a case of where we put that attention. Don't we want to spend our money and effort on solutions that actually work?
There are experts who have done huge amounts of research into works and what doesn't, like the academic in that story. And yet you still find people who think they know better because "criminals can't commit crimes if they're in jail", as if that was something experts hadn't considered. I'm always surprised how many people think the first solution they can think of will be better than the findings of an expert after decades of research and consideration.
From the article:
She was on board with increasing access to rehabilitation, but stressed it doesn't need to happen in prison.
Studies have shown that jail time does not reduce a criminal’s future risk of crime and may slightly increase it. Meanwhile, rehabilitation inside or outside of prison has been shown to reduce the risk of future crime by 29 percent.
Crime rates in NZ have been steadily decreasing for years. It seems to me by increasing access to rehab we will continue to see better outcomes for society as a whole.
As the population goes up you should expect crime to go up in proportion. If the crime stays the same it's a win, if it goes up slower than the population growth it's a win.
In any case you can't just blindly change things and hope, all changes need to be carefully considered and studied. National isn't doing that. They are just doing the same shit hoping for a different outcome.