Bert Schoneveld

THERE was a report on Radio New Zealand that our coalition Government is planning to increase the prison population by 2000 in the foreseeable future.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, in an interview, argued that increasing the prison population, in conjunction with tougher penalties handed out by the judiciary, would reduce crime in our nation

I wonder if it ever occurred to our in-power parliamentarians that prisons are the ideal hot-houses for teaching and enabling criminal behaviour.

Creating another prison is tantamount to building a university devoted to fostering criminal behaviour.

Also, if there are going to be 2000 more prisoners in our jails, there will be a need to train more suitable wardens. Where are these going to come from? And what money has been set aside in the budget for this? Or is there a plan to alleviate the cost by using public-private partnerships to share the costs and the responsibility.

Have the advocates of punitive justice run out of options in their efforts to reduce criminal behaviour?

An alternative avenue to the punitive justice system is restorative justice. There are organisations in our communities that are experienced exponents of this approach.

Finally, if the wealthy continue to screw down the poor, crime will rise. It will be like replaying the terrible conditions of the poor in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries during the Industrial Revolution, and the subsequent export of thousands of convicts to Australia.

We have nowhere to send our convicts to, so let’s send them to prison.

The only difference is that ours is not an Industrial Revolution but digital-technological one.