When they first took over six years ago, Labour set a target of reducing the prison population by 30 percent in 15 years.
That target is now gone. Hipkins was asked about it today, and says there is no target for the next term.
This is massive, because Labour was celebrated for this. On November 29, 2018, there was a huge write up in the Guardian about how great Kelvin Davis was.
“The man on a mission to get New Zealand’s Māori out of prison”- said the headline
Labour's never backed down from this target, never admitted this was a mistake. As crime rose, as our concern over crime rose, as people with ankle bracelets on committed crimes- Labour stood by this.
And now they’ve backed down today. This is an admission that it was a bad idea, because of course it is.
How many crimes do we now have to point to where offenders have ankle bracelets on? They’ve already got in some sort of trouble, but they’re out in the community instead of in jail.
The young guy who shot up the construction site in Auckland earlier this year? He was at home with an ankle bracelet on, when he should’ve been in jail. His probation officer assessed that his risk of causing harm to other people because of the violent nature of his offending was high.
The guy arrested in connection with the shooting in the park across the road from a family home in Point England, Auckland? He had an ankle bracelet on.
The guy with Waikato tattooed across his face who police are currently chasing, who they say is too dangerous for any of us to go anywhere near- he is accused of murdering someone with a knife and he was out with an ankle bracelet on.
Labour can’t say that they’re dropping the target because job done- because it’s not.
At last count, prison population is only down 18 percent, that’s just over half of where they were aiming.
The only reason they’ve dropped this is because it’s a failure. It's made our country less safe, voters hate it, and they’re about to lose an election for doing things like this to New Zealand.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
4 comments:
What about the recent leaked internal police report advising about the 50 murderers that have been released that they don't know where they are.
This labour govt are so inept, divisive and destructive it's criminal how they have behaved imo.
In a perfect world, if I could change one thing, it would be that only labour voters were the victims of their policies, ie labour have let crime escalate out of control and the labour voters wanted this by voting them in, it should be them that suffer, not me, I never wanted this, yet it's often those that don't want this that end up being victims to stupid policies of stupid people who head up stupid parties (labour).
What total foolishness to try and cover up a bad situation and never consider the causes.
I am of course referring to the current ghastly socialist progressive education system we have, This is progressive education founded on the writings of Dewey and adopted by the NZ labour party,
Its tenets include allowing the child to determine what they learn and how they learn. Freedom is the catch cry and discipline, hard work, concentrating on the basics and most other traditional values and methods are scorned as repressive.
I am not suggesting education is the only cause but for me it is a major one and noticeable by its absence in discussions on the gang problem.
don't be disillusioned - they are admitting nothing!
in fact, they are claiming that the initiative was a success as they met their targets!
Kelvin Davis' Hokai Rangi program was designed to reduce Maori prison numbers to match the proportion of Maori in the population. Surely a better match would be to the proportion of crimes committed? The woke and/or racially self-serving academics and politicians claimed, on the basis of scant and poor 'research', that disproportionate Maori imprisonment was due to racism in the justice system, or that poverty and having ancestors that lost land to the evil colonists left Maori with no choice but to become offenders. Yeah right, they had no choice but to beat, maim or murder their partners, children and community members, to drink too much, to drive dangerously and so forth.
The studies on which these claims were largely based compared sentences handed down to Maori and non-Maori offenders for similar crimes and found that Maori were sentenced more harshly. However, the studies did not take into account ('control for') those offenders' previous offending! Of course someone who has a string of previous similar offences will be sentenced more harshly for the latest one than will someone without such offending history. The studies were simply measuring an indicator of Maori vs non-Maori reoffending history.
Hipkins has now abandoned yet another target that his government was never competent to achieve. But don't imagine that means his party would abandon the racist Hokai Rangi program that continues to punish Maori offenders by making them have a chat with some iwi members to help them understand how their offending was other people's fault. Hipkins' statement is as deliberately misleading as was his previous announcement that his regime was going to abandon 3 Waters. Everybody thought they would at least remove or dilute the racist provisions of the water management plan and he made no effort to correct this interpretation. Instead, the name of the plan was changed, it was expanded to include even more types of water management while racist provisions remained, and the legislation for it was passed late in their term, under urgency and largely under the radar. If Labour gets a chance to do so it will further entrench racism in our justice system as well as every other part of the state.
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