National's crime policy

do you think National's "tougher" stance on crime will result in any significant change to crime stats and make New Zealand a safer place to live?

or do you think it will simply give emotional satisfaction to parts of the population knowing that some baddies are being dealt with more "toughly?"

The crime policy wont make much difference at all.

The cutback in social services will, for the worse.

Exactly. so why bother with it? why do people fall for this empty promise/ "solution"?

some people are stupid and think that getting tough is the answer to everything

er didn't violent crime increase under LABOUR?

Human nature, lack of understanding, popularism.

Nope.

And yup, this is the worst form of ambulance at the bottom of the cliff popularity. Fuck, it's not even an ambulance, it's a 94 Nissan Primera...

And what are they going to say to the victims of rape, assault and murder? "Sure, sure, sorry about you getting raped but it's OK cause we've put the guy in prison..."

http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/portfolios/justice/2008/mar/05/violent_crime

yadda yadda yadda yadda

rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

A sense of justice is an important function of the justice system so i dont see it as a waste.

Hey its better that they make the right noises and apply a minor adjustment than pretend it isnt an issue and get voted out in favour of someone who will do something really stupid.

I've had some farcical outcomes from court cases i've been involved in (directly or as a witness) so im inclined to say that there's some areas that need fixing up.

but their philosophy isn't about creating a more "just" system or a "fairer" system.

only "stricter."

Well if you start with the premise that it isnt tough enough then of course any 'improvement' is going to be 'stricter'.

They didnt claim that the system was too tough and they were going to make it easier for crims.

Overall i agree as long as some intelligence is applied (i havent seen details yet).

LOL... being harsher on crime doesn't necessarily REDUCE the number of criminals, but it makes reoffending LESS frequent (because they're still in prison!)

If you ask me, a large part of crime is because of the difficulty criminals have in getting work, also there is a pathetic "look out for your bro" mentality which often means that if your friend starts a fight you'll help him wallop some poor guy who walked passed you. There also seems to be no dishonour in using deadly weapons vs the unarmed...

by "overall I agree" I assume you think that punishments in NZ are too "soft" and need to be "toughened." is that in just one area or across the board?

like you I do hope some intelligence will be applied. I am very intrigued by Act's proposed "three strikes" law. not because I think it's a good idea! simply I would like some more detail eg three violent offences means what exactly? any sort of violence including minor assault? I presume not.

yeh just like in the USA! look how offending and reoffending across the board has been reduced over there thru longer sentences, "three strikes" policies, and the death penalty!

no...that's what Labour used to say to rape victims.

what National will say to the victim is "sorry about you getting raped and it's NOT ok, that's why we're going to put him away for a lot longer than the last government did....because we value your rights and dignity more than Labour did"

yes it is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff....but as people have said in previous threads punishment and rehabilitation are two different things.

The rape victim doesn't give a shit if the rapist is rehabilitated into a youthworker who helps wayward kids get their life back on track.....her number one priority is to have her dignity restored, and rightly so.

lots of rape offenders get put away for 8 years approx, sometimes longer. so rape is already dealt with VERY harshly.

so lets say National increases that sentence to 10 or maybe 12 years?

does that restore more dignity to the victim by tweaking the sentence up a but further?

I think they're specifically targeting violent offenders which i support. My understanding was that if someone is convicted of serious violent offending 3 times then they get a much longer sentence through removing parole.

I support the gist of this - why give parole to people who reoffend at a serious level? The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour and as pointed out in the torture thread people will say anything to avoid further punishment. So putting people away for longer means less opportunity to commit further crimes, more safety for people and a greater sense of justice, especially for the victims.

I am not a supporter for extreme sentences for a very similar reason. If the punishment is so severe then the crim is likely to do anything to avoid jail, including killing witnesses rather than just the original crime.

you tell me. if a guy walks up to you outside a club and hits you in the face because you made eye contact with him, you're saying that regardless of whether he is locked up for 3 months or 2 years would do nothing for your faith in the system? You wouldn't feel just a little bit better knowing that he'll suffer for just a little bit longer under National?

I suppose it's completely unfair to ask you that because your PART of the system.....but for the average NZer I'd say, the answer is yes they would feel better.

yes that was my understanding too - that would at least make sense

I'm picking they will specify which Crimes Act offences will qualify as specified offences for the purposes of three strikes

I suspect injuring with intent, assault intent to injure, GBH offences. murder obviously!

I hope they don't include common assault under s 196. will be very interesting to see if they include MAF.

the legislature does have to be careful otherwise a three strikes law could bring some distortions into the system eg defence lawyers encouraging every defendant to go to trial regardless. causing further delays and expenses in the justice system. etc.

National's tougher stance is towards hardcore recidivist offenders who, let's be realistic, there is very little chance of rehabilitating so let's keep them off the streets.

I would be happy that I could get some reparation money out of him probably. and that he get punished by the system in some way but that may not include prison. I might feel better if I get a genuine apology or sense of remorse out of him actually.

If he was sent to prison I would think the reality of going to prison would be a punishment in itself rather than the length necessarily. (especially if he had never been imprisoned before)

you know there are other ways of achieving justice in cases now apart from just throwing everyone in prison.

I would like to see a retroactive law that anyone with more than say 50 significant offences gets a long term supervision program.

It defies belief that there's people out there with more than 100 convictions - the person who killed his partners daughter a could of years ago had 119 previous convictions.

Again there are notable extreme cases - i would like to see a concerted effort to limit the number of people who get the opportunity to accumulate that number of offences even if its only 100, 50 or even 10 people.

the 3 strikes thing by the way is an ACT policy initiative that National has agreed to support

I remember reading that it is only applicable to the worst of violent offending

I have major problems giving any kind of reparation to victims for anything other than direct loss or replacement (counselling, medical and worker assistance is fine to a degree though)

well let's see where they draw the line exactly

Labour brought in a range of new sentencing options including intensive supervision, which can be useful for certain types of offenders

my concern is that all these will be scrapped by the new government before we get to see how they are working

here's a copy of act's and national's confidence and supply agreement

look under Law and Order

http://www.act.org.nz/files/agreement.pdf

you're absolutely right. what you said was ridiculously idealistic and hardly achievable, but still right.

the reason people will turn to crime is because they don't feel they have much to lose and that they actually have something to gain by committing the crime. do you think someone who goes around beating people up will likely have a few thousand sitting in the bank so that he can pay your medical bills and a few grand more to pay you for emotional distress with? Unless you're talking about a gang member or drug dealer, the answer is invariably no.

and the apology thing, I suppose only you can decide if his apology sounds real enough to be genuine, so I can't really comment on that......

under the "First Actions" section there's about two ideas that MIGHT work - the rest are crap

why is that so ridiculous?

where did I say that I require thousands of dollars from the person?

did you know that some victims meet offenders in the context of restorative justice meetings and achieve very successful outcomes?

I should also add that having a conviction for a violent offence is a punishment in itself - the conviction stays with the person FOREVER

And once you have that conviction a second isn't really a big deal - it becomes harder to find work, etc which predisposes you to more crime...

Also regarding ACT - they want to make it much 'easier' to defend yourself/property etc, so 'petty assault' certainly isn't under it.

hardcore crims wear that as a badge of honour

a minority of people who commit assaults overall

the very same minority targeted by the 3 strikes policy

yes

so in answer to your op

yes and yes

exactly - not many people seem to recognise this point

this usually comes after many offences and rehabilitative attempts and interventions by the relevant agencies

once on the slippery slope the crim can accept to reap the consequences of his actions if he persists with his ant-social endeavours

expect to reap..

For sure. I'd like someone to reconcile though, the cutting of social services argument. The past decade has seen a massive increase in social services - yet crime violent has risen faster (per-capita) and particularly so in the areas and groups which have the most social services available to them.

Turning around and arguing that cutting social services will increase crime isn't backed up by the past decade of results.

R

what, you'd be happy if the offender just took you out for a couple of beers, perhaps if he gave you and your missus a dinner voucher at a nice restaurant??? seriously....

and yes I'm well aware of the schemes you're talking about, and that's all good, but only if the VICTIM is happy to use these measures. The justice system should be focussed on maintaining the victim's dignity and faith in the system.

why do you have to characterise what I am saying by way of extremes? first you mention thousands of dollars, then you mention a dinner voucher. neither of those extremes is appropriate or desired, it's just a cheap way for you to denounce your opponent's arguments. pathetic.

glad to hear you've heard of these schemes. and i agree that they are only appropriate when the victim is happy to participate. but you asked me what I would want out of the justice process hypothetically speaking - and I said I would be interested in talking part in such measures! especially so if this was a young guy, out on the turps, who was willing to front up to me, and apologise for his actions.

I suggest you read people's responses more carefully before engaging in your kneejerk reactions

I don't consider thousands of dollars as an extreme, quite reasonable actually.......

also, you do realise that most NZers don't express the same Jesus-like compassion towards criminals that you're favouring.....

It may have increased at an even greater rate without those services though.

Also the Labour government has engaged in numerous advertising campaigns and initiatives that encourage victims of violence especially that of the domestic kind to seek help and report the crime.

These sorts of things can have a drastic impact on statistics since a large percentage of violent crime typically goes unreported. A quick search suggests as much as 50%.

In fact improved social services will by nature increase the amount of reported violent crime since that is one of the goals.

One other thing that needs to be considered is that tougher penalties may in some cases encourage victims not to report a crime as victims are often close to their offenders and that can make doing the right thing difficult in some situations.

The head of the A&E at Middlemore said the worst violent crimes can't have increased because of increased reporting - as the people would have to have sought medical attention whether they wanted to report it or not. In that respect the serious injuries can't really be attributed to higher reporting. (unless there was previously a conspiracy to hide lots of people who died from stabbings/beatings)

If the worst violent bodily crimes are on the up - then the logic follows that either there is no link between poverty and these sorts of crime or that we're just getting more violent. Either way Labour hasn't addressed it adequately in basically a decade.

It is all very well for people to come out and say "oh, but longer prison sentences don't reduce crime" - but there was a clear and overwhelming mandate in an election referendum to deal to criminal with longer/tougher sentences (not necessarily at the expense of rehab efforts) which Labour ignored. (Not by itself) but to argue now that cutting any social services will increase crime is just one-eyed leftism which conveniently ignores the last decade.

Improving efficiency in government run organisations does not automatically mean a cut in services. Expecting a level of accountability from the public healtcare system to a level many administrators have clearly forgotten about in the last nine years is just good, practical sense - not being stingy and at the expense of care. It should be at the expense of dead wood and, by productivity indicators in some areas, there's plenty of it.

R

I'll explain it in simple words.

Douglas-Labour and National destroyed NZ's social democratic structure from the 1980s through the 1990s.

After a time, the legacy of that underinvestment in health, social welfare, and education came back to bite us, in the form of spikes in crime due to the "children of Ruth Richardson" reaching an age where they were capable of beating innocents to a pulp.

Have you got the figures to prove "that underinvestment in health, social welfare, and education"?

Well they threw money into more administrators to meet the extra regulations they made so surely they achieved something?

A merry go round?

Homicides went down under labour, serious assault went down, burglaries went down - i.e all the highly-reported crimes went down. The total increase in violent crime reporting was ALL from domestic violence - the very thing that had such a high profile campaign to stop.

I wonder if the head of A&E has ever considered that injured people don't always go to A&E - or wtf do they know about crime rates

Homicides are down.. oh, that's just underreporting of crime

Actually aggravated assault & burglary are miles up in the lowest socio-economic regions. Manukau etc. Nationwide they may be down but, as I said, the areas with the biggest avenue and highest uptake of added social services have shown the highest increases in crime. So, does adding more and more social services (as some suggest) mean it'll get lower or are they less related then people thinkg and does it warrant a complete rethink (as a dismal failure of Labour policy making?)

R

for the sake of our sanity can we just blame labour and look forward to the vast improvement that national will bring about

Clearly someone in his position would be smart enough to factor in the injuries which demand medical attention, not the odd black eye.

(Hospital admissions by specific ailment are not published in detail for a very good reason - because they don't want the Herald saying "stab wounds are up 22% on last year" etc.)

R

Yes. We've got lots of time to pick holes in National or demonstrate how Rodney has his hands in the pie.

R

Not only did you completely miss the point, you in fact got it the EXACT opposite way around! Gold star

I was being ironic. (I'll explain for you in-case it's not obvious: if people claim crime rise is due to higher reporting, then the joke about it would be what?.. that decreased crime is due to decreased reporting - which would be sort of difficult in the case of homicide)

R

Interestingly, the type of crime most likely to be affected by reporting bias.

That is interesting. Shouldn't the knowledge that you're more likely to get reported now be an extra deterrent?... Or is there a lag of a couple of years? Or is domestic violence at a static, in-built level which can't really be altered?

R

Ha, so I missed the point. Happens a bit...

It's good to see that largely uninformed popular opinion still influences criminal justice policy.

I know that whenever I beat my wife in a blind rage, the thought of any possible consequences is certainly high in my mind.

Murder rate decreased under GB junior ...

not in iraq, afganistan, somalia etc

It's called democracy, what the majority say goes. If you want to change the majority's opinion then you should run workshops on "why current justice systems don't work and how to improve them". Once the majority agree with what your workshop says THEN you will have the majority vote and things will go the way you want them to.

But to turn around and impose laws against the majority's wishes when you are in the minority won't really work.

legal elites only think they know better

Presumably this vigorous defence of the lynch mob extends to Klan hangin' a nigger as well?

I wonder if that will lead to a rise in reported crime

another bloody prison... I wonder if it'll be a privately run/owned one

I would have thought that the economy was far more important right now than changing a few words in legislation enacted by the previous govt

obviously I am mistaken

there's lies, damned lies ... and then there's crime stats

Incorporation of uninformed popular opinion into criminal justice policy is not excused by democracy.

is not excused by democracy.

Ahem, there should be only one 'is not excused by democracy' in that post

So what about civil rights? The southern states of US would still be segregated if it had been purely democratic as the majority of southerners were in favour of segregation. I imagine things like civil unions would be touch and go if it was down to the majority. California, a supposedily liberal state, voted to outlaw same sex marriages in the last presidential election.

I've said this before in relation to plenty of laws / bylaws that were introduced during Labour's time.

to change a law because the people's views have changed, that's a good thing.

but to change a law IN ORDER to change people's views, that's wrong. It is no different to a dictatorship, where the government's definition of right and wrong overrides the wishes of the people.

me and you sitting here talking about all people being created equal is all good, but if we're in a country where the majority hates blacks or gays, then it is stupid of us to think that a simple law change will make life easier for blacks or gays. If the majority don't like it, they will find a way around it.