On Thursday the 30th Aug morning we spent time with Dr. Kim Workman, the “godfather” of criminal justice reform in NZ. He is a really amazing man. Some points from his interview:
In a typical law and order debate, political parties increasingly promote policies which appeal to our ‘gut instincts’ i.e. they feel and sound right, but may not be supported by evidence. Since 1987 New Zealand general elections have relied increasingly on law and order policies which attract that kind of reasoning. One has to ask whether those political messages are evidence-based, and whether they will reduce crime.
A “tough on crime’ war developed, with the two main political parties outbidding one another in a public muscle-flexing exercise, aimed at attracting the support of the general public.
The pressure on the judiciary continued after the introduction of the Sentencing Act 2002. Dr Don Brash promised even more when launching National’s law and order policies in 2004:
“I don’t intend to recite a lot of statistics to make my case. We all know that New Zealand has a terrible record. It is in front of us each day . . . Every day the media carry stories of horrendous crimes”.
Interviewing Kim Workman at the Just Speak office.
In this instance, penal policy was announced without any reference to fundamental statistical data; including a proposal to abolish parole; a proposal that was estimated to increase the prison population by about 50 per cent.
What was public opinion at the time? After Dr Brash’s law and order speech, delivered at a Sensible Sentencing Trust conference, a TV1 opinion poll showed that respondents favoured parole with safe guards, rather than the abolition of parole. In an opinion poll conducted for TV3’s Campbell Live, 56 per cent favoured community punishments rather than spending more money on prisons.
Research at that time consistently showed that the general public overestimated their own risk from crime; overestimated the proportion of crime involving violence; overestimated the risk of reoffending; and underestimated the severity of sentences. On the other hand, they did not think sentences were too lenient once acquainted with the facts. Media coverage did nothing to address this. Indeed, the media was a primary source of public misinformation.
The ACT party recommended that New Zealand follow the policy examples of the United States; where imprisonment rates increased 700 per cent from 110 per 100,000 of population in 1975 to 764 in 2011. That view subsequently found its expression in the promotion by ACT of New Zealand’s own “three strikes” legislation; the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act 2010. All this attention to ‘tough on crime’ legislation, and the Bail Amendment Act 2013, has driven the prison rate up, in the face of declining crime rate.
He also spoke about the disproportionate representation of Maori in prisons
Hon. Chester Burrows at the Ministry of Justice
On Thursday afternoon we interviewed the Hon.Chester Burrows – the newly appointed Chair for the advisory committee on criminal justice reform. He is a former police officer, lawyer and as a National Party MP, held portfolios as the Minister for Courts, Associate Minister of Justice and Associate Minister of Social Development which he said were all issues he “believed in”.
He said the country needed to be smart, not tough on crime but for that to happen the politics needed to be taken out of the debate.
- “I think a big chunk of the public would consider themselves to be tough on crime and the big challenge is to put some information in front of them and get them to think about the issues,” he said.
- “What we’ve had in the past is we’ve had evidence based suggestions and they’ve run up against emotive responses and it’s very difficult to have a conversation like that.”
He said a lot was working well in justice but a lot of it was “inefficient and not particularly safe”, and that “Not many people in the New Zealand public actually have confidence that the justice system is working.”
“The political challenge is to confront the crude rhetoric of tough-on-crime/soft-on-crime and say, ‘Ah-ah, I ain’t buying into that, I’m about what’s effective.’ Because what’s effective keeps people safe.”
He has blamed political parties’ self-interest in staying in power for the lack of progress in law and order reform. As examples you have stated:
An example was the three strikes law introduced by National and ACT under the previous government, which you said National never supported but was introduced to appease their confidence and supply partner.
- “Three strikes was never part of National’s plan, it came up as a political move because they needed a confidence and supply partner and that was it. I never liked it, I sent that back.
- “Unfortunately it was a party vote and you fall under the whip on those occasions and that’s what happened.”
“Most politicians know that restorative justice is the key to reducing crime, but are happy to talk tough on sentencing because it gets them votes.
- “The fact is law and order is one of the big four people vote on alongside health, education and the economy. So what you find is someone who wants to stay in power or someone who wants to get into power… will run over and push that button.”
- And it’s politics he fears will get in the way of real reform.
Speaking to the new advisory group – “The thing that could kill it is the politics around it. It is thankfully about putting up evidence-based solutions. Now if the politicians want to kill it with rhetoric, over to them. But let’s shift the blame to them.”
Many of those are young people who have their lives ahead of them, but the system is letting them down. He expressed the view that many young people who fall into a life of crime are just as much victims as those they offend against.
- “You send them to a criminal university and give them a gang affiliation,” he says, adding that it’s even worse for those who are remanded in custody before they get to face a judge.
- “When they finally get to court they are then released on time served, so they go out with no rehabilitation, no therapy, no one watching them, not on parole – just pissed off and poor, and they’re going to commit more crime.”
“If you get to know these people, they’ve all been offended against. Why the hell do you think people offend in this abhorrent way? Because it’s a learned behaviour.”
- He got into trouble for saying a lot of the victims in the center of the criminal justice system are standing in the dock
- He acknowledges it’s an unexpected view to have as a former National Party MP. He says even as a cop, his views sometimes clashed with those of his peers.
- “They thought I was a bit of an oddball.” But the evidence doesn’t lie.
“Restorative justice works better than anything else, and yet if you promote it, you’re seen as being soft on crime.”
Prisons should be safe and effective; just like the rest of the justice system.
- There is little point in sending somebody to jail in desperate need of reform, rehabilitation, therapy and assistance, only to release them back on to the street with none of those interventions taking place.
- To phrase it another way, people must come out of prison in better shape than when they went in. If we have a prison population with high ratios of mental health diagnosis, illiteracy, substance dependence, and brain injury, and we hold them for a year or so and then release them with no intervention, that is not safe. Not safe for the offender, their victims or the public in which they live. If recidivism runs at about 60 per cent, that is not effective.
The ignorant like to describe prisons as holiday camps. Being locked up in a cell, probably with somebody to you don’t know, or hate, or are desperately afraid or of at least have zero feeling for, in a small space no bigger than most domestic bathrooms, is no holiday. The table you eat at or write at folds down over an open toilet where you cellmate had a crap 10 minutes ago. The hours spent in this cell may range from ten to twenty-three hours per day. Movement is severely limited as is the use of communications and reading and writing materials. Therapy and treatment are sporadic, and leisure-time is virtually nil. These critics must have some interesting holiday experiences.
Future prison populations will be radically reduced from where they are today, because social policy will deal with the obvious health, education, work and welfare disparities which are indicative if not determinative of future offending and incarceration. Sentences will probably be shorter because they will be resourced well enough to provide effective interventions that will dissuade and rehabilitate offenders sufficiently to live crime free post-release. Many sentences will be completed outside of prison in communities. Prisons will be much smaller and involve the public much more than presently, who will take some responsibility for effective reintegration on release. Prisoners will from custody to freedom by staged transitional accommodation, employment, supervision and mentoring.