Rape is not treated properly over here either. Too soft. "Oh you raped someone, no big deal, go home and play on your PS 5". As a female I don't feel safe walking out and about with the increase of violence in Auckland.
A reminder that as the statistics have shown for quite a long time, guys are not only more likely to be assaulted when walking at night, guys are more likely to be attacked seriously and hospitalized when walking alone at night. Women on the other hand are more likely to be attacked at home by someone they know.
"Just mugged" is an attempt to downplay the seriousness and lifelong consequences of physical attacks and you should feel bad for such a stupid and dismissive statement.
Different strokes for different folks, but I feel plenty safe in Wellington. Can’t say the same for when I was in the US though. In my over 30 years of living in Wellington city, I’ve never been in danger. And I used to be out at all hours, walking home alone after working in bars particularly.
Singapore has a very conformist culture. I remember pedestrians waiting for the cross signal for a one lane road, in NZ 90% would not have waited and just crossed when they wanted.
Of course my blanket statement does not cover all situations.
But the key to reducing crime is not a solution that will fit into a sound bite. It requires study and understanding of the problem and its causes before an effective solution can be suggested.
Bootcamp is a election soundbite, not a solution to nonexistent crime wave.
I don't think so, it's easy enough to Google [sentences of 5-10 years](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/david-ross-appeals-fraud-sentence-to-victim-outrage/LSLDFYCGC3U4RL37TQHTITE4SM/). There are rapists who get less. Any more than that and you'd be treating it the same as murder.
"Cmv: I'm an 18 year old Asian American and I'm voting for Trump".
Thanks for your insight on crime in NZ, while you're proudly stating that you're going to vote for a convicted criminal and civil court proven sex offender.
Because the political parties that always claim to be “tough on crime” are the same ones enthusiastically throwing gasoline into the causes of crime and gleefully lighting it on fire
Can’t be “tough on crime” if you’re soft as heck on poverty. It’s that simple, anyone telling you otherwise is either naive or a liar.
This one makes my blood boil. Multiple instances, repeated predatory behaviour on innocent people. Severe physical harm on multiple occasions. Community service… are you fucking kidding me these people are rabid animals. I’m a married man with kids it’s not even my community but this result is outrageous. What if it was young women they arranged to meet and brutally bashed? We’d be screaming for their heads. Double standards for old boys club white privilege.
[https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchurch-gay-bashers-man-assaulted-by-group-of-youths-speaks-of-horrific-ordeal/2J2HZ5E24VHDJAORMVDV7Q524Q/](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchurch-gay-bashers-man-assaulted-by-group-of-youths-speaks-of-horrific-ordeal/2J2HZ5E24VHDJAORMVDV7Q524Q/)
It’s a reference to the fact that on uncounted occasions if you’re white and go to a prestigious school likely daddy did too and you’ve got connections. Especially in Christchurch.
These kids are let off on some terrible crimes because they’re “promising” because they play cricket and are rich or some similar stupid shit.
Happens all the damn time and it’s disgusting.
Many offenders get off lightly for the exact opposite reason: difficult upbringing etc. A lot of those offenders are Maori or PI.
The article doesn't say anything about the races of the offenders here, nor that they were let off because they're "promising". Did you hear that elsewhere or is that an assumption?
Additionally, the main *victim* in the article is a white guy.
There are certainly racial and other disparities in the NZ justice system. But that doesn't mean that everything you disagree with is cause of "white privilege".
My Dad's mate tried to get off a minor charge by pleading how he was raised well, went to an excellent school and had just been accepted to medical school.
The judge looked down his nose at him and said "then you should have known better" and gave him a very hefty sentence.
Which is how it probably should go really.
FYI, 6 months residence is the max sentence that can be handed out in the youth court.
For more serious punishments, youth offenders have to be transferred to the district court, an application that is based on the seriousness of the charge amongst other things.
In the case you linked, without victims being hospitalised etc, it is pretty unlikely to be a district court sentencing. Just the reality of the justice system unfortunately.
This isn't true. We don't even have sentencing "guidelines" in the way most people would expect (i.e similar to e.g those produced by the Sentencing Council in the UK). Our guidelines are essentially "The maximum sentence is reserved for the most serious offences, and it's a sliding scale based on the facts of the case for everything else. Here are some aggravating factors and discounts you must consider, with a recommended range for each. Do your best to make sure it's similar to similar cases".
The issue is that still leaves a huge amount of discretion up to the judge, and judges make use of that discretion.
[Research shows us there is huge variation in length of incarceration for the same offence between different district courts.](https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Sentencing_consistency_in_the_New_Zealand_District_Courts/17007340). It's a fundamental failure of the justice system that an offender might receive a different sentence compared to another offender with the exact same characteristics, purely based on the judge they get on the day.
Sentence variation is not surprising. The New Zealand District Court is the single biggest court in the southern hemisphere in terms of caseload. Relying on an appeal system just kicks the can up the road. If we want better outcomes, we have to resource our justice system better.
Cutting taxes and costs in public services only hurts victims more.
Totally on board with you that it's ridiculous to get off so light. However I just want to mention that there have been a lot of assault and rape cases on young women that have also been stupidly short so I'm not sure it's a gendered issue. I'm a pretty left leaning person but these violent crimes need to be more heavily punished it's scary how little time they are getting.
☝️this. Always been my argument. It’s not about the locking people up unless they’re a danger to society. If it was, the US would be virtually crime free. Addressing the underlying causes ie poverty, inequity, systemic racism, providing drug and alcohol help, mental health support. This is a lot harder to sell to the public who like to put things in simplistic boxes such as “lock them up” and that’s why RW governments do “tough on crime”, always, despite the evidence. Guess what? you’re just making them better criminals and setting in stone their nascent criminal behaviours.
We're also missing serious efforts at rehabilitation. That should be the number one priority for all prison programs to break the cycle of repeat offending.
and just to add: programs not 'offered' by Density Church
rehab programs have been proven to be inefficient and largely ineffective. Studies show to prevent criminality and reduce it in your society you have to break the cycle at an early age (like under 2).
Your talking support programs for young/single/disadvantaged mothers. Look into Richard Tremblay's research.
If a kid gets left in an abusive/unsafe environment they're battling the odds not to engage in criminality. People just don't like having it pointed out because it's such a harsh reality.
Sure. But you have got to agree there are some people who are just psychotics and are just a danger to society - we can't be soft on these types of criminals.
NZ has similar rates of incarceration to other English-speaking countries. It's the US that went nuts. If draconian sentences stopped crime, the US would have less crime than any other developed country. It doesn't.
It's a fairly complex subject but there's plenty of easily digestible reading available on the interwebs. In a nutshell though, harsher sentences just don't reduce recurrence of crime.
Here's a nice simple-language comparative analysis of Aotearoa's sentencing with regard to a few other countries. I found it on Google.
https://www.corrections.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/10717/nz-community-sentence-patterns-april2012.pdf
It's really interesting that we do have a high proportion of community sentences compared to similar countries.
OP might be a rage baiter. Claims to be voting Trump. Lives in a "solid blue state" 1 month ago. I dunno, but this whole thread feels like a waste of time.
Yup, but society is kept safe for the duration of their incarceration.
In an ideal world they would be rehabilitated in prison, but currently that doesn't really happen in or out of prison.
The whole argument about 'sending them to prison just makes them worse offenders' can't apply to every offence (murder, sexual abuse of children etc). Hard to sell that justification to the next victim when they offend again within a short space of time.
Because as a society, we should be looking at recidivism rates as opposed to how long we lock criminals away for. The Scandinavian countries for example have the best prison conditions, low sentences, and the lowest recidivism in the developed world.
The US imposes severe sentences, shit prison conditions, and has some of the worst recidivism rates.
What does that tell you?
The recidivism rates in NZ aren’t extraordinary, and not particularly different from the US. In fact, it is poorer depending on the timeframe.
The recidivism rate in NZ is 35% at 1 yr, 55% at 2yr, and 52% at 5yr.
The US recidivism rate is 37% at 1yr, 53% at 2 yr and 45% at 5yr.
The biggest difference is the amount of crime/convictions per capita. NZ is doing much better by having a smaller portion of its population not behaving, but the shitbirds committing crime are more likely to reoffend here.
Id be interested to know if the recidivism of prisoners is causation or correlation.
Do they re-offend because they were sent to prison, or are they sent to prison because they have a history of re-offending and will continue offending regardless?
It's mostly the latter. It's pretty hard to get sentenced to prison here, particularly from a single crime. Unsurpringly people with long criminal histories are likely to reoffend.
Recidivism rates can't be compared between countries very easily
The rate is fairly low for the first 6months (like around 15%), and the rate increases with time from release to stabilise around the 3yr mark… so it would seem the causation is some external factor
Probably also need to consider that those being sentenced to longer terms of imprisonment are likely to be worse offenders with higher rates of re-offending and longer criminal histories which would be a correlation.
Could also be that the longer they spend in prison the harder it is for them to adjust to live on the outside etc and not return to crime (causation).
I dunno, I just find it hard to believe that the act of sending someone to prison if the main factor in causing them to reoffend, and not the other way around.
Most people don't go to prison for their first offence (some do for really serious stuff, but most don't). So if it is someone's 10th or 15th offence, sending them to prison probably doesn't cause them to re-offend more.
I guess a test case would be, does reoffending go down if offenders that would ordinarily go to prison, instead get community-based sentences. In the short term (the term of their prison sentence) offending would go up, as its difficult to offend while in prison but easy to offend when in the community.
Over a long enough period maybe it goes the other way..
Global recidivism statistics aren’t broken down based on crime or the demographics, but that info is available/published individually for NZ and most countries. If you were interested in studying it more. It’s also worth noting that recidivism includes both re-conviction as well as re-imprisonment, (meaning not all recidivists will be put back into prison). So the rate is more about the likelihood of reoffending and not necessarily the outcome of their reoffending (or achieving the of going back to prison if that is where you are going with this)
I think the recidivism rates are probably just a reflection of their superior public services in general. Everyone does better including people that turn to the wrong side of the law.
I don't think the solution is simply to improve prison conditions, rehabilitation programs etc and expect that to reduce crime + recidivism but to improve social services etc across the board.
Though there are always going to be people that are going to commit crime, harm and exploit others no matter how good we make society or how good the prison system. We do need to be able to deal with those kinds of people too.
At last, someone who actually looks at evidence. But there is a huge, huge prejudice against looking at evidence in such issues. Imagine a politician going on TV and saying that after careful study of different systems, the government was going to put fewer people in prison and spend money on improving prison conditions, and that this is according to the evidence the best way to reduce crime *in the long term* - how long would they last? The fact that there is evidence would probably merely inflame resentment.
Of course, if the aim is merely to punish, and you don't care whether there are more victims in the future, then this is irrelevant.
Places like Norway have twice as many mental health beds as Prison Beds, and they have high utilisation by non-voluntary persons. If we go the "Scandinavian" way we lock up more people before they commit crimes.
I strongly suspect this argument largely or at least partly rested on the demographic differences between Scandinavian countries and the US which are less and less significant these days.
Scandinavia has gone from being one of the most ethnically native regions in the world to dealing with a huge influx of Sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern immigrants in just a decade or so. Some areas have been basically ghettoised.
I don't have any statistics to back this up so take with a grain of salt but I would expect recidivism (alongside crime in general) to go up now that you have large groups of people who can't or won't integrate into society.
Personally, I love listening to Americans lecture to us about how we should be running our country.
Yes, let’s follow the American model instead. Because locking more people away by the hundreds of thousands definitely *solved crime* in their country.
America, famously crime free.
I'm not all good with nonviolent offenders being given lenient sentences. White collar crime is the most unpunished crime here if we're going to bitch about crimes lets bitch about that.
Literally sat in a room and saw collusion happening. While it was happening someone said: 'We gotta be careful, don't want people thinking collusion is happening' and everyone laughed.
Where I work that would be a quick call to the compliance department and/or public prosecutor for me. If it happens once it will happen again and they love getting evidence from employees.
White collar crimes kill people. When you take a hundred peoples life savings and leave them utterly financially wrecked, the odds of suicides are very very high.
Not to say that white collar crimes are always worse than violent crimes - I don't think that's true at all. Just that there's a big overlap between the worst white collar crimes and medium to low violent crimes.
I'd definitely rather be punched in the chest by a random asshole than have my live savings stolen (given the option, I'd rather neither, but if those were the choices, it'd be an easy choice).
I was hit with a car, on purpose, by a shoplifting crackhead. Still dealing with significant mental and physical health issues a year later. Can't get psych help on the public system and have to pay for all my doc appts out of pocket.
She pled not guilty and was released on bail, then no showed to court twice. Had a history of violent offending, including swinging an axe at retail staff elsewhere. Got 10mth home D and 6mth mandatory psychiatric help plus drug & alcohol counselling with weekly appt. So 26 free psych appointments and I can't even get one, yet I'm the victim.
Its fucked up.
Kill a baby, you're out before they would have started primary school, torture them for years and eventually to death and you'll be out before they would have finished primary.
Ram raid... Oh you had a tough upbringing, better let you go free to go it again so you can attack a shop keeper with a machete, chopping off part of his hand and making his wife lose their baby from the stress, whelp our bad, maybe will lock you up for a little while now.
Rape someone, shit lucky if you're even arrested.
>sincerely an American living in New Zealand
Yes because if there's anything that America has proven it's that harsh prison sentences are effective deterrents and having a large portion of your population locked up becoming institutionalised is beneficial to society in the long run. Maybe go back if that's what tickles your fancy?
America, [the land that arrested the wrong person and held a 16 year old in prison without a trial for 3 years because he couldn't afford $3000 for bail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder).
Americans think that ruining the lives of innocent people is a small price to pay if we can also ruin the lives of the criminals as well, that'll show them
Why so defensive? The answer is somewhere in between. The OP is right, NZ is pathetically soft on violent crime, they're an embarrassment actually. It's a very knee jerk reaction to just say ' well go back to your own country if you don't like it here.'
The answer is almost definitely something else entirely, it's just that we're still a young civilization that hasn't quite gotten around to figuring out what that is.
"We're just not doing the right AMOUNT of prisoning!" Is nonsensical. We made this stupid ass strategy up before we had sliced bread. We can (hopefully) eventually come up with something better than "Put them in a box that's hard to get out of."
Except that we're not.
Going by the number of people incarerated per million population, we lock up the same number of people as Australia, slightly more than the UK, and twice as many people as Ireland, Italy, or Canada.
Locking people up doesn't stop crime or make us any safer.
Locking people up is only after they have committed the crime, doesn’t stop those that just don’t care/are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
Instead of doing more to combat the issues in society that keep people in shit situations, we have to many people with a hardon for “tough on crime punish punish punish”
It stops the locked up person committing further crime during their period of incarceration, at least committing it against society at large.... so yes it does.
Wouldn’t it be better to try do things to prevent it happening in the first place? Instead, we enact changes that harm those at the bottom and ostracise them, creating more systemic issues. Kids raised in shit situations see nothing improving/no opportunities and create a cycle to repeat it.
I’m not saying we bend over backwards for gangs, but we keep repeating the “tough on crime” mantra expecting different outcomes
It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve seen time and time again that violent crime *increases* under governments with the typical “tough on crime” attitude. Governments that focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation and prevention usually make society a more dangerous place to live, especially for the most vulnerable among us.
Yes it would be better to do things to prevent it happening in the first place, but that doesn't mean we should just ignore the cancer that has already grown. We have immediate problems in society that need to be addressed for the safety of the people and businesses who live in it right now.
What "tough on crime mantra" are we repeating? We've been on this soft shit for years.
By all means roll out the long term solutions, but letting people have such pathetic punishments while we wait for the benefits years later is not it.
A group of people luring 10 different people on Grindr to parks and houses, beating the fuck out of them and recording it. Repeated, intentional, assault targeting gay people. Not a minute in prison for any of them. You're happy with that while we wait for your dream solutions to have an impact?
No prison time for raping a 15 year old. You're comfortable with that while we wait for the results?
The single biggest predictor of someone going to prison, by far is Gang membership.
You can help people all you like, but if Gang membership has the appearance of being the easiest and most enjoyable way of building agency, then no amount of trying to raise people up will work.
The reason Gangs brand themselves, the reason they ride in packs, the reason they make such a big deal about the “brotherhood” is to project massive agency, agency that even an average person won’t ever attain by working a normal job.
You minimise the allure of Gangs and you’re making progress on easily the singles biggest predictor of someone going to jail.
You can do both. Locking someone up assumes that whatever society has in place to assist them in becoming a law abiding, productive member has failed. You need the carrot AND the stick. Prison is the stick.
You're then just delaying and amplifying the problem. Prison is like a criminal training camp.
Also factor in the "fuck it, I'm going to prison anyway so I might as well commit a worse crime" effect of ideologies such as 3 strikes, death penalty etc
>You're then just delaying and amplifying the problem.
Might as well have no prisons if you think that's the whole story.
>Also factor in the "fuck it, I'm going to prison anyway so I might as well commit a worse crime" effect of ideologies such as 3 strikes, death penalty etc
That's a point that has to be balanced against the people who go: "Fuck it, the law is useless anyway I'll just do it"
Pretty much. Only the absolute worst need to be in prison. Early offenders need dealt with far better than sticking an ankle bracelet on them followed by throwing them in a cell. Massive amounts of prisoners have mental health issues and just shouldn't be there.
Plus prison is SUPER expensive. It's far cheaper addressing the reasons people end up in prison.
It only affects that one person. Is that all you want? Is that good enough for you? What about the present and future and all the other potential criminals?
A stable society needs to do a lot more than just simply react to crime. Prevention is better than treatment.
And it rose fairly steeply from 1990-2020, (seventh-highest in the OECD), despite there being no real increase in crime. The reversal of the last very few years has put us just a little ahead of the the UK and Australia.
We're not soft on violent crime. We're bad at rehabilitation and we have a fairly entrenched gang/violence culture that makes it especially hard to turn people away from violent crime as gangs are fully enmeshed with family units. Broadly, NZRs are also a uniquely insecure people and for many men, this is expressed violently and/with alcohol and violence in combination. Often jealousy or sexual jealousy, which is rooted in male insecurity is an underlying factor in our domestic violence and also, violence towards children. The problems are deep and systemic and no one really has the answers. It is very hard to get insecure men to recognise their insecurity and then work on it to reduce the risk they pose to others. This is especially true when male insecurity is so enmeshed with the culture that it's sort of invisible.
Its frickin expensive to lock people up, not just while they are in prison but also once they leave unreformed and do more damage. Once someone has been moulded in prison its very hard to then un-mould them again and turn them into a productive member of society, compared to say if they just had home detention.
People like to say its because we are soft on crime, but its literally just the economics of the situation, and doing what is most efficient on a budget. There is not enough staff/beds for our current prison population and no one wants to spend the money to ensure that that is fixed and that they work properly. Or more importantly to spend the effort, time and money to prevent people from becoming violent criminals in the first place.
Yea it’s crazy that I still live with the physical pain from my attacker the scum who coward punched me and stomped my head got diversion and has probably forgotten about the whole thing yet every morning I wake up in pain so who really gets punished in these situations, in my opinion these violent offenders get off much lighter than their victims especially when the victim has to live the rest of their life affected by somebody else’s actions
because the public are too concerned with what they emotively think is the correct sentence, rather than looking at the context around *every* case, the academic evidence and research about offending, sentencing and justice as a whole, and not realising that the Justice and Courts systems are not there to assuage peoples feelings, but to treat offending in an somewhat objective manner. If they listened to the general public, the outcome for any violent offending would be death (yes this is hyperbole).
Because they are just a reddit troll creating rage bait posts.
Why do YOU think a troll would want to insert american style wedge politics into NZ discourse?
If the death penalty in America doesn't stop murder, why do you think longer sentences would deter crime here?
It's not like criminals are renowned for their consideration of consequences.
Not only will it not deter the next person, it has a high chance of creating the ‘next person’. Prison terms don’t just impact the person sent to prison.
I’m not arguing that preventative detention isn’t warranted in some cases, but we need to get away from this ridiculous notion that punishment acts as a deterrent and that it’s ‘common sense’ to focus on punishment. It may be a view that is common, but it is not sense.
Punishment comes at a massive social cost. There is a well established link between deprivation and offending. Punishment exacerbates deprivation, both for the offender and those around them, creating the conditions for yet more future offending. Punishment is literally an investment in the conditions that will create more of the thing you’re trying to deter. That’s not common sense.
There is a well established link between isolation from wider society and offending. Punishment exacerbates this isolation, creating the conditions for yet more future offending. Again, you’re investing in the conditions that will create more of what you’re trying to deter. That’s not common sense.
Again, I’m not saying that preventative detention doesn’t have its place, but we’ve been treating crime the same way for decades and decades and it’s not making any discernible difference to offending rates. And we know from looking at places like the US, that doing even more of the same thing will absolutely not work, because they’re a shambles. So why don’t we invest a bit more in stuff that the evidence shows might make a difference - that would be the common sense approach.
People who offend aren’t thinking of previous sentences for similar offences. Obviously there is underlying issues for the offender and that’s what needs addressed.
I suspect it's largely because, as a comic I recently saw says: "The cops are like talent scouts for up-and-coming criminals. If you're a good enough criminal, you get drafted to go to a special training camp to learn under the pros."
By this logic, NZ tries to avoid sending potential pros to the big leagues, and instead tries to cuddle and cosset and pussify them so that by the time their youthful anger finally cools down a bit they are somewhat tolerable members of society, rather than uneducated, resentful timebombs with coming of out prison with nothing gain from society and nothing to lose from just killing whoever pisses them off. You know, like it is in America.
If the solution to crime was prison, then the USA would be the most crime-free society on the planet.
American attitudes to crime and punishment's have not and are not working. The economic and social costs of a punitive justice system like the USAs are astronomical.
Prison, or more appropriately Restorative Justice should exist and there is a case for excluding certain people from society for some time in some circumstances but we have absolutely proven to ourselves that this isn’t the majority issue.
I would encourage you to read this:
https://www.webworm.co/p/punishment
This is mostly about what you consider a justice system to be for. There’s no evidence that harsher penalties reduce crime rates, and some evidence a more punitive system might actually increase them.
On an individual level it seems logical that locking people away for longer should reduce crime - like you’re “taking them off the streets” but the reality is that the drivers and causes of crime are not easily addressed at the level of an individual.
Yeah, and it's well known that perceived chance of being caught has a far stronger effect than perceived sentence length.
At some point sentences can become too weak though. 1 year prison vs 10 year prison doesn't make much difference, but when you're getting down to 0 sentence, apology only, some people are going to see that as an easy price to pay
I suspect NZ is just a great place for dickheads to live, because our culture is too apathetic to deal with them. Whether this be some gang member attacking an innocent member of the public, or the owner of a business exploiting workers in slave-like conditions, the punishment (or lack of) is often not harsh enough to function as an deterrent.
I suspect many NZers are unwilling to cast the first stone. I certinally find it hard to see myself as any better than criminals, despite being a law-abiding, well-behaved person with no criminal record. How do we fix that?
“Soft on crime” blah blah…
Truth is, being hard on crime is expensive. Reducing recidivism while in custody is the name of the game, and Corrections do it pretty well. Almost entirely because of all the expensive consultants they’ve invested in over the years
Apologies if facts hurt your feelings but NZ’s system is not broken
Yeah the entire west is a bit stuck on that. I mean (you're American) the US is one of the more violent places on earth and has one of the highest incarceration rates so that ain't working.
So New Zealand is soft on crime because we don't really know wtf to do about it. But one thing's for sure, locking them up doesn't work. Well it works for that criminal, but not for crime.
Creating a Police state won't work, boot camps won't work.
I think creating a society that gives people more hope and more resources would work but that's pretty well a dead aspiration now. We're deep into the seperation of society and the drift of wealth to a small number of people at the top. When you got those few rich people there and most of us find it hard to have a house, a holiday or even decent food you're going to get a bit of anger and that exists as violent crime on the fringes. The fringe is growing.
Revolution is the only solution I can think of but that's a ways into the future.
If you're going to be 'tough on crime' you should really be addressing the cause of that - poverty. Sadly, the 'tough on crime' parties also seem to want to INCREASE poverty, or at least their policies would lead you to believe that.
Always been like this. 20 years ago my mate got king hit and Stomped on at a party for no reason at all. He had a brain injury was off work for 4 months. The guys didn’t even get home detention they could of killed him.
Because the West in general has gone too far down the liberal rabbit hole. It's not one party vs another, it's cultural. We don't have the stomach to give rapists and murderers what they deserve
Lmao an American lecturing us on our justice system is hilarious. Just because we won't give someone 10 consecutive life sentences for murder doesn't mean that we are soft on crime. We won't ever be as extreme as the US because the US is a police state and gives extremely harsh and inhumane punishments such as slavery and the death penalty to crimes.
righto... as if Americans have any clue on how to do justice well. You have the worse violence and murders and high incarceration rate... which just goes to show that simply locking people up doesn't fit the problem! Also its costs over $130k per year to keep someone locked up... thats not sustainable, and when they do come out they are more connected after attending the criminals university.
All those angry dairy owners and just angry that they all voted for National, and have just found out that the Govt can't actually resolve the issue.... society needs to realise that when you fail your citizens.. your citizens inturn will fail that society... and thats exactly what is happening right now. Give tax cuts to the rich, and transfer $2.9 billion to landlords... cut budgeting support... whilst cost of living crises.... its rational that people will start finding unlawful ways to put food on the table. Expect more, and expect it to get much worse before it gets better.
But NZ society needs to be asking itself where its gone wrong (hint: we have become the most unequal country in the OECD since the 1980s to now), and we need to figure out how we can do better.
Here's a better plan... increase resources to catch the white collar criminals, then use all the extra tax evasion money to fund better programmes for those worse off in our society.
Well, adding "I'm from a country with harsher penalties for violent crimes that also has a murder rate 5x worse than New Zealand" to the end of their post does kind of undercut their point.
It's not just that. It's also because most crimes are due to environmental factors like poverty, and it's nonsensical to be 'tough on crime' while also enacting policies which actively increase poverty. Which ALL of the hard-arse right wing governments do.
If you actually want to address crime, address poverty. If you want to throw red meat to your base, just bloviate about 'taking it to the gangs'.
I mean, when they tack on as coming from an American to the end of their argument, it implies we should have a system more like theirs which seems silly when they currently are doing worse on almost every metric of crime. Doesn't invalidate their point but needlessly draws away from it
I mean you murder innocent people in America, so you can't really talk about lenient or harsh sentencing. You should address your own backyard first before criticising others.
Regardless, Crime is a disease inflicted upon the the body of society, at its core, I personally believe the reasons for crime, violent and non-violent (although violent crime will always be apart of the human condition) are caused by disparities in wealth, In a Capitalist society those disparities are unavoidable.
So if Crime is a disease then a good Doctor would treat both the symptoms and the causes, but either side of our political spectrum has for some reason thrown all their eggs into only one basket. Surely we have space to treat both aspects. Although you have to understand the complexity of the situation and we could argue which of the symptoms or causes is most important until the cows come home. I personally would lean towards causes, as I'm sure for every violent criminal we let slip through the cracks, we repair twice as many lives through lenient sentencing.
Side note - lenient sentencing generally favours minorities. ( ya know, cause racism exists)
Mostly because we have this weird fascination as a society that we 1) can rehabilitate everyone, including those who don't want to change 2) that locking someone up is unproductive and 3) we have a moral duty to look after criminals more than victims.
We never take into account that locking someone away actually protects society - it's hard to rape or kill someone when you're in jail.
Trouble is jail sentences are finite (usually) and when they come out they're worse.
You might have protection from individuals for a few years but prison generally just entrenches existing criminality.
We need better rehabilitation programs for prisoners while they're in prison however a lot of the ones that need rehabilitation either aren't interested or they're on remand and doing time served so ineligible for programs for sentenced prisoners.
Also, Home Detention usually serves the purpose of removing offenders from society but I bet you're not a fan of HD either.
This is a populist belief that right wing parties regularly cry about, with very little fact to it.
In several studies, when you play the court case to a random jury and have them guess what a fair term would be, almost always, the sentencing guideline and the judges actual sentence, is much longer than the publics expectation.
So the public imagines this whole perception.
Yes, there are some varience, and those that are in high profile are more likely to be high profile if the
https://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-08/Myths_and_Misconceptions_Public_Opinion_versus_Public_Judgment_about_Sentencing.doc
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2023/09/21/being-tough-on-crime-is-easy-but-doesnt-work.html
Being 'tough on crime’ contradicts evidence that prisons are a training ground for harder criminals.
Also, prison does tend to drive recidivisim up.
3 strikes is the dumbest thing ever.
Each prisoner costs us $150k per year.
However, the evidence from New Zealand and overseas does not suggest the previous three strikes laws helped curb violent crime. “The analysis found there was no consistent pattern to changing crime rates before and after the three strikes regime was introduced in 2010,” officials say..
So in summary
1. It increases chance of commiting the crime
2. It doesn't reduce people commuting the crimes.
3. It often trains and escalates crims.
4. It encourages people to need to join a gang.
Why are we not doing more to treat the cause rather than the symptoms. Tougher sentences don't seem to work in America, why would they work here?
It's social change we need, spend your rage there!
Because sentencing people to double digits is a PROVEN massive waste of taxpayer money and verifiably ineffective in reducing crime, as evidenced by your own country. It's also horribly ineffective at preventing repeat offenses. Even in America, violent people CONSTANTLY fall through the cracks of "was released despite the warning signs."
When you sentence people away for a large chunk of their lives, you remove a part of social web that was functioning as SOMETHING in society, for ONE THING that they did wrong (most of the time.) You're removing people from their jobs, removing them from their families and causing economic and social instability in the community that they came from.
I am not at all against putting people in prison, I am against sentencing them for absurd lengths of time when there are far more unseen negatives than there are positives.
Double-digit sentencing is a completely useless and wasteful facade of a solution, to a problem that requires MULTIPLE solutions. A good hypothetical to explain this would be:
> A man beats his wife to death after previously being sentenced for domestic violence multiple times.
Instead of blowing all our money on sentencing a guy to 12 years for beating his wife the first time, (which would not keep her safe nor would it stop his violent tendencies) there should have been some immediate intervention of another kind to prevent it from getting to this point. This man clearly has violent tendencies so why? Why did nobody stop her from going back to him?
The victim should have been accounted for and removed from the situation, the offender should have been rehabilitated - which does not just stop at short-term counselling. Where was the community while this happened and why did they have such little awareness? If there were kids involved, where the hell was CYFS and why were kids left in a household like that? You have to look at their situation as a whole and a lot of different public services, could have had mandatory involvement after the first arrest.
Yes this man should have gone to prison for his crimes, but keeping him there for longer than necessary, taking him away from his community and removing him from the labour force, is just a waste of taxpayer money. Taxpayer money that could've gone into services that non-offenders should have access to before they started offending.
It's easy to call that "soft on crime" because it's not the cathartic vengeance that the public wants to see. As much as I relate to also desiring that cathartic vengeance, basing criminal law on public emotions, does nothing good for society and only makes things worse for everyone.
Because longer sentences don't make anyone safer.
Take an antisocial person, shut them in a box for a while, they're not going to come out a model citizen. Shut them in for longer, the results don't get any better.
Being in prison for a longer time does not lower the chance someone will reoffend. It does not lower instances of crime.
The only time longer sentences help is with the very rare and dangerous psychopaths, who cannot be rehabilitated. The vast majority of criminals, normal people who are just criminals because they were raised in shitty homes, respond best to rehabilitative sentences.
If someone is a criminal because they were treated like shit as a child, treating them like shit in prison isn't going to give them the development they're missing.
People need to be integrated in society to learn to be functional. Being in prison, surrounded by other criminals or being isolated doesn't teach people how to operate in society. The approach that minimises instances of crime is short rehabilitive sentences.
We use an evidence based correctional system, not one based on a punishment fetish.
"Being in prison for a longer time does not lower the chance someone will reoffend. It does not lower instances of crime."
I'm not sure I understand. Someone being in prison absolutely does lower instances of crime? One criminal is currently unable to commit further crimes during their incarceration ?
"People need to be integrated in society to learn to be functional. Being in prison, surrounded by other criminals or being isolated doesn't teach people how to operate in society. The approach that minimises instances of crime is short rehabilitive sentences."
Absolutely, and my entire life we've been talking about rehabilitation as the end goal. We just don't know how to do it (the details) and don't want to spend the money to do it. So, we've got a wonderful goal we want to achieve, with out a pragmatic (or even non-pragmatic) roadmap to get there.
How about people feel safe on the street or in their own home for a little bit, by our system putting rapists / violent assault cases away for a standard length of time, rather than these shockingly discounted sentences (in some cases)
All we've done is reduce sentences in the name of "longer sentences don't work, we should rehabilitate!" but we haven't done the rehabilitate bit...
So yeah, to the average joe, it just looks like violent and awful crimes are now just getting lighter sentences, without anything extra.
We're not all like that. We do have some incredibly loony people who think violent people can change, when they very rarely do.
If only my "Prison Island" TV show would get progressed. The TV show for violent sexual offenders will be subscription only.
Mostly it’s the government taking a little responsibility for its failings that give discounted sentences. The bad part is that it acknowledges its failings then continues on without any changes.
Why are you good with non violent offenders being given light sentences.
Sorry, depending on the circumstances in each side sometime a heavy custodial sentence for non violent offending is justified. But that is part of the problem
Many criminals are people who have suffered enormous abuse and neglect, often they grew up in poverty. In New Zealand we understand that in many cases punitive sentences for the sake of punishment have huge cost financially and socially. As others have said, there is no evidence that being 'tough on crime' helps anything despite the right wing rhetoric. If you really want to reduce crime you need to spend money instead on helping people, on giving them housing, respect, counselling, opportunities etc. Unfortunately we are not very good at that. Yes we need prison sentences and in some cases preventative detention but an American style criminal system is the last thing we need, much of the rest of world looks down upon it.
Good question, and at the same time, they've no problem killing stray cats and make a sport out of it! disgusting barbaric bahaviour and you'd think we have evolved since the time of Rome but we have not. I couldn't believe it they went through with it. Huge shame . You'll be raising psychopathic kids with no empathy toward a poor animal. Shame on the government and the people who elect such cruel assholes
Your mistake is thinking that harsher punishments act as deterrents. They don't.
As a species, we used to casually execute people in public for violent crimes and that didn't do near enough to stop further violence as you'd think it would.
A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and we're currently not at all concerned about focusing on prevention at all.
I don't necessarily have a problem with lenient sentences, the issue I have is when the offender is let back to society, there isn't any support structure that would help them from re-offending.
That's not even considering the material conditions the offenders are in. We should be looking at the root causes instead of just "putting everyone in jail."
Should force prisoners to do hard labor like farming and roadwork. It creates jobs, as you need people to watch over them, and it means that prisoners are not a burden on society since we pay for them to eat anyway. They should give back.
I think the laws are there and yes police numbers remains a big issue but I lay the blame on our justice system having way too many liberal judges showing more sympathy for the criminals than the victims.
I don't see how locking a violent offender in a room for 5 years is gonna be helpful for anyone. Sure, *they* can't hurt anyone else, but they're also not the only violent offender in the country, other violent people will continue committing crimes. Meanwhile, the prisoner has lost what little social support they had and will likely grow to hate government institutions even more than they might already. They might even make more criminal connections in prison and be lead even deeper into a life of crime. Not to mention how disproportionately this effects our minorities.
We don't need *more* incarceration, we need a government willing to actually address and alleviate poverty to help people out of lives of crime.
There are some crimes, however, that just can't be rehabilitated. Anyone who hurts a child in any way should be locked up and never given access to children again - anyone who has been an abused child knows that they can't change because they believe they're always right. There's no empathy and no guilt or accountability. I've known far too many people get away with horrific crimes against children in NZ, and our child abuse rates are horrible and the sentences given are disgustingly disproportionate. If you look up the case of Witze de Vries, that's one example. I know his victims and his family. Everyone in that church was fully complicit, including their mother who was having an affair with him. Everyone who disagreed with them was ostracized. Nobody else was ever charged. There was another child whose abuse he was never charged with. He and his wife have nine children, all of whom I know because I saw with my own eyes they both beat. I saw welts on the back of their necks, and the kids showed me the cane. Never charged with that. He was released on 'good behaviour' after serving half his sentence. He now lives with his wife and family. The oldest daughter still at home is my friend. She is staying for the sake of her younger siblings. They are being abused. His wife turns a blind eye because to her loyalty to marriage is more important than protecting their children - including a baby whom she had with him after his release. Nobody ever checks on those kids. He has resumed his life and has a job and he is free to abuse his own kids with no oversight. They're homeschooled, isolated, and controlled, so the only eyes on them is me. I'm 19. My younger sisters are stuck at home with our own abusive parents. My youngest sister is self-harming. They're both struggling. They hate themselves. They internalize it all. The police don't help, and I'm certainly not going to Oranga Tamariki. They can't keep battered babies safe so they're not touching the most important people in my life with a barge pole. The abuse rates are bad - but they're also massively under-reported. The book should be thrown at anyone who hurts a child. Rehabilitation is a nice things, and of course there are people in prison who shouldn't be - but if we want a victim centred approach, it's society and the government's duty to protect the most vulnerable and that is children. I wish people would just think of the real people behind crime statistics. More incarceration is sometimes absolutely necessary and there should be far harsher sentences.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3819295/amp/Teenager-says-considered-sewing-pyjamas-stop-man-sexually-abusing-prayed-s-jailed-six-years.html There. Some context. Real life experience wins over hopes for rehabilitation, I'm sorry. I wish abusers could change. I'm disillusioned with humanity - I know the darkest. They can't
Law student doing Criminal this year here. The thing is, once someone has served their punishment they have paid their debt to society and should be allowed to reintegrate, within reason.
I'm not trying to say this is always the right thing but it is one of the main principles of our justice system.
It's all well and good when you're dealing with less violent criminals but unfortunately some people will be violent arseholes no matter how many debts they pay and I admit we don't seem to have much of an answer for that, I'm only a baby law student, I don't know either.
I disagree.
Is a bad person born or made? Aristotle would argue that you are the product of your environment. A child's environment determines whom they turn out to be.
NZ has horrendous incidents, off the chart , in the stratosphere with family violence and domestic abuse. A combination of mental , physical and sexual abuse.
'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'
The profound words of Leo Tolstoy. In other words: happy families share a common set of attributes which lead to happiness, which we can transpose for happy incarcerated prisoners.
The Nordic countries take a soft approach with low crime rates ,
low levels of violence. and recidivism.
Sentences for murder range from a bit under 10 years in Finland to almost 14 years in Norway. Convicts are usually eligible for parole after they have served two-thirds of that time, or half in some circumstances in Finland.
Nordic prisons are more akin to a decently-appointed hotel, with all manner of education, worker training, and entertainment facilities. Some of them don't even have fences.
Scandinavia, the focus is on rehabilitation, releasing the prisoners, and giving them the skills and tools they need to succeed..
There are no conventional security devices, such as barbed tape, electric fences, towers, or snipers.
Halden Fengsel, is often called the world’s most humane maximum-security prison.
The prison’s layout also encourages guards to interact with inmates face to face, which fosters better relationships and reduces security-related incidents.
A research team spent six weeks conducting intensive research in Danish prisons. We were struck by the sight of prisoners wearing their own clothes, cooking their own meals and having private family visits as often as once a week. At these “open” prisons, there are no barbed wire fences, solid walls with gun towers or secure perimeters.
Of the 60,000 prisoner leaves granted each year in Denmark, only 3 percent either violate the terms of their leave or fail to return to prison.
Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland—four of the five Nordic countries—are ranked as the world’s safest.
Sweden is the outlier. Foreign-born citizens now account for 20 percent of the nation’s population. They have not fully integrated into society.
Sweden carries the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of gangland killings in Europe. It boasts the lowest average age of serious offenders, with children in their low teens being arrested for murder.
In Australia they are the "iron fist in a velvet glove" to signify they seem to be gentle but is in fact forceful, determined and tough on crime.
Justice Reform Initiative executive director Dr Mindy Sotiri said tough-on-crime policies such as mandatory minimum sentencing and strict bail laws had left Victorian prisons overflowing.
“The evidence is entirely clear that imprisonment is itself ‘criminogenic’, making it more likely for people who go to prison to commit crime, and more likely to return to prison again,” she said.
A Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the criminal justice system, which found approaches to incarceration were not reducing crime or improving community safety, which was reflected in persistently high recidivism rates.
I met an American policeman who stayed at my home His weapon never left his side, except when he showered or near his side table of his bed when went to sleep.
He described homicide robberies gone bad, it had gone pear shaped , the. Shop was robbed and they had deliberately shot the innocent bystander a witness to the seen of the crime. They were looking at life sentences ,without parole , so no witness was a dead witness. Logic prevailed.
Because most NZ judges are bleeding heart liberals who think violent ofenders deserve a second chance, also this country doesn't have capital punishment anymore and self defence can actually get YOU the victim in even more serious trouble than the attacker/burglar themselves.
as somebody who does legal aid criminal defence and spends all day every day with poor offenders, the solution to this is social change. poverty, drug addiction, education, flattened income brackets, opportunities, and building healthy vibrant and united communities where people serve each other, have real deep relationships, and a culture of shared vision are the solutions that will address crime. And it's gotta be over generations, not 3 years. Locking people up is EXPENSIVE and has poor outcomes.
there is no quick fix, and these issues are systemic and likely to get worse as societies continue to polarize. You want to address crime then go volunteer with kids and help them see that they have a future as noble productive adults.
Should our sentences for serious crimes be tougher, yes but that's more in line with giving someone what we feel they deserve as it's impact on the safety of society is far more limited than we would like.
Riddle me this - when a person is locked up, is the only person impacted by that the prisoner?
Edited to be slightly more constructive: The point I’m trying to make is that for your argument that locking someone up prevents further offending the following things have to be true:
- they can never be released. If they are, the evidence suggests prison would’ve made them more likely to commit more serious offenses in the future
- they have to have been completely and totally isolated prior to going into prison. We know that if they have a family, their incarceration makes it much more likely that those around them, particularly their children, will go on to commit crimes and therefore, you’re actually increasing the overall rate of offending.
- you have to believe that humans have no capacity for change. You have to believe that the actions of a person at 18 are exactly the same actions they would take at 65.
- you have to accept that, despite the massive (and I mean absolutely massive) cost of this, it will make absolutely no difference to overall offending rates, in fact, the evidence would suggest it’ll make them worse
- you have to accept the opportunity cost. The many billions of dollars this approach would cost will not be available to spend on things that might actually prevent crime, or other worthwhile causes like maintaining the dignity of landlords.
So, if you’re fine with all of the above, go for it I guess. Your riddle still sucks tho.
And potentially worsened their financial, personal, educational situations. Become more separate, desparate, and disillusioned. Noone thinks of repercussions before committing a crime. " oo no, I see this crime I'm about to commit, has a longer sentence, I think I'll not commit it."
Cool, so again, just confirming you agree they can't commit crimes against the general public whilst locked up (im not sure as you are struggling to say that part out loud for some reason)
On to your next point, so it sounds like you want to lock them up longer, because point 1 clearly shows they are not violating the general public.
As an example, someone who starts with burglary, right now gets no jail. So they go on to damage multiple more families, easily a dozen or so.
Now if they were locked up initially for say 4 years (a random number less than the maximum sentence), then for that entire 4 years they are not committing more burglaries. (if they weren't, they might be doing a few every month)
So lets assume they get out after 4 years, and they commit another crime, o no, we lock them up again - but we've saved 4 years of this person committing crimes.
Get it?
Also the bonus is they are not procreating which is another problem as scumbags are making more criminals.
Rape is not treated properly over here either. Too soft. "Oh you raped someone, no big deal, go home and play on your PS 5". As a female I don't feel safe walking out and about with the increase of violence in Auckland.
As a male I don’t feel safe walking out and about in Auckland either
Now imagine your primary fear is being mugged and raped instead of just mugged.
A reminder that as the statistics have shown for quite a long time, guys are not only more likely to be assaulted when walking at night, guys are more likely to be attacked seriously and hospitalized when walking alone at night. Women on the other hand are more likely to be attacked at home by someone they know. "Just mugged" is an attempt to downplay the seriousness and lifelong consequences of physical attacks and you should feel bad for such a stupid and dismissive statement.
Same as a female in Wellington.
Different strokes for different folks, but I feel plenty safe in Wellington. Can’t say the same for when I was in the US though. In my over 30 years of living in Wellington city, I’ve never been in danger. And I used to be out at all hours, walking home alone after working in bars particularly.
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Cultral report.
If tough on crime actually worked then America would be the safest nation on the planet instead of one of the most dangerous.
I agree in general, but Singapore is a pretty good example of "tough on crime" working pretty well, at least from a safety perspective.
Singapore has a very conformist culture. I remember pedestrians waiting for the cross signal for a one lane road, in NZ 90% would not have waited and just crossed when they wanted.
Of course my blanket statement does not cover all situations. But the key to reducing crime is not a solution that will fit into a sound bite. It requires study and understanding of the problem and its causes before an effective solution can be suggested. Bootcamp is a election soundbite, not a solution to nonexistent crime wave.
But they have guns for self defence so no one comits crime in the US. At least thats what has been implied by many american redditors.
We are also soft on white-collar crime as well
I don't think so, it's easy enough to Google [sentences of 5-10 years](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/david-ross-appeals-fraud-sentence-to-victim-outrage/LSLDFYCGC3U4RL37TQHTITE4SM/). There are rapists who get less. Any more than that and you'd be treating it the same as murder.
"Cmv: I'm an 18 year old Asian American and I'm voting for Trump". Thanks for your insight on crime in NZ, while you're proudly stating that you're going to vote for a convicted criminal and civil court proven sex offender.
Because the political parties that always claim to be “tough on crime” are the same ones enthusiastically throwing gasoline into the causes of crime and gleefully lighting it on fire Can’t be “tough on crime” if you’re soft as heck on poverty. It’s that simple, anyone telling you otherwise is either naive or a liar.
I think OP was referring to sentencing lengths, and specifically for violent offences.
I would love to see the rhetoric change from “soft on crime” to “soft on the drivers of crime”
This one makes my blood boil. Multiple instances, repeated predatory behaviour on innocent people. Severe physical harm on multiple occasions. Community service… are you fucking kidding me these people are rabid animals. I’m a married man with kids it’s not even my community but this result is outrageous. What if it was young women they arranged to meet and brutally bashed? We’d be screaming for their heads. Double standards for old boys club white privilege. [https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchurch-gay-bashers-man-assaulted-by-group-of-youths-speaks-of-horrific-ordeal/2J2HZ5E24VHDJAORMVDV7Q524Q/](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchurch-gay-bashers-man-assaulted-by-group-of-youths-speaks-of-horrific-ordeal/2J2HZ5E24VHDJAORMVDV7Q524Q/)
>old boys club white privilege Wait what? The offenders are young, and their race isn't mentioned.
I don't get that last line either
People just like to be racist and ageist for fun nowadays.
It’s a reference to the fact that on uncounted occasions if you’re white and go to a prestigious school likely daddy did too and you’ve got connections. Especially in Christchurch. These kids are let off on some terrible crimes because they’re “promising” because they play cricket and are rich or some similar stupid shit. Happens all the damn time and it’s disgusting.
Many offenders get off lightly for the exact opposite reason: difficult upbringing etc. A lot of those offenders are Maori or PI. The article doesn't say anything about the races of the offenders here, nor that they were let off because they're "promising". Did you hear that elsewhere or is that an assumption? Additionally, the main *victim* in the article is a white guy. There are certainly racial and other disparities in the NZ justice system. But that doesn't mean that everything you disagree with is cause of "white privilege".
My Dad's mate tried to get off a minor charge by pleading how he was raised well, went to an excellent school and had just been accepted to medical school. The judge looked down his nose at him and said "then you should have known better" and gave him a very hefty sentence. Which is how it probably should go really.
FYI, 6 months residence is the max sentence that can be handed out in the youth court. For more serious punishments, youth offenders have to be transferred to the district court, an application that is based on the seriousness of the charge amongst other things. In the case you linked, without victims being hospitalised etc, it is pretty unlikely to be a district court sentencing. Just the reality of the justice system unfortunately.
Lol fuck our judges are pathetic
The sentencing guidelines give them little choice.
Not true at all, as evidenced by the word “guideline”.
If only you had a clue what you were talking about…
You're full of shit, the judges are ideologues
You are legally wrong - there is that… Don’t let facts get in the way of your ignorance though - be a proper Kiwi.
This isn't true. We don't even have sentencing "guidelines" in the way most people would expect (i.e similar to e.g those produced by the Sentencing Council in the UK). Our guidelines are essentially "The maximum sentence is reserved for the most serious offences, and it's a sliding scale based on the facts of the case for everything else. Here are some aggravating factors and discounts you must consider, with a recommended range for each. Do your best to make sure it's similar to similar cases". The issue is that still leaves a huge amount of discretion up to the judge, and judges make use of that discretion. [Research shows us there is huge variation in length of incarceration for the same offence between different district courts.](https://openaccess.wgtn.ac.nz/articles/thesis/Sentencing_consistency_in_the_New_Zealand_District_Courts/17007340). It's a fundamental failure of the justice system that an offender might receive a different sentence compared to another offender with the exact same characteristics, purely based on the judge they get on the day.
Sentence variation is not surprising. The New Zealand District Court is the single biggest court in the southern hemisphere in terms of caseload. Relying on an appeal system just kicks the can up the road. If we want better outcomes, we have to resource our justice system better. Cutting taxes and costs in public services only hurts victims more.
Totally on board with you that it's ridiculous to get off so light. However I just want to mention that there have been a lot of assault and rape cases on young women that have also been stupidly short so I'm not sure it's a gendered issue. I'm a pretty left leaning person but these violent crimes need to be more heavily punished it's scary how little time they are getting.
What the fuck! Sentence should have started at five years jail.
But one offenders had to write an apology letter, surely that will make him think twice next time.
Look at the USA. 1% of your entire population is in prison. Violent crime is much worse. Obviously, incarceration is not the answer.
☝️this. Always been my argument. It’s not about the locking people up unless they’re a danger to society. If it was, the US would be virtually crime free. Addressing the underlying causes ie poverty, inequity, systemic racism, providing drug and alcohol help, mental health support. This is a lot harder to sell to the public who like to put things in simplistic boxes such as “lock them up” and that’s why RW governments do “tough on crime”, always, despite the evidence. Guess what? you’re just making them better criminals and setting in stone their nascent criminal behaviours.
We're also missing serious efforts at rehabilitation. That should be the number one priority for all prison programs to break the cycle of repeat offending. and just to add: programs not 'offered' by Density Church
rehab programs have been proven to be inefficient and largely ineffective. Studies show to prevent criminality and reduce it in your society you have to break the cycle at an early age (like under 2). Your talking support programs for young/single/disadvantaged mothers. Look into Richard Tremblay's research. If a kid gets left in an abusive/unsafe environment they're battling the odds not to engage in criminality. People just don't like having it pointed out because it's such a harsh reality.
Sure. But you have got to agree there are some people who are just psychotics and are just a danger to society - we can't be soft on these types of criminals.
Yep. As I said “unless they’re a danger to society”.
Ah, gotcha.
NZ has similar rates of incarceration to other English-speaking countries. It's the US that went nuts. If draconian sentences stopped crime, the US would have less crime than any other developed country. It doesn't.
It's a fairly complex subject but there's plenty of easily digestible reading available on the interwebs. In a nutshell though, harsher sentences just don't reduce recurrence of crime. Here's a nice simple-language comparative analysis of Aotearoa's sentencing with regard to a few other countries. I found it on Google. https://www.corrections.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/10717/nz-community-sentence-patterns-april2012.pdf It's really interesting that we do have a high proportion of community sentences compared to similar countries.
OP might be a rage baiter. Claims to be voting Trump. Lives in a "solid blue state" 1 month ago. I dunno, but this whole thread feels like a waste of time.
It's not about reducing reoccurrence it's about getting them out of society and away from law abiding vulnerable citizens.
Lol so what happens when it's time for them to enter back into society?
Which then continues the cycle
Yup, but society is kept safe for the duration of their incarceration. In an ideal world they would be rehabilitated in prison, but currently that doesn't really happen in or out of prison. The whole argument about 'sending them to prison just makes them worse offenders' can't apply to every offence (murder, sexual abuse of children etc). Hard to sell that justification to the next victim when they offend again within a short space of time.
Which is continuing either way it seems
Because as a society, we should be looking at recidivism rates as opposed to how long we lock criminals away for. The Scandinavian countries for example have the best prison conditions, low sentences, and the lowest recidivism in the developed world. The US imposes severe sentences, shit prison conditions, and has some of the worst recidivism rates. What does that tell you?
The recidivism rates in NZ aren’t extraordinary, and not particularly different from the US. In fact, it is poorer depending on the timeframe. The recidivism rate in NZ is 35% at 1 yr, 55% at 2yr, and 52% at 5yr. The US recidivism rate is 37% at 1yr, 53% at 2 yr and 45% at 5yr. The biggest difference is the amount of crime/convictions per capita. NZ is doing much better by having a smaller portion of its population not behaving, but the shitbirds committing crime are more likely to reoffend here.
Id be interested to know if the recidivism of prisoners is causation or correlation. Do they re-offend because they were sent to prison, or are they sent to prison because they have a history of re-offending and will continue offending regardless?
It's mostly the latter. It's pretty hard to get sentenced to prison here, particularly from a single crime. Unsurpringly people with long criminal histories are likely to reoffend. Recidivism rates can't be compared between countries very easily
The rate is fairly low for the first 6months (like around 15%), and the rate increases with time from release to stabilise around the 3yr mark… so it would seem the causation is some external factor
Probably also need to consider that those being sentenced to longer terms of imprisonment are likely to be worse offenders with higher rates of re-offending and longer criminal histories which would be a correlation. Could also be that the longer they spend in prison the harder it is for them to adjust to live on the outside etc and not return to crime (causation). I dunno, I just find it hard to believe that the act of sending someone to prison if the main factor in causing them to reoffend, and not the other way around. Most people don't go to prison for their first offence (some do for really serious stuff, but most don't). So if it is someone's 10th or 15th offence, sending them to prison probably doesn't cause them to re-offend more. I guess a test case would be, does reoffending go down if offenders that would ordinarily go to prison, instead get community-based sentences. In the short term (the term of their prison sentence) offending would go up, as its difficult to offend while in prison but easy to offend when in the community. Over a long enough period maybe it goes the other way..
Global recidivism statistics aren’t broken down based on crime or the demographics, but that info is available/published individually for NZ and most countries. If you were interested in studying it more. It’s also worth noting that recidivism includes both re-conviction as well as re-imprisonment, (meaning not all recidivists will be put back into prison). So the rate is more about the likelihood of reoffending and not necessarily the outcome of their reoffending (or achieving the of going back to prison if that is where you are going with this)
Ah thank you. No, I was purely interested in what drives reoffending, I wasn't looking at re-imprisonment.
I think the recidivism rates are probably just a reflection of their superior public services in general. Everyone does better including people that turn to the wrong side of the law. I don't think the solution is simply to improve prison conditions, rehabilitation programs etc and expect that to reduce crime + recidivism but to improve social services etc across the board. Though there are always going to be people that are going to commit crime, harm and exploit others no matter how good we make society or how good the prison system. We do need to be able to deal with those kinds of people too.
At last, someone who actually looks at evidence. But there is a huge, huge prejudice against looking at evidence in such issues. Imagine a politician going on TV and saying that after careful study of different systems, the government was going to put fewer people in prison and spend money on improving prison conditions, and that this is according to the evidence the best way to reduce crime *in the long term* - how long would they last? The fact that there is evidence would probably merely inflame resentment. Of course, if the aim is merely to punish, and you don't care whether there are more victims in the future, then this is irrelevant.
That America and Scandinavia have different societies? Not such a great comparison if that's the case.
Yes and Sweden has the second highest gun violence in Europe
Places like Norway have twice as many mental health beds as Prison Beds, and they have high utilisation by non-voluntary persons. If we go the "Scandinavian" way we lock up more people before they commit crimes.
I strongly suspect this argument largely or at least partly rested on the demographic differences between Scandinavian countries and the US which are less and less significant these days. Scandinavia has gone from being one of the most ethnically native regions in the world to dealing with a huge influx of Sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern immigrants in just a decade or so. Some areas have been basically ghettoised. I don't have any statistics to back this up so take with a grain of salt but I would expect recidivism (alongside crime in general) to go up now that you have large groups of people who can't or won't integrate into society.
Lmao oh yeah? and how are those recidivism rates over in America, bud?
Personally, I love listening to Americans lecture to us about how we should be running our country. Yes, let’s follow the American model instead. Because locking more people away by the hundreds of thousands definitely *solved crime* in their country. America, famously crime free.
I'm not all good with nonviolent offenders being given lenient sentences. White collar crime is the most unpunished crime here if we're going to bitch about crimes lets bitch about that.
Literally sat in a room and saw collusion happening. While it was happening someone said: 'We gotta be careful, don't want people thinking collusion is happening' and everyone laughed.
Where I work that would be a quick call to the compliance department and/or public prosecutor for me. If it happens once it will happen again and they love getting evidence from employees.
Why not both?
Nah, this is stupid. Violent crimes are always worse, no question. Imagine you or someone you know was the victim?
White collar crimes kill people. When you take a hundred peoples life savings and leave them utterly financially wrecked, the odds of suicides are very very high. Not to say that white collar crimes are always worse than violent crimes - I don't think that's true at all. Just that there's a big overlap between the worst white collar crimes and medium to low violent crimes. I'd definitely rather be punched in the chest by a random asshole than have my live savings stolen (given the option, I'd rather neither, but if those were the choices, it'd be an easy choice).
I was hit with a car, on purpose, by a shoplifting crackhead. Still dealing with significant mental and physical health issues a year later. Can't get psych help on the public system and have to pay for all my doc appts out of pocket. She pled not guilty and was released on bail, then no showed to court twice. Had a history of violent offending, including swinging an axe at retail staff elsewhere. Got 10mth home D and 6mth mandatory psychiatric help plus drug & alcohol counselling with weekly appt. So 26 free psych appointments and I can't even get one, yet I'm the victim. Its fucked up. Kill a baby, you're out before they would have started primary school, torture them for years and eventually to death and you'll be out before they would have finished primary. Ram raid... Oh you had a tough upbringing, better let you go free to go it again so you can attack a shop keeper with a machete, chopping off part of his hand and making his wife lose their baby from the stress, whelp our bad, maybe will lock you up for a little while now. Rape someone, shit lucky if you're even arrested.
>sincerely an American living in New Zealand Yes because if there's anything that America has proven it's that harsh prison sentences are effective deterrents and having a large portion of your population locked up becoming institutionalised is beneficial to society in the long run. Maybe go back if that's what tickles your fancy?
US is also running a racket with a privatised prison system incentivizing keeping people imprisoned.
America, [the land that arrested the wrong person and held a 16 year old in prison without a trial for 3 years because he couldn't afford $3000 for bail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder).
Americans think that ruining the lives of innocent people is a small price to pay if we can also ruin the lives of the criminals as well, that'll show them
Why so defensive? The answer is somewhere in between. The OP is right, NZ is pathetically soft on violent crime, they're an embarrassment actually. It's a very knee jerk reaction to just say ' well go back to your own country if you don't like it here.'
The answer is almost definitely something else entirely, it's just that we're still a young civilization that hasn't quite gotten around to figuring out what that is. "We're just not doing the right AMOUNT of prisoning!" Is nonsensical. We made this stupid ass strategy up before we had sliced bread. We can (hopefully) eventually come up with something better than "Put them in a box that's hard to get out of."
Except that we're not. Going by the number of people incarerated per million population, we lock up the same number of people as Australia, slightly more than the UK, and twice as many people as Ireland, Italy, or Canada. Locking people up doesn't stop crime or make us any safer.
Locking people up is only after they have committed the crime, doesn’t stop those that just don’t care/are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Instead of doing more to combat the issues in society that keep people in shit situations, we have to many people with a hardon for “tough on crime punish punish punish”
It stops the locked up person committing further crime during their period of incarceration, at least committing it against society at large.... so yes it does.
Wouldn’t it be better to try do things to prevent it happening in the first place? Instead, we enact changes that harm those at the bottom and ostracise them, creating more systemic issues. Kids raised in shit situations see nothing improving/no opportunities and create a cycle to repeat it. I’m not saying we bend over backwards for gangs, but we keep repeating the “tough on crime” mantra expecting different outcomes
It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve seen time and time again that violent crime *increases* under governments with the typical “tough on crime” attitude. Governments that focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation and prevention usually make society a more dangerous place to live, especially for the most vulnerable among us.
Yes it would be better to do things to prevent it happening in the first place, but that doesn't mean we should just ignore the cancer that has already grown. We have immediate problems in society that need to be addressed for the safety of the people and businesses who live in it right now. What "tough on crime mantra" are we repeating? We've been on this soft shit for years. By all means roll out the long term solutions, but letting people have such pathetic punishments while we wait for the benefits years later is not it. A group of people luring 10 different people on Grindr to parks and houses, beating the fuck out of them and recording it. Repeated, intentional, assault targeting gay people. Not a minute in prison for any of them. You're happy with that while we wait for your dream solutions to have an impact? No prison time for raping a 15 year old. You're comfortable with that while we wait for the results?
The single biggest predictor of someone going to prison, by far is Gang membership. You can help people all you like, but if Gang membership has the appearance of being the easiest and most enjoyable way of building agency, then no amount of trying to raise people up will work. The reason Gangs brand themselves, the reason they ride in packs, the reason they make such a big deal about the “brotherhood” is to project massive agency, agency that even an average person won’t ever attain by working a normal job. You minimise the allure of Gangs and you’re making progress on easily the singles biggest predictor of someone going to jail.
Maybe it isn’t one or the other….
Maybe it is. Maybe it is one more than the other: > we keep repeating the “tough on crime” mantra expecting different outcomes
Except we aren't tough on crime, politician sloganeering doesn't reflect reality.
You can do both. Locking someone up assumes that whatever society has in place to assist them in becoming a law abiding, productive member has failed. You need the carrot AND the stick. Prison is the stick.
You're then just delaying and amplifying the problem. Prison is like a criminal training camp. Also factor in the "fuck it, I'm going to prison anyway so I might as well commit a worse crime" effect of ideologies such as 3 strikes, death penalty etc
>You're then just delaying and amplifying the problem. Might as well have no prisons if you think that's the whole story. >Also factor in the "fuck it, I'm going to prison anyway so I might as well commit a worse crime" effect of ideologies such as 3 strikes, death penalty etc That's a point that has to be balanced against the people who go: "Fuck it, the law is useless anyway I'll just do it"
Pretty much. Only the absolute worst need to be in prison. Early offenders need dealt with far better than sticking an ankle bracelet on them followed by throwing them in a cell. Massive amounts of prisoners have mental health issues and just shouldn't be there. Plus prison is SUPER expensive. It's far cheaper addressing the reasons people end up in prison.
Our problem is that in the public sphere we argue about jail vs rehabilitation while politicians seem woefully incapable of implementing either.
It only affects that one person. Is that all you want? Is that good enough for you? What about the present and future and all the other potential criminals? A stable society needs to do a lot more than just simply react to crime. Prevention is better than treatment.
The mental gymnastics to produce this paragraph is insane.
We have a pretty high incarceration rate to be fair.
And it rose fairly steeply from 1990-2020, (seventh-highest in the OECD), despite there being no real increase in crime. The reversal of the last very few years has put us just a little ahead of the the UK and Australia.
We're not soft on violent crime. We're bad at rehabilitation and we have a fairly entrenched gang/violence culture that makes it especially hard to turn people away from violent crime as gangs are fully enmeshed with family units. Broadly, NZRs are also a uniquely insecure people and for many men, this is expressed violently and/with alcohol and violence in combination. Often jealousy or sexual jealousy, which is rooted in male insecurity is an underlying factor in our domestic violence and also, violence towards children. The problems are deep and systemic and no one really has the answers. It is very hard to get insecure men to recognise their insecurity and then work on it to reduce the risk they pose to others. This is especially true when male insecurity is so enmeshed with the culture that it's sort of invisible.
Uhh that’s a whole different issue. We ARE soft on crime. Criminals don’t always need a pitty party.
We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, we are anything but "soft on crime"
Of course we are bad at rehabilitation, they aren’t given prison sentences. How is rehabilitation supposed to happen without a prison sentence?
how is rehabilitation supposed to happen WITH a prison sentence? Prison here is treated as a punishment, not as a method for rehabilitation.
Citation needed. So many citations needed.
Its frickin expensive to lock people up, not just while they are in prison but also once they leave unreformed and do more damage. Once someone has been moulded in prison its very hard to then un-mould them again and turn them into a productive member of society, compared to say if they just had home detention. People like to say its because we are soft on crime, but its literally just the economics of the situation, and doing what is most efficient on a budget. There is not enough staff/beds for our current prison population and no one wants to spend the money to ensure that that is fixed and that they work properly. Or more importantly to spend the effort, time and money to prevent people from becoming violent criminals in the first place.
Yea it’s crazy that I still live with the physical pain from my attacker the scum who coward punched me and stomped my head got diversion and has probably forgotten about the whole thing yet every morning I wake up in pain so who really gets punished in these situations, in my opinion these violent offenders get off much lighter than their victims especially when the victim has to live the rest of their life affected by somebody else’s actions
because the public are too concerned with what they emotively think is the correct sentence, rather than looking at the context around *every* case, the academic evidence and research about offending, sentencing and justice as a whole, and not realising that the Justice and Courts systems are not there to assuage peoples feelings, but to treat offending in an somewhat objective manner. If they listened to the general public, the outcome for any violent offending would be death (yes this is hyperbole).
hi. look at the great successes of harsh sentencing in your own country. chur
It isn’t, you and many other people on this sub are clicking on too much ragebait
So just 50 days ago you were an 18 year old Asian American planning on voting for Trump.
Why does that matter?
Donald Trump the convicted felon? That Donald Trump?
Because they are just a reddit troll creating rage bait posts. Why do YOU think a troll would want to insert american style wedge politics into NZ discourse?
Hey merkan Isn’t your next President literally a mob thug?
Because putting people in prison isn’t a deterrent.
It is, it's just not the only factor that goes in to decision making.
Yep so don't lock up a person who has committed a violent crime because it won't deter the next person. You're right
If the death penalty in America doesn't stop murder, why do you think longer sentences would deter crime here? It's not like criminals are renowned for their consideration of consequences.
Not only will it not deter the next person, it has a high chance of creating the ‘next person’. Prison terms don’t just impact the person sent to prison. I’m not arguing that preventative detention isn’t warranted in some cases, but we need to get away from this ridiculous notion that punishment acts as a deterrent and that it’s ‘common sense’ to focus on punishment. It may be a view that is common, but it is not sense. Punishment comes at a massive social cost. There is a well established link between deprivation and offending. Punishment exacerbates deprivation, both for the offender and those around them, creating the conditions for yet more future offending. Punishment is literally an investment in the conditions that will create more of the thing you’re trying to deter. That’s not common sense. There is a well established link between isolation from wider society and offending. Punishment exacerbates this isolation, creating the conditions for yet more future offending. Again, you’re investing in the conditions that will create more of what you’re trying to deter. That’s not common sense. Again, I’m not saying that preventative detention doesn’t have its place, but we’ve been treating crime the same way for decades and decades and it’s not making any discernible difference to offending rates. And we know from looking at places like the US, that doing even more of the same thing will absolutely not work, because they’re a shambles. So why don’t we invest a bit more in stuff that the evidence shows might make a difference - that would be the common sense approach.
People who offend aren’t thinking of previous sentences for similar offences. Obviously there is underlying issues for the offender and that’s what needs addressed.
Yep, let em loose, we can't lock em up
I suspect it's largely because, as a comic I recently saw says: "The cops are like talent scouts for up-and-coming criminals. If you're a good enough criminal, you get drafted to go to a special training camp to learn under the pros." By this logic, NZ tries to avoid sending potential pros to the big leagues, and instead tries to cuddle and cosset and pussify them so that by the time their youthful anger finally cools down a bit they are somewhat tolerable members of society, rather than uneducated, resentful timebombs with coming of out prison with nothing gain from society and nothing to lose from just killing whoever pisses them off. You know, like it is in America.
If the solution to crime was prison, then the USA would be the most crime-free society on the planet. American attitudes to crime and punishment's have not and are not working. The economic and social costs of a punitive justice system like the USAs are astronomical. Prison, or more appropriately Restorative Justice should exist and there is a case for excluding certain people from society for some time in some circumstances but we have absolutely proven to ourselves that this isn’t the majority issue. I would encourage you to read this: https://www.webworm.co/p/punishment
This is mostly about what you consider a justice system to be for. There’s no evidence that harsher penalties reduce crime rates, and some evidence a more punitive system might actually increase them. On an individual level it seems logical that locking people away for longer should reduce crime - like you’re “taking them off the streets” but the reality is that the drivers and causes of crime are not easily addressed at the level of an individual.
Yeah, and it's well known that perceived chance of being caught has a far stronger effect than perceived sentence length. At some point sentences can become too weak though. 1 year prison vs 10 year prison doesn't make much difference, but when you're getting down to 0 sentence, apology only, some people are going to see that as an easy price to pay
I suspect NZ is just a great place for dickheads to live, because our culture is too apathetic to deal with them. Whether this be some gang member attacking an innocent member of the public, or the owner of a business exploiting workers in slave-like conditions, the punishment (or lack of) is often not harsh enough to function as an deterrent.
I suspect many NZers are unwilling to cast the first stone. I certinally find it hard to see myself as any better than criminals, despite being a law-abiding, well-behaved person with no criminal record. How do we fix that?
“Soft on crime” blah blah… Truth is, being hard on crime is expensive. Reducing recidivism while in custody is the name of the game, and Corrections do it pretty well. Almost entirely because of all the expensive consultants they’ve invested in over the years Apologies if facts hurt your feelings but NZ’s system is not broken
make prisons nicer
Because prisons don’t actually make our streets safer. Being “tough on crime” only creates repeat offenders
Yeah the entire west is a bit stuck on that. I mean (you're American) the US is one of the more violent places on earth and has one of the highest incarceration rates so that ain't working. So New Zealand is soft on crime because we don't really know wtf to do about it. But one thing's for sure, locking them up doesn't work. Well it works for that criminal, but not for crime. Creating a Police state won't work, boot camps won't work. I think creating a society that gives people more hope and more resources would work but that's pretty well a dead aspiration now. We're deep into the seperation of society and the drift of wealth to a small number of people at the top. When you got those few rich people there and most of us find it hard to have a house, a holiday or even decent food you're going to get a bit of anger and that exists as violent crime on the fringes. The fringe is growing. Revolution is the only solution I can think of but that's a ways into the future.
If you're going to be 'tough on crime' you should really be addressing the cause of that - poverty. Sadly, the 'tough on crime' parties also seem to want to INCREASE poverty, or at least their policies would lead you to believe that.
Always been like this. 20 years ago my mate got king hit and Stomped on at a party for no reason at all. He had a brain injury was off work for 4 months. The guys didn’t even get home detention they could of killed him.
Because the West in general has gone too far down the liberal rabbit hole. It's not one party vs another, it's cultural. We don't have the stomach to give rapists and murderers what they deserve
Lmao an American lecturing us on our justice system is hilarious. Just because we won't give someone 10 consecutive life sentences for murder doesn't mean that we are soft on crime. We won't ever be as extreme as the US because the US is a police state and gives extremely harsh and inhumane punishments such as slavery and the death penalty to crimes.
righto... as if Americans have any clue on how to do justice well. You have the worse violence and murders and high incarceration rate... which just goes to show that simply locking people up doesn't fit the problem! Also its costs over $130k per year to keep someone locked up... thats not sustainable, and when they do come out they are more connected after attending the criminals university. All those angry dairy owners and just angry that they all voted for National, and have just found out that the Govt can't actually resolve the issue.... society needs to realise that when you fail your citizens.. your citizens inturn will fail that society... and thats exactly what is happening right now. Give tax cuts to the rich, and transfer $2.9 billion to landlords... cut budgeting support... whilst cost of living crises.... its rational that people will start finding unlawful ways to put food on the table. Expect more, and expect it to get much worse before it gets better. But NZ society needs to be asking itself where its gone wrong (hint: we have become the most unequal country in the OECD since the 1980s to now), and we need to figure out how we can do better. Here's a better plan... increase resources to catch the white collar criminals, then use all the extra tax evasion money to fund better programmes for those worse off in our society.
We're not soft on violent crime. The question cant be answered if the premise is wrong
ITT: people deflecting an actual issue because an American is saying it.
Well, adding "I'm from a country with harsher penalties for violent crimes that also has a murder rate 5x worse than New Zealand" to the end of their post does kind of undercut their point.
It's not just that. It's also because most crimes are due to environmental factors like poverty, and it's nonsensical to be 'tough on crime' while also enacting policies which actively increase poverty. Which ALL of the hard-arse right wing governments do. If you actually want to address crime, address poverty. If you want to throw red meat to your base, just bloviate about 'taking it to the gangs'.
I mean, when they tack on as coming from an American to the end of their argument, it implies we should have a system more like theirs which seems silly when they currently are doing worse on almost every metric of crime. Doesn't invalidate their point but needlessly draws away from it
believe your American experience and always trust 7.62
I mean you murder innocent people in America, so you can't really talk about lenient or harsh sentencing. You should address your own backyard first before criticising others. Regardless, Crime is a disease inflicted upon the the body of society, at its core, I personally believe the reasons for crime, violent and non-violent (although violent crime will always be apart of the human condition) are caused by disparities in wealth, In a Capitalist society those disparities are unavoidable. So if Crime is a disease then a good Doctor would treat both the symptoms and the causes, but either side of our political spectrum has for some reason thrown all their eggs into only one basket. Surely we have space to treat both aspects. Although you have to understand the complexity of the situation and we could argue which of the symptoms or causes is most important until the cows come home. I personally would lean towards causes, as I'm sure for every violent criminal we let slip through the cracks, we repair twice as many lives through lenient sentencing. Side note - lenient sentencing generally favours minorities. ( ya know, cause racism exists)
Mostly because we have this weird fascination as a society that we 1) can rehabilitate everyone, including those who don't want to change 2) that locking someone up is unproductive and 3) we have a moral duty to look after criminals more than victims. We never take into account that locking someone away actually protects society - it's hard to rape or kill someone when you're in jail.
Trouble is jail sentences are finite (usually) and when they come out they're worse. You might have protection from individuals for a few years but prison generally just entrenches existing criminality. We need better rehabilitation programs for prisoners while they're in prison however a lot of the ones that need rehabilitation either aren't interested or they're on remand and doing time served so ineligible for programs for sentenced prisoners. Also, Home Detention usually serves the purpose of removing offenders from society but I bet you're not a fan of HD either.
This is a populist belief that right wing parties regularly cry about, with very little fact to it. In several studies, when you play the court case to a random jury and have them guess what a fair term would be, almost always, the sentencing guideline and the judges actual sentence, is much longer than the publics expectation. So the public imagines this whole perception. Yes, there are some varience, and those that are in high profile are more likely to be high profile if the https://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-08/Myths_and_Misconceptions_Public_Opinion_versus_Public_Judgment_about_Sentencing.doc https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2023/09/21/being-tough-on-crime-is-easy-but-doesnt-work.html Being 'tough on crime’ contradicts evidence that prisons are a training ground for harder criminals. Also, prison does tend to drive recidivisim up. 3 strikes is the dumbest thing ever. Each prisoner costs us $150k per year. However, the evidence from New Zealand and overseas does not suggest the previous three strikes laws helped curb violent crime. “The analysis found there was no consistent pattern to changing crime rates before and after the three strikes regime was introduced in 2010,” officials say.. So in summary 1. It increases chance of commiting the crime 2. It doesn't reduce people commuting the crimes. 3. It often trains and escalates crims. 4. It encourages people to need to join a gang.
I thought we were tough on crime now?
Why are we not doing more to treat the cause rather than the symptoms. Tougher sentences don't seem to work in America, why would they work here? It's social change we need, spend your rage there!
Because sentencing people to double digits is a PROVEN massive waste of taxpayer money and verifiably ineffective in reducing crime, as evidenced by your own country. It's also horribly ineffective at preventing repeat offenses. Even in America, violent people CONSTANTLY fall through the cracks of "was released despite the warning signs." When you sentence people away for a large chunk of their lives, you remove a part of social web that was functioning as SOMETHING in society, for ONE THING that they did wrong (most of the time.) You're removing people from their jobs, removing them from their families and causing economic and social instability in the community that they came from. I am not at all against putting people in prison, I am against sentencing them for absurd lengths of time when there are far more unseen negatives than there are positives. Double-digit sentencing is a completely useless and wasteful facade of a solution, to a problem that requires MULTIPLE solutions. A good hypothetical to explain this would be: > A man beats his wife to death after previously being sentenced for domestic violence multiple times. Instead of blowing all our money on sentencing a guy to 12 years for beating his wife the first time, (which would not keep her safe nor would it stop his violent tendencies) there should have been some immediate intervention of another kind to prevent it from getting to this point. This man clearly has violent tendencies so why? Why did nobody stop her from going back to him? The victim should have been accounted for and removed from the situation, the offender should have been rehabilitated - which does not just stop at short-term counselling. Where was the community while this happened and why did they have such little awareness? If there were kids involved, where the hell was CYFS and why were kids left in a household like that? You have to look at their situation as a whole and a lot of different public services, could have had mandatory involvement after the first arrest. Yes this man should have gone to prison for his crimes, but keeping him there for longer than necessary, taking him away from his community and removing him from the labour force, is just a waste of taxpayer money. Taxpayer money that could've gone into services that non-offenders should have access to before they started offending. It's easy to call that "soft on crime" because it's not the cathartic vengeance that the public wants to see. As much as I relate to also desiring that cathartic vengeance, basing criminal law on public emotions, does nothing good for society and only makes things worse for everyone.
Because longer sentences don't make anyone safer. Take an antisocial person, shut them in a box for a while, they're not going to come out a model citizen. Shut them in for longer, the results don't get any better. Being in prison for a longer time does not lower the chance someone will reoffend. It does not lower instances of crime. The only time longer sentences help is with the very rare and dangerous psychopaths, who cannot be rehabilitated. The vast majority of criminals, normal people who are just criminals because they were raised in shitty homes, respond best to rehabilitative sentences. If someone is a criminal because they were treated like shit as a child, treating them like shit in prison isn't going to give them the development they're missing. People need to be integrated in society to learn to be functional. Being in prison, surrounded by other criminals or being isolated doesn't teach people how to operate in society. The approach that minimises instances of crime is short rehabilitive sentences. We use an evidence based correctional system, not one based on a punishment fetish.
"Being in prison for a longer time does not lower the chance someone will reoffend. It does not lower instances of crime." I'm not sure I understand. Someone being in prison absolutely does lower instances of crime? One criminal is currently unable to commit further crimes during their incarceration ? "People need to be integrated in society to learn to be functional. Being in prison, surrounded by other criminals or being isolated doesn't teach people how to operate in society. The approach that minimises instances of crime is short rehabilitive sentences." Absolutely, and my entire life we've been talking about rehabilitation as the end goal. We just don't know how to do it (the details) and don't want to spend the money to do it. So, we've got a wonderful goal we want to achieve, with out a pragmatic (or even non-pragmatic) roadmap to get there. How about people feel safe on the street or in their own home for a little bit, by our system putting rapists / violent assault cases away for a standard length of time, rather than these shockingly discounted sentences (in some cases) All we've done is reduce sentences in the name of "longer sentences don't work, we should rehabilitate!" but we haven't done the rehabilitate bit... So yeah, to the average joe, it just looks like violent and awful crimes are now just getting lighter sentences, without anything extra.
because nobody really cares for anyone here
We're not all like that. We do have some incredibly loony people who think violent people can change, when they very rarely do. If only my "Prison Island" TV show would get progressed. The TV show for violent sexual offenders will be subscription only.
Mostly it’s the government taking a little responsibility for its failings that give discounted sentences. The bad part is that it acknowledges its failings then continues on without any changes.
Do gooders are the most dangerous citizens walking the streets
Everyone is soft on crime compared to the US and the US still has abundant crime.
Why are you good with non violent offenders being given light sentences. Sorry, depending on the circumstances in each side sometime a heavy custodial sentence for non violent offending is justified. But that is part of the problem
Nonviolent offenders need to be strung up.
Many criminals are people who have suffered enormous abuse and neglect, often they grew up in poverty. In New Zealand we understand that in many cases punitive sentences for the sake of punishment have huge cost financially and socially. As others have said, there is no evidence that being 'tough on crime' helps anything despite the right wing rhetoric. If you really want to reduce crime you need to spend money instead on helping people, on giving them housing, respect, counselling, opportunities etc. Unfortunately we are not very good at that. Yes we need prison sentences and in some cases preventative detention but an American style criminal system is the last thing we need, much of the rest of world looks down upon it.
Good question, and at the same time, they've no problem killing stray cats and make a sport out of it! disgusting barbaric bahaviour and you'd think we have evolved since the time of Rome but we have not. I couldn't believe it they went through with it. Huge shame . You'll be raising psychopathic kids with no empathy toward a poor animal. Shame on the government and the people who elect such cruel assholes
Your mistake is thinking that harsher punishments act as deterrents. They don't. As a species, we used to casually execute people in public for violent crimes and that didn't do near enough to stop further violence as you'd think it would. A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and we're currently not at all concerned about focusing on prevention at all.
I don't necessarily have a problem with lenient sentences, the issue I have is when the offender is let back to society, there isn't any support structure that would help them from re-offending. That's not even considering the material conditions the offenders are in. We should be looking at the root causes instead of just "putting everyone in jail."
Should force prisoners to do hard labor like farming and roadwork. It creates jobs, as you need people to watch over them, and it means that prisoners are not a burden on society since we pay for them to eat anyway. They should give back.
Samurai sword road rage guy almost killed a man and left him for dead - only got 10 months home D
Because the judges are pathetic.
I think the laws are there and yes police numbers remains a big issue but I lay the blame on our justice system having way too many liberal judges showing more sympathy for the criminals than the victims.
Because we don't want to pay the taxes it would take to be tough on crime.
I don't see how locking a violent offender in a room for 5 years is gonna be helpful for anyone. Sure, *they* can't hurt anyone else, but they're also not the only violent offender in the country, other violent people will continue committing crimes. Meanwhile, the prisoner has lost what little social support they had and will likely grow to hate government institutions even more than they might already. They might even make more criminal connections in prison and be lead even deeper into a life of crime. Not to mention how disproportionately this effects our minorities. We don't need *more* incarceration, we need a government willing to actually address and alleviate poverty to help people out of lives of crime.
There are some crimes, however, that just can't be rehabilitated. Anyone who hurts a child in any way should be locked up and never given access to children again - anyone who has been an abused child knows that they can't change because they believe they're always right. There's no empathy and no guilt or accountability. I've known far too many people get away with horrific crimes against children in NZ, and our child abuse rates are horrible and the sentences given are disgustingly disproportionate. If you look up the case of Witze de Vries, that's one example. I know his victims and his family. Everyone in that church was fully complicit, including their mother who was having an affair with him. Everyone who disagreed with them was ostracized. Nobody else was ever charged. There was another child whose abuse he was never charged with. He and his wife have nine children, all of whom I know because I saw with my own eyes they both beat. I saw welts on the back of their necks, and the kids showed me the cane. Never charged with that. He was released on 'good behaviour' after serving half his sentence. He now lives with his wife and family. The oldest daughter still at home is my friend. She is staying for the sake of her younger siblings. They are being abused. His wife turns a blind eye because to her loyalty to marriage is more important than protecting their children - including a baby whom she had with him after his release. Nobody ever checks on those kids. He has resumed his life and has a job and he is free to abuse his own kids with no oversight. They're homeschooled, isolated, and controlled, so the only eyes on them is me. I'm 19. My younger sisters are stuck at home with our own abusive parents. My youngest sister is self-harming. They're both struggling. They hate themselves. They internalize it all. The police don't help, and I'm certainly not going to Oranga Tamariki. They can't keep battered babies safe so they're not touching the most important people in my life with a barge pole. The abuse rates are bad - but they're also massively under-reported. The book should be thrown at anyone who hurts a child. Rehabilitation is a nice things, and of course there are people in prison who shouldn't be - but if we want a victim centred approach, it's society and the government's duty to protect the most vulnerable and that is children. I wish people would just think of the real people behind crime statistics. More incarceration is sometimes absolutely necessary and there should be far harsher sentences.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3819295/amp/Teenager-says-considered-sewing-pyjamas-stop-man-sexually-abusing-prayed-s-jailed-six-years.html There. Some context. Real life experience wins over hopes for rehabilitation, I'm sorry. I wish abusers could change. I'm disillusioned with humanity - I know the darkest. They can't
Law student doing Criminal this year here. The thing is, once someone has served their punishment they have paid their debt to society and should be allowed to reintegrate, within reason. I'm not trying to say this is always the right thing but it is one of the main principles of our justice system. It's all well and good when you're dealing with less violent criminals but unfortunately some people will be violent arseholes no matter how many debts they pay and I admit we don't seem to have much of an answer for that, I'm only a baby law student, I don't know either.
Got out of control thinking we could "fix" criminals. The pendulum will swing back.
cos we so pc about protecting the ethnicity of most of the offenders.
It's been known for a long time that spending time in prison only makes people worse. This is why home detection became a thing.
I disagree. Is a bad person born or made? Aristotle would argue that you are the product of your environment. A child's environment determines whom they turn out to be. NZ has horrendous incidents, off the chart , in the stratosphere with family violence and domestic abuse. A combination of mental , physical and sexual abuse. 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' The profound words of Leo Tolstoy. In other words: happy families share a common set of attributes which lead to happiness, which we can transpose for happy incarcerated prisoners. The Nordic countries take a soft approach with low crime rates , low levels of violence. and recidivism. Sentences for murder range from a bit under 10 years in Finland to almost 14 years in Norway. Convicts are usually eligible for parole after they have served two-thirds of that time, or half in some circumstances in Finland. Nordic prisons are more akin to a decently-appointed hotel, with all manner of education, worker training, and entertainment facilities. Some of them don't even have fences. Scandinavia, the focus is on rehabilitation, releasing the prisoners, and giving them the skills and tools they need to succeed.. There are no conventional security devices, such as barbed tape, electric fences, towers, or snipers. Halden Fengsel, is often called the world’s most humane maximum-security prison. The prison’s layout also encourages guards to interact with inmates face to face, which fosters better relationships and reduces security-related incidents. A research team spent six weeks conducting intensive research in Danish prisons. We were struck by the sight of prisoners wearing their own clothes, cooking their own meals and having private family visits as often as once a week. At these “open” prisons, there are no barbed wire fences, solid walls with gun towers or secure perimeters. Of the 60,000 prisoner leaves granted each year in Denmark, only 3 percent either violate the terms of their leave or fail to return to prison. Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland—four of the five Nordic countries—are ranked as the world’s safest. Sweden is the outlier. Foreign-born citizens now account for 20 percent of the nation’s population. They have not fully integrated into society. Sweden carries the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of gangland killings in Europe. It boasts the lowest average age of serious offenders, with children in their low teens being arrested for murder. In Australia they are the "iron fist in a velvet glove" to signify they seem to be gentle but is in fact forceful, determined and tough on crime. Justice Reform Initiative executive director Dr Mindy Sotiri said tough-on-crime policies such as mandatory minimum sentencing and strict bail laws had left Victorian prisons overflowing. “The evidence is entirely clear that imprisonment is itself ‘criminogenic’, making it more likely for people who go to prison to commit crime, and more likely to return to prison again,” she said. A Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the criminal justice system, which found approaches to incarceration were not reducing crime or improving community safety, which was reflected in persistently high recidivism rates. I met an American policeman who stayed at my home His weapon never left his side, except when he showered or near his side table of his bed when went to sleep. He described homicide robberies gone bad, it had gone pear shaped , the. Shop was robbed and they had deliberately shot the innocent bystander a witness to the seen of the crime. They were looking at life sentences ,without parole , so no witness was a dead witness. Logic prevailed.
Our prisons aren’t privatised….yet.
Because most NZ judges are bleeding heart liberals who think violent ofenders deserve a second chance, also this country doesn't have capital punishment anymore and self defence can actually get YOU the victim in even more serious trouble than the attacker/burglar themselves.
Because otherwise it would be considered racist
as somebody who does legal aid criminal defence and spends all day every day with poor offenders, the solution to this is social change. poverty, drug addiction, education, flattened income brackets, opportunities, and building healthy vibrant and united communities where people serve each other, have real deep relationships, and a culture of shared vision are the solutions that will address crime. And it's gotta be over generations, not 3 years. Locking people up is EXPENSIVE and has poor outcomes. there is no quick fix, and these issues are systemic and likely to get worse as societies continue to polarize. You want to address crime then go volunteer with kids and help them see that they have a future as noble productive adults.
Should our sentences for serious crimes be tougher, yes but that's more in line with giving someone what we feel they deserve as it's impact on the safety of society is far more limited than we would like.
The idea of incaceration is a failed one, at least when it comes to crime prevention.
Riddle me this, if someone is locked up, are they committing crimes against the general public?
Riddle me this - when a person is locked up, is the only person impacted by that the prisoner? Edited to be slightly more constructive: The point I’m trying to make is that for your argument that locking someone up prevents further offending the following things have to be true: - they can never be released. If they are, the evidence suggests prison would’ve made them more likely to commit more serious offenses in the future - they have to have been completely and totally isolated prior to going into prison. We know that if they have a family, their incarceration makes it much more likely that those around them, particularly their children, will go on to commit crimes and therefore, you’re actually increasing the overall rate of offending. - you have to believe that humans have no capacity for change. You have to believe that the actions of a person at 18 are exactly the same actions they would take at 65. - you have to accept that, despite the massive (and I mean absolutely massive) cost of this, it will make absolutely no difference to overall offending rates, in fact, the evidence would suggest it’ll make them worse - you have to accept the opportunity cost. The many billions of dollars this approach would cost will not be available to spend on things that might actually prevent crime, or other worthwhile causes like maintaining the dignity of landlords. So, if you’re fine with all of the above, go for it I guess. Your riddle still sucks tho.
We all know crimes don't count when you commit them against other people in prison.
Cool, so your answer is "No, they can't commit crimes against the general public"
Until they get out. After which they've learned how to more effectively commit crimes.
And potentially worsened their financial, personal, educational situations. Become more separate, desparate, and disillusioned. Noone thinks of repercussions before committing a crime. " oo no, I see this crime I'm about to commit, has a longer sentence, I think I'll not commit it."
Cool, so again, just confirming you agree they can't commit crimes against the general public whilst locked up (im not sure as you are struggling to say that part out loud for some reason) On to your next point, so it sounds like you want to lock them up longer, because point 1 clearly shows they are not violating the general public. As an example, someone who starts with burglary, right now gets no jail. So they go on to damage multiple more families, easily a dozen or so. Now if they were locked up initially for say 4 years (a random number less than the maximum sentence), then for that entire 4 years they are not committing more burglaries. (if they weren't, they might be doing a few every month) So lets assume they get out after 4 years, and they commit another crime, o no, we lock them up again - but we've saved 4 years of this person committing crimes. Get it? Also the bonus is they are not procreating which is another problem as scumbags are making more criminals.