Lindsay Mitchell Covers NZ's Plummeting Prison Population
December 18, 2022
PHOTO: https://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/
here are various possible explanations for the reduction including demographic change, policy changes in police and justice procedures, and/or less imprisonable crime being committed. Government politicians claim less crime is being committed, especially by youth, “according to the statistics”. But the statistics they use - apprehension, prosecution and conviction - rely on those activities actually occurring. If the police are instructed not to pursue a fleeing vehicle, then the ensuing apprehension etc. is less likely to happen.
When Labour became government Kelvin Davis stated a goal of reducing the prison population and set about doing so. This is one policy goal they’ve actually achieved. But at what cost?
The prison population reduced by over twenty percent between September 2019 and 2022. It could be said that one in five people who should be in prison are not so it’s hardly surprising the country is experiencing a “crime wave”. But that proposition is barely provable.