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A Land Fit for Criminals

This comprehensive and frankly outstanding book is by former British probation officer David Fraser, who has over thirty years experience of Britain's justice and prison systems, and gives an account of the ideologically driven changes over the last fifty years and the disatrous results, backed by copious statistics and graphs

A Land Fit for Criminals

is an epic refutation of the propaganda and lies disseminated by the anti prison movement. It demonstrates that the move away from imprisonment in Britain over the last 50 years has been driven not by sound research based on reality, but wishful thinking and naive ideologies. Although it describes the British situation, it is strikingly similare to what we have exprienced here in New Zealand.

Large chunks of the book are eerily accurate descriptions of the New Zealand experience, only the names would need to be changed! Therefore the points that David Fraser makes with respect to the British "justice" system are very much applicable to New Zealand, and any New Zealander who wants to know what has gone wrong here in the last 50 years and how to put it right need to read this book.

His suggested remedy is simple and to the point - the only way to protect society from the predations of repeat offenders is imprisonment. No other solution is anything like as effective in preventing reoffending. This will not be a popular view amonst those currently in power.

The current approaches that attempt to drive prison populations down are driven not only by ideology but by misguided attempts to save taxpayer money - failing to recognise that impriosnment often actually saves the taxpayer money due to it's incapacitative effect, and that all other punishments, such as probation, parole, community service etc have nothing like the same incapacitative effect.

He does emphasise the importance of early intervention in families - the most successful interventions are those that take place before the age of five! This is completely in line with local and other findings as elaborated in Justice with Both Eyes Open. If rehabilitation is to be effective it needs to take place before patterns of criminal offending are fully established.