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Archived Press Releases 2006 5th March 2006

Punishment, Work and “fear” must be reintroduced to prisons

(5th March 2006)

Governments are historically and notoriously bad at running prisons, and should hand the running of New Zealand prisons over to private enterprise, according to a prominent justice watchdog organization.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust were commenting after revelations by one of this country’s most appalling child abusers that she smoked P and downloaded porn on her cell phone while in jail.

33 year old Rachealle Namana who was convicted of killing 23 month old Lillybing in 2001 and was paroled in 2005 also said that she has not been rehabilitated and was not confident she would stay out of jail.

Trust spokesman Garth McVicar said Namana's comments confirm what the Trust has been saying; "Rehabilitation is a figment of the imagination of a bunch of bureaucratic academics in Wellington who had created a mystique around the prison system to ensure their gravy-train jobs continued."

Punishment, work and “fear” must be reintroduced into the Corrections system and prisons must be run on a user pays basis. The escalation in violent crime and spiraling prison population are confirmation that the 30 year politically-correct social experiment has been a total disaster for New Zealand, McVicar said. "The cost in human terms with child abuse running rampant and thousands of innocent law-abiding Kiwis becoming crime victims every year --not to mention the burgeoning dollar costs -- are unacceptable".

Mr McVicar said he and the Minister of Corrections had just returned from a trip to Europe to look at alternative prison and corrections systems; "In London all new prisons since 1995 have been financed, built and managed by private enterprise, and all the comparable figures are extremely favourable".

"With the $140 million blow-out in building of new prisons and the recent exposure that current rehabilitation programs are a disastrous and dismal failure we see no alternative to private management of New Zealand’s Prison and Corrections system".

"New Zealand is uniquely placed to lead the world in the fight against crime and burgeoning prison populations. but it is patently obvious that this will not occur under a State run prison system.

Regards,

Garth McVicar
National Spokesperson,
Sensible Sentencing Trust.