Hon Jim Anderton

Member of Parliament for Wigram

Progressive Leader

17 July 2009 Media Statement

How to reduce prison populations.

There are too many people in prison and the Chief Justice is right to raise the issue, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton says.

But he says the only viable way to reduce prison overcrowding is to reduce the level of crime by targeting drugs and alcohol.

“Longer prison sentences are not making much difference.

“The Chief Justice’s comments are the latest of a flurry this year looking at the justice system: Pita Sharples wants to build special Maori prisons for Maori offenders. The government wants to build prisons out of shipping containers. The next step will be putting containers on a container ship and shipping them offshore.

“All of these ideas are looking at the wrong end of the problem. Early intervention works best and costs less.

“If you intervene early, you don’t have as many victims, and you don’t need to worry about locking people up or letting them out.

“Three out of five offences are committed while the offender is under the influence of alcohol. If you want to cut crime, you can’t go past that figure.

“The government made big promises about significantly cutting serious offending. It won’t keep that promise, because it won’t do anything about the most common factor in criminal offending.

“Reducing the abuse of alcohol is a tough issue to fix. Until it is fixed, crime rates will remain high, more prisons will be built in local neighbourhoods, we will pay higher taxes to build them, they will continue to be overcrowded and they will continue to fail.”

ENDS

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