Greg Newbold’s ‘Nothing Works’ Approach to Justice Reform

Greg Newbold’s interview on yesterday’s Radio NZ Panel, marks him out as probably the only New Zealand criminologist who believes that ‘Nothing Works’, said Kim Workman, adjunct research associate at the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University. “It was one of the most insightful and revealing radio interviews I have heard, and explains why he is a member of the Department of Corrections Academic Advisory Committee. ”

In about ten minutes we learned that;

• Most of the people attending the Justice Summit were not criminologists and knew nothing about crime;

• The 700 people attending had nothing better to do for two days;

• There was no country in the world that had a recidivism rate half that of New Zealand. Denmark’s reoffending rate of 28% is obviously a fiction. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/the-danish-prison-system

• There is no such thing as a ‘Māori mind’ – we all think the same;

• The Minister’s goal of reducing the prison population by 30% over 15 years is unachievable

• We need to build more prisons

It has driven me to review my own research, including a recent discussion paper on ‘Downsizing Prisons’, which cited research showing that New York, New Jersey, and California – have achieved prison population reductions in the range of 25% over the last decade, and have seen their crime rates decline at a faster pace than the national average. [The Sentencing Project: Policy Brief: Fewer Prisoners, Less Crime: A Tale of Three States, 2015] Or another discussion paper showing what happens when government builds a mega prison.

I blame the bizarre notion that we might learn something if we listen to people other than criminologists, (such as prisoners, victims and gang members) on Bill English. In 2014, in a speech to the Institute of Public Administration, he urged public servants to focus more strongly on clients and customers, warning;

The public service and politicians run the risk of losing respect for the people for whom we are providing services. To combat that, we will increasingly ask, “Do we really understand the nature of our interaction with the general public, and our customers?” “Do we really understand how the behaviour of public institutions impacts on those people, and have we asked them?”

He then went on to speak of the importance of treating prisoners as customers:

… That is going to mean more sitting down and understanding our customers, for example the newly-released prisoner who is potentially a very expensive individual in our community because he is likely to end up back in a very expensive system. Do we know how he thinks and what his aspirations are?

References

The Sentencing Project: Policy Brief: Fewer Prisoners, Less Crime: A Tale of Three States, 2015

Downsizing Prisonshttps://www.criminologycollective.nz/2018/02/28/downsizing-prisons/

A New Zealand Mega-prison – will it workhttps://www.criminologycollective.nz/2018/03/05/a-nz-mega-prison-will-it-work/

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