John MacDonald: More prison beds or more commonsense needed?

ACT leader David Seymour wasn’t eating pies on TV last night like the other party leaders. But he was spitting tacks about dangerous criminals not being locked-up in prison.

He was out promoting his party’s law and order policy and, if I was to sum up the message he was trying to get across, it would be this: “More people should be in prison”.

Now I don’t necessarily agree that there should be more people behind bars. But we sure as hell need to get things in order and make sure the people who should be locked up are locked up.

So the policy ACT is pushing has a few elements to it. As well as spending $1 billion on 500 more prison beds, Seymour’s crew want to make sure that the justice system focuses more on the victims of crime, and less on the criminals themselves.

And they’ll get no argument from me on that front. A brilliant part of ACT’s policy is this idea of the Crown stepping-in if crims are slow or fail to make reparation payments to their victims.

Because, let’s face it, whenever you see a report in the media saying a judge has ordered someone to pay reparation, you do wonder to yourself how likely it is that that’s actually going to happen.

I do. And, obviously if ACT has come up with this idea as part of its law and order policy, then I must be on the money and there must be a truckload of victims not getting the reparation they deserve when they should be getting it or if at all.

So, yes, this would mean the taxpayer jumping-in and coming to the rescue when crims fail to do what they’re ordered to do by the courts. But why should the victims of crime suffer any more than they have already? It’s a great idea.

As for the ‘more people behind bars’ thing that ACT is pushing. I think we could be a bit smarter on this.

What I would do, is make prison automatic for anyone who behaves violently towards people or property.

Because if someone was to ask you whether you feel safe or not, I bet it would come down to your sense of physical safety.

Scammers, for example. They can be devastating for people who fall for their text messages or emails or automated phone calls saying “hey, it’s your bank here” or “hey, it’s your power company here”.

But what they do doesn’t threaten our physical safety.

Just like any fraudster, really. They are a threat to our financial security but not our physical security.

So, instead of just going holus-bolus and spending $1 billion on 500 more prison beds, wouldn’t it be better to have some very clear non-negotiables when it comes to who actually belongs behind bars?

And, for me, that would be anyone who is violent towards people and property. So your ram-raiders, people involved in family harm crimes, any form of sexual crime, bank robbers, service station robbers, carjackers, home invaders…all of them. I’m in no doubt that anyone involved in those sorts of crimes don’t belong in society.

Which may very well mean we still need more prison beds, as ACT is pushing for. But maybe we wouldn’t.

Because, what if we decided that anyone who commits a crime that doesn’t threaten our physical safety were the ones who got to wear the ankle bracelet and serve their time on the couch at home?

Who would they be? Well, I suppose if we were to give them a label, it would be white-collar criminals.

The people who come up with elaborate scams to rip-off their employers. Or the ones who rip off government departments for things like COVID support of welfare payments.

It seems nuts, doesn’t it, that if we’re running out of room at our prisons, these people are taking up space and other, more dangerous people, are out on home detention.

One example - the guy who did the shootings on the building site in Auckland recently. He was on home detention after violently assaulting his partner. Under my approach, he wouldn’t have been on Home D, he would’ve been in prison. Because what he did was act violently towards a person.

So that’s where I’d start. Making sure that the criminals who are a threat to our personal safety, are taken out of circulation. And only having home detention an option for the crims who aren’t a threat to our physical safety.

Maybe then, we might not need 500 more prison beds.

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