Labour has dumped its target to keep the country’s prison population 30 per cent lower than 2017 levels, should it secure re-election next month.
“We don’t have a target for the next term.” Prime Minister Chris Hipkins stated in response to questions today.
Under Labour, incarceration rates have plummeted from 213 people per 100,000 in 2018, near the highest in the OECD, to 149 per 100,000 today, although victims of crime have increased 12 per cent.
Labour’s reforms were part of an overall goal to reduce the prison population 30 per cent by 2033 but it’s achieved that 10 years early.
Asked if today’s pivot was because the problem was fixed, or because of criticism linking the reduced prison population to increased crime, Hipkins replied, “Our overall goal here is to reduce offending in the first place.”
National swiftly reacted, with Corrections spokesperson Mark Mitchell slamming the dead policy.
“For the past six years, Labour has focused on emptying out New Zealand’s prisons rather than trying to reduce crime,” Mitchell said.
“The Prime Minister’s admission today that Labour will finally ditch its disastrous target to reduce the prison population by 30 per cent is too late for Kiwis who feel unsafe in their homes, businesses and communities.”
Mitchell accused Hipkins of making the change without consulting Labour’s deputy leader and Corrections Minister, Kelvin Davis, although Davis defended the move while speaking to teaonews.co.nz.
“When we became government at the end of 2017, our prisons were bursting at the seams,” he said.
“That was a trajectory the New Zealand public would never accept, so we set a goal to reduce the prison population.”
“That has now largely been achieved, the crisis has been averted, and we have now moved on to focusing on other areas, namely rehabilitation and reducing recidivism,” Davis said.
Davis pointed out the reduction has been achieved without changing sentencing laws but conceded dumping what he said was National and Act’s ‘flawed’ Three Strikes law, enacted in 2010.
“That was removed because there was no evidence to show it increased public safety and actually made it harder to rehabilitate offenders,” Davis said.
The majority of the reduction in the prison population had come from those locked up for non-violent offences, such as drug offending, Davis argued.
“Community-based sentences are part of a modern justice system,” he added, arguing that community sentences had been stagnant for a decade.
Mitchell criticised Labour’s timing, stating, “For Labour to now try to quietly ditch its prison reduction target just days out from an election shows how desperate Labour has become to pretend the last six years never happened.”
Mitchell laid out National’s approach.
“We’ll introduce stronger sentences for convicted criminals by limiting the ability of judges to reduce sentences, making gang membership an aggravating factor, restoring Three Strikes, and ending taxpayer funding for cultural reports,” he said.