Angela Davis
June 28th, 2007 at 9:24 am by David FarrarSome of the far left have been swooning with excitment over the visit of Angela Davis to NZ. So who is Angela Davis?
Well she is the ideal unimpeachable minority as a female African-American lesbian communist. That by itself must make her a hero.
But hold on a second you say. Is she really a communist, or are you placing that label on her?
Well the fact she stood for as the Communist Party candidate for Vice-President of the United States means we can probably be reassured she is or at least was a communist. And we are not talking back in the 1950s but in 1980 and 1984. And up until 1987 the US Communist Party was funded by Moscow with an annual US$3 million a year or so.
But hold on again you say? Maybe she was one of those good nice communists? The ones who stood up to the Stalinist empire? Well not according to Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
According to Solzhenitsyn, a group of Czech dissidents “addressed an appeal to her: `Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You have such great authority now. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those people in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?’ Angela Davis answered: ‘They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.’”
Her specialist area is prisons. She has a simple solution. She wants them abolished. Yep. So is this now official Green party policy?
Liberty Scott blogs on Davis also.
Related posts:
- Congratulations Angela
- Davis staying behind
- Davis endorses Shane Jones to be next Labour Leader
- HoS on Barlow’s release
June 29th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Yes I mentioned her earlier this month as her upcoming arrival was heralded by the following groups:
Amokura, Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga, Va’aomanū Pasifika: Samoan Studies and Pacific Studies, Te Kawa a Maui: Maori Studies, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University.
She became famous for being linked to the murder of a prominent judge and as a result went underground to avoid arrest. She was caught and then let go and is now pretty much a raving lunatic giving speeches about radicalism and social “consciousness”.
Quite how she is allowed in NZ is another thing altogether.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 9:34 am
This reminds me of talking to a woman at the Socialist Unity party stall at the old Nambassa Festival back in about 79. She was harping on about the evils of capitlism and I asked her how many millions of people capitalists had exterminated in gulags. She blustered a lot and then said that the only thing Stalin did wrong was not kill enough counter-revolutionaries. This Davis woman sounds like her.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 9:49 am
They’re a collective Brian, they’re supposed to sound the same.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:22 am
So is this now official Green party policy?
John Key is meeting with senior administration officials in the US. Does that mean bombing other countries is now official National party policy? I know Brash wanted us to go to Iraq… In fact I bet it’s how they want to deal with Fiji – just kill the little darkies.
Oh hang on, no it doesn’t. Meeting people, even liking people, doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or endorse everything they’ve ever done.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:31 am
“Meeting people, even liking people, doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or endorse everything they’ve ever done.”
Wake up child, the only difference between Angela Davis and the bulk of the left is how honest they are concerning their intentions and whether they’re talking long term or short term.
The NZ Labour Party is riddled with “ex communists”, who often claim they have turned from their radical ideas, when the truth is they have merely agreed to pursue their totalitarian objectives in a more gradual manner.
Witness the threat that mainstream leftist politicians are to liberty, freedom of choice, free speech and democracy in the US today. (especially with their recent threats to shut down talk radio, after the failure of Air America of course)
They represent the same threat here in New Zealand. The left, all of them, only have one long term ambition and that is a totalitarian one party state. They aspire to the gradual crushing of every idea, every ideology, every person, every institution who stands in their way.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Witness the threat that mainstream leftist politicians are to liberty, freedom of choice, free speech and democracy in the US today.
I’m sorry, but wasn’t it the Republicans who supported the Homeland Security Act, possibly the biggest assault on freedom in the US ever?!
The left, all of them, only have one long term ambition and that is a totalitarian one party state. They aspire to the gradual crushing of every idea, every ideology, every person, every institution who stands in their way.
They need to ban whatever you’re on too. You can’t really believe that? The extreme left aside (which is just as crazy as the extreme right), most people just want to make NZ a better place to live, and to many of them it seems like capitalism and materialism is starting to crush ideas and individuality.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:50 am
“And up until 1987 the US Communist Party was funded by Moscow with an annual US$3 million a year or so.”
Yes, and up to the 1990s former head of Otago University’s Political Studies Department, Robert Catley, was a hard-core communist. Now he’s of the far-right.
So, if you’re going to try and smear someone you had better make it better than saying: “this person believed in something 20 years ago therefore they must still believe in it today”. That’s just distasteful mud-slinging.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Redbaiter:
“The NZ Labour Party is riddled with “ex communists”, who often claim they have turned from their radical ideas, when the truth is they have merely agreed to pursue their totalitarian objectives in a more gradual manner”
See my above post.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:00 am
So, if you’re going to try and smear someone you had better make it better than saying: “this person believed in something 20 years ago therefore they must still believe in it today”. That’s just distasteful mud-slinging.”
Ahhh roger…? DPF was just stating a fact.
“Witness the threat that mainstream leftist politicians are to liberty, freedom of choice, free speech and democracy in the US today. (especially with their recent threats to shut down talk radio, after the failure of Air America of course)
They represent the same threat here in New Zealand. The left, all of them, only have one long term ambition and that is a totalitarian one party state. They aspire to the gradual crushing of every idea, every ideology, every person, every institution who stands in their way.”
While I agree mostly with Libertarian comrade Redbaiter in his view of the Left its the threat posed by the Religious right that is the most pressing problem concerning freedom lovers in the US and else where right now
See this presentation for a horror story…
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1323,The-Present-Threat-of-the-Religious-Right-to-Our-Modern-Freedoms,Edward-Tabash
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:04 am
You want to see swoon?…..
Vote:Then wait until I hear Ann Coulter is arriving to reduce the collective to tears.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Well if Labour can solve the hospital waiting list problem by getting rid of the waiting patients, I’m sure they can solve the criminal problem by getting rid of prisons.
This woman may be an inspiration to ballbreakers everywhere but she is not on the same planet as common sense.
Put it down to two factors, anger and indoctrination.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Well, I went to hear her speak, and I don’t agree with her about a lot of things, and think she is more a celebrity than an academic, however, thre is something very wrong with the US Jail system. Her solution won’t work, but …
“The US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics announced Wednesday that the US prison and jail population, already the largest in the world, increased by 2.8 percent to reach over 2.2 million prisoners in 2006.
The report also found racial disparities among prisoners, with black males representing 37 percent of the prison population. More than 11 percent of black males between the ages of 25 and 34 are currently incarcerated, compared to 1.9 percent for Hispanics and 0.7 percent for white males. The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, with approximately 750 per 100,000 of the national population, representing approximately 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population despite despite only having 5 percent of the world’s population.”
Consider our own prisons- Maori make up 14% of the general population, yet over 50% of the prison muster. If we were living in a racially neutral society one would reasonable expect the Maori number of prisoners to be roughly proportionate to their numbers in the population.
They are not genetically more prone to crime (unless you hold some sort of weird unscientific social Darwinian views) so it would point to something going on in society.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:43 am
“Well if Labour can solve the hospital waiting list problem by getting rid of the waiting patients, I’m sure they can solve the criminal problem by getting rid of prisons.”
Damn, I was hoping you were going to say “by getting rid of criminals”.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:45 am
I heard Angela Davis lecture at Berkeley in the late sixties. At that time she was a member of the Black Panthers based in nearby Oakland. ( I was writing my thesis within the Oakland Project under Aaron Wildavsky at the time.)
Vote:I remember her as a tall (made even taller by her huge trademark Afro), beautiful, intelligent and witty speaker with that charisma which seems to come naturally to so many blacks at that time. (Is that a racist comment?). He theme as I recall was on the University system as the “third wing of the US penitentiary system”. The jails are the first wing and kept blacks in their place, the Vietnam army was the second wing and kept poor whites in their place, and the Universities were the third wing and kept rich white kids in their place.
Or words to that effect. This had been developed with one of her Black Panther colleagues who written “Soul Black” (or similar) about his time in jail for rape. HE went to Europe to escape US racism but came back dismayed to find that Europeans were far more racist “on the streets”.
Angela has shown a remarkable ability to survive and maintain high quality jobs within a system she so vigorously critizises. That is the American genius.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:53 am
“this person believed in something 20 years ago therefore they must still believe in it today”. That’s just distasteful mud-slinging.”
Roger nome, read the post. Read the article contained there-in. Doing so would have saved you from embarrassing yourself.
Love the closing of the article. “A veritable who’s who of the activist and radical communities in Aotearoa.”…..and it’s a suprise that this group want prisons abolished?
The police could have used the meetings as a sting operation for rounding up wayward crims. Would have saved us a fortune.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:54 am
The book was “Soul on Ice” by Eldridge Cleaver.
I heard Eldridge speak at Sproul Plaza at Berkeley too.
He and Angela were genuine soul mates – they could have been brother and sister.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
“I’m sorry, but wasn’t it the Republicans who supported the Homeland Security Act, possibly the biggest assault on freedom in the US ever?!”
You know what you need to do Ricky? read something other than extreme left bullshit. Inform yourself. If you really think that act, instituted in a time of war and internal subversion and terrorism, represents the biggest threat to freedom the US has ever faced you need to not only read a bit of history, you need to look at the rhetoric and long term ambitions of politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid etc.
Leaving aside the utter absurdity of a leftist trying to project the idea that they are concerned with individual freedoms, when every damn thing the left have ever done over the last four decades has been aimed at attacking the sovereignty of the individual and expanding the power of government.
The funny thing is, if a suitcase nuke ever goes off in LA, its commies like you and Nancy Pelosi who will be at the forefront of those pseudo-liberals who will be screaming that Bush didn’t do enough.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
“I’m sorry, but wasn’t it the Republicans who supported the Homeland Security Act, possibly the biggest assault on freedom in the US ever?!”
Surely the McCarthy inquisition would be at least a close second.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
And there are a few fuckers in NZ who champion Angela Davis, such as Maia Capitalism Bad & Tree Pretty While Living on The Dole.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Nah, not the first or second biggest assault on freedom comrades….
You must recall the Californian Gulags where millions were worked and starved to death…
Vote:All in the name of capitalism.
June 29th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
What else would you expect from the Utopian New Zealand Green Party, as I mean advice and listening to another fellow comrade ! Welcome to the ism machine !
This fiasco must stop !
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I had read the article CraigM – it gives no indication that she’s still a communist at all.
DPF poses the hypothetical question from a third-person perspective:
“But hold on a second you say. Is she really a communist, or are you placing that label on her?”
He then goes on to say that she used to be a communist 20 years ago, but fails to say that this in no way proves that she’s still a communist. I simply pointed this out.
So what’s your problem?
BTW: in the event that I am banned for posting this (which is a very real possibility seeing as I’m banned from this blocked on average, i’d say about every five times i post), I might ask David to consider the quote from frog-blog on the page he links to above.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
she is the ideal unimpeachable minority as a female African-American lesbian communist
Not so, DPF. According to the Socialist Unthink Manual (Vol IV) the ideal unimpeachable minority is a disabled female black lesbian communist. And it would help if she were a whale though I believe this is not compulsory.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Roger nome, maybe you read it, maybe you didn’t. Maybe we just have a differing opinion on her political leanings. She may no longer be a member of the communist party (due to internal politics, not her beliefs) but she is still clearly & proudly, a lefty of the most left leaning kind. If it walks like a duck & quacks like a duck…..
DPF’s original comment is accurate.
“…Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (2007-07-20). Davis points to Cuba as an example of a country which successfully addresses social and economic problems. In her view democracy and socialism are more compatible than democracy and capitalism. [19]
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Comrades, another appalling assault on freedom in the US has come to notice.
George “Pol Pot“ Bush is a capitalist running dog who not only searched data bases for enemy activity but killed 2 million people in some fields and has a big collection of skulls.
But how do we protect our data bases?…… I hear you ask.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
RickyJJ and Mickeybill
Say what you want about US incarceration rates, you cannot deny the decline in crimes across the board in the US over the last 10 years compared to increases in similar crimes in New Zealand. Growing up in NZ I felt safe due to what was a low crime rate and the US rates back then were high. Now the roles have been reversed as the following stats reveals
NZ from http://www.stats.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/7D5A6256-3D51-4F8E-ADF3-C0FC0B55D66B/0/CrimeinNewZealand19962005.pdf
US from http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm which are lifted straight from the FBIs figures
All figures per 10,000 population
1. Vehicle Theft (US)/Car Conversion (NZ term)
US ’95: 56 US ’05: 41.6 Change:-26%
NZ ’96: 139.2 NZ ’06: 90.6 Change: -35%
Current differential: NZ 85% higher car theft rate
2. Burglary
US ’95: 98.7 US ’05: 72 Change: -27%
NZ ’96: 139.2 NZ ’06: 90.6 Change: -35%
Current differential: NZ 26% higher burglary rate
3. Aggravated Assault
US ’95: 41.8 US ’05: 29.1 Change:-30%
NZ ’96: 44.7 NZ ’06: 52.7 Change: +18%
Current differential: NZ 79% higher aggravated assault rate
4. Rape (US)/Sexual attacks (NZ)
US ’95: 3.71 US ’05: 3.2 Change:-14%
NZ ’96: 5.9 NZ ’06: 6.0 Change: 2%
Current differential: NZ 87% higher rape rate
5. Murder (US)/Homicide (NZ)
US ’95: 0.82 US ’05: 0.56 Change:-32%
NZ ’96: 0.23 NZ ’06: 0.2 Change: -13%
Current differential: US 64% higher murder rate
Please note that p 47 of the NZ Stats Dept survey has complete definitions of each crime type and the FBI website in various locations has the US definitions. In all categories detailed, the definitions are very similar.
There have been declines in some NZ crime stats but with the property related crimes, NZ rates are still higher than the US. Rapes see divergent stats with NZ much higher than the US. Only in the area of murders does the US outstrip NZ but heading in the right direction. You can also see the ratio of murders to agg assaults in 06 in NZ is 263:1 and the US equivalent ratio in 05 is 289:1 so murder, even in the US, is a relatively rare crime. Aggravated assaults and personal property crimes affect quality of life far more.
Now these figures are for the whole of the US and are affected negatively by the high crime rates in a handful of large cities like Baltimore, OH or Washington DC. When you take a state like Minnesota with a population only slightly larger than NZ and with a similar urban/rural split, the differential is even more stark with Minnesota crime rates pretty much half the US average across the board.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
That quote is possibly the most vile I have ever heard.
For the greens to support anyone who has ever said anything like that is astounding. They have no place in a free parliament.
Oh: her point about the vietnam war is complete and utter bull. Blacks were only allowed into fighting positions in any sort of numbers during the vietnam war, due to manpower shortages(not enough whites to fight).
Funnily enough, they found the black man to be at least as good as his white counterpart.
So what ended up happening is lack participation in the Vietnam war being a major factor in reducing racism.
But don’t let facts get in the way of a good leftist conspiracy theory.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
The US has 2% of the male population in prison.
Vote:In NZ that would make about 40,000 prisoners.
maybe ideology aside , she is right as far as the US goes
June 29th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Selma
Lefties like you just don’t get it. The stats are right for sure but you are ignoring the hugely positive impact of demonstrably lower crime rates that have led to increased quality of life in almost all US cities. Voters here don’t have a problem with the incarceration rates because they see the benefits.
NZ’s crime stats are have worsened for the most serious crimes and this effects quality of life. I feel less safe in central Christchurch now at 1am on a Fri night than the same time in New York. A combination of wishy washy left ideological thinking over time dominating the Corrections Dept, Police Dept and Parole Board combined with weaker laws and more serious underfunding of police have all combined to bring about this shocking reversal in the crime situation vis a vis the US.
So your celebrity commie speaker can say what she likes, she represents the extreme hard left of American thought and is far from the mainstream of middle America on this and I’m sure most other issues.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Hmmm….don’t tell me, let me guess….
They’re in prison because they did crimes.
Is it that obvious?
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Roger Nome:
“Yes, and up to the 1990s former head of Otago University’s Political Studies Department, Robert Catley, was a hard-core communist. Now he’s of the far-right.”
Ahhh wrong there mate. I’m a mate of Bobs and that is not true at all. He was acting head for about a year and while he was a member of Bob Hawkes government, he was not a commie. I introduced the guy to Roger Douglas myself and he had been a supporter of his from the late 80s. Before that, Bob had been on the sensible side of the left, drifting rightwards on more occasions than not. When he was in Russia, he did his best telling them how much worse they were than even the most oppressed black Americans under communism.
Get your facts right.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
It’s so distasteful to see the mindless flailing of someone because for seeing beyond prisons. Regardless of Davis’s credentials, what’s the big problem with trying to think of better ways of dealing with crime? Is there really anyone here who believes that prison – with its great personal disruption and taxpayer cost – is anything but a monumental waste of resources except in those few cases where an individual represents an immediate threat to law-abiding citizens?
Ironically, many of you are the same people who criticise Corrections for its perceived failings – without making any allowance for the rapid and ongoing stress brought about by a simple-minded “lock ‘em up” policy.
Despite the media-bias and the lazy repetition of Mr Power’s fulsome slanders of Corrections, our prison system has coped well in recent years in spite of the destabilising growth in prisoner numbers. By virtually any measure, Corrections is tangibly better at its business than it was over a decade ago. But there is a limit to its capacity to absorb uncontrolled growth. OK, cracks are now starting to appear in the Department’s operation. That’s due in part by the rapid uncontrolled growth and the rock-bottom morale of continually being pilloried by under-informed bigots.
It’s time to stop locking up Maori at one of the highest per capita rates in the World and to start thinking about new ways of dealing with crime in New Zealand. It’s good that at least one of the mainstream parties is willing to risk the kind of knee-jerk opprobrium displayed here today and to think about alternatives. OK, Davis has a history, but what ideas has she got? Where’s the harm in that? Where’s the debate about the policy issue? The closest you get is to denounce Davis as being a nutbar because she dares suggest that there has to be an alternative to imprisonment.
You can tell most of you have never visited a prison or worked with criminals. You talk to virtually anyone in the justice sector from judge through to prisoner, prison officer through to community liaison worker – and you will find a broad consensus that prison is not an effective solution to the problem of criminality. In most cases, prison is an expensive and deleterious intervention.
The only people in the justice system who have any time for prison as a broad solution to crime are dyed in the wool old school cops who simply want vengeance against arseholes.
Prison should be reserved for the worst of the worst. It’s too costly in human and economic terms to waste on the broad expanse of jerks and pissant crims.
Rather than spend your time dumping on Davis and the Greens for daring to think outside of the square. Why not think about the substantive issue? You’re supposed to be conservatives, why not start worrying about all of the millions of dollars wasted on mediaeval retribution? Why not start thinking about ways of really making crims learn lessons and have to “pay” for their crimes.
Fuck it…I hear the click of a thousand arthritic knees being jerked…I am probably wasting my time with you lot.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Rexion I think not, as I think our justice system needs a radical rethink . There is a better way .
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
ditto
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
ditto
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Oh of course Rexion. Although dear Angela thought it was most appropriate to keep the dissenters of Soviet Russia locked away and the key thrown away. I think that most people here are more concerned about that than her somewhat “radical” prison theories.
Her supporters are hardly the kind of people that you would think were normal middle of the road people, unless you think Stalinist sympathisers are normal :>
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
“Fuck it…I hear the click of a thousand arthritic knees being jerked…I am probably wasting my time with you lot.”
Ah the intellectual superiority of the left.
Thinking outside the square is one thing re. justice/prisons etc. Knee jerk (pun intended) leftist posturing for an untenable position is another.
Vote:June 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Untenable? America has criminalised and incarcerated a huge chunk of young black male population – devastating families and whole communities. The cost of this prison industry in America is tremendous. While America can trade its way through its massive over-expenditure, maintaining this crazy situation may seem tenable. But really, it’s short term thinking. It’s a textbook untenable position.
Same goes for New Zealand. For our size we desperately over-incarcerate young, maori males. For what benefit? It doesn’t stop criminality – it exacerbates it. It doesn’t cost less than alternatives – it costs several hundred times more. It’s not good for teaching these kids real skills and training to become better people – it fucks them up. It doesn’t stop gang culture – it creates an incubator for gang activity and recruitment.
Who gives a fuck what this woman says, really. It’s the idea about prison reform that you should be focusing on.
I’m fucking left wing for daring to challenge the status quo when it comes to our penal policy? If you could only manage to get past your own prejudice you would see that this is conservative issue.
Anyone who wants crims to pay – that is have genuine remorse and make amends as best they can – would not use prisons.
Anyone worried about runaway government expenditure should be railing against the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the prison system for an almost overwhelmingly negative result – would not back prisons.
These are conservative issues, matey jake. But (most) of you guys can’t see that – because you got a hard on about some black, lesbian communist and the fact the Watermelons might actually have fallen arse backward into a good policy point.
You know, not everything the Greens say is stupid. That kind of unthinking oppositional thinking is just dumb. Similarly, the fact that some black activist is saying some of the same things doesn’t make the fundamental point wrong.
Hell, I bet you guys and the Greens and Angela Davis can agree that the sky is blue and the trees are green. Why the fuck is it then that the word prison gets mentioned and your stupidity and prejudice kick into over-drive.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Actually they did have a point.
Vote:as suggested in the comments you could just give them enough drugs to leave us alone.
Imagine the worst offender who has just beaten their child to death with a baseball
I’m thinking very strong drugs that make it almost imposible to stand up and absolutely impossible to hurt anyone.
I dont care if they are “feel god drugs” just as long as their brain looks like one of those eggs after a few doses.
June 30th, 2007 at 12:09 am
“Anyone who wants crims to pay – that is have genuine remorse and make amends as best they can – would not use prisons.”
Damn right I wouldn’t, I’d use a firing squad. Its not my fucken job to re-adjust the thinking patterns of adults whose parents have brought them up to be pathological misfits. Its not my job to deal with the barbaric behaviour of sub human knuckle draggers with no conception of morality. Its not my job to rehabilitate at cost to my own family the psychotic mass murderers or those who kill and abuse our children. Fuck em. Live by the sword, die by the sword. The death penalty is the paramount enforcer. Without it, there is no real justice. Without it, there is no real deterrent.
The left have spent decades breaking down the moral barriers that bound society into a cohesive unit, and now they want us to pick up the pieces of their failed social experiment. there’s only one way to do it, and that’s get really tough, and only back off once the social moral standards that were the most effective barrier to crime have been restored.
Everything else is just more useless bullshit, the kind of feel good crap that Rexion spouts might make him feel morally superior but in practice, with all the money, all the time, all the people, in terms of any meaningful reduction in crime levels, its never achieved sweet fuck all.
You want to “rehabilitate” the people who did this??
http://www.observationdeck.org/weblogs/vault/?page_id=26
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Rexion, I have a problem with prison, dont get me wrong. The main problem is, the fuckers are released. You demonstrate the fundamental flaw in leftist ideology…..there are no bad people, its all societies fault. You can rehab all you want the murderers, rapist and paedeophiles and not make a bean of difference. Fact is I don’t care and neither do the majority of people and all your self serving hand wringing wont change a thing.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:17 am
Rexion, what’s your view on capital punishment?
Vote:You have pointed out that we waste too much on keeping people in prison. For people who will not reform a bullet is the logical course, if they are always going to be a threat to society they should never get the chance to cause harm.
June 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Rexion
Lots of warm fuzzy socialist utopian rhetoric I’m afraid. There isn’t a country in the world who have been able to successfully restrain recidivist criminals and Lord knows the Dutch and Swedish have sure spend millions trying. Prisons are hellishly awful places and they are not the preferred option I concur.
But the Americans have learned that keeping more nasty criminals off the streets for longer, surprise surprise reduces crime – and reduces it considerably. Check my earlier post – the statistics speak for themselves. It is a crock to say US incarceration rates are unsustainable. Aside from the distorted world view of radicals like Davis, there is no fiscal crisis in America due to building too many prisons. On the contrary, US voters keep voting for the bonds to build the prisons and for the politicians who pass the stricter laws that have led to the higher prison populations. Its called democracy and, unlike Davis’ communism, it mostly works because the people like that their communities are safer.
Because the left now so dominates the bureacracies, the universities, the media and the political process in NZ, you have all the ingredients for rising crime and little stomach for the raft of measures that most US cities and states have introduced that have led to lower crime. When a state like Minnesota with a population similar to NZ sports crime rates (except murder) a 1/4 of NZ, its time to look at a change. Your handwringing liberal recipe for prison reform is a guarantee of more of the same.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 8:27 am
KIA.
Its called democracy and, unlike Davis’ communism, it mostly works because the people like that their communities are safer.
Flat out lie. As I conclusivly proved a few weeks ago, the US still has the highest violent crime rates in the OECD by a considerable margin.
Worth reading what Nandor wrote:
I kind of read the demand for the abolition of prisons as a counterpoint to the unrestrained expansion of them. One of her arguments was that prisons are self perpertuating, and create the conditions for their own expansion, through the vested interests that make up the various elements of the prison industrial complex. Even corporations far removed, one would think, from penal policy gain significant advantage from becoming monopoly suppliers of clothing, services etc etc. That’s without touching on the expansion of private prison / security firms like Group 4 that I highlighted during the debates around the Corrections Act 2004. That’s why its important to think about how we might go about abolishing them.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 9:13 am
“Flat out lie. As I conclusivly proved a few weeks ago, the US still has the highest violent crime rates in the OECD by a considerable margin.”
The US crime rate is high in regions where such as you have managed to exert the most political influence Rag. Where you have exploited minorities or races for political advantage by inducing widespread welfarism and dependency, and where you have ruined the education system, and all this has given rise to a culture of drugs, violence and innate immorality.
Thew crime rate is extraordinarily high in all socialist countries, even your much lauded Scandinavia and in the UK and Australia and NZ. In Singapore, where citizens are encouraged to stand on their own two feet, crime is negligible.
If you look at holdout anti-progressive communities in for example the US, crime rates are low. Prison rates may be high, because its seen as the effective option, but crime is low. I know. I’ve lived in such regions, and I know you can walk the streets at night and leave your car in the street with the keys in the ignition and when you leave your house, you can leave the doors and windows open. (as you once could in NZ, before progressives became socially dominant here)
I’ve also lived in the places where Angela Davis and the likes of you have social ascendancy Rag, with barred windows and triple locks on the doors, and I know what disgusting barbaric communities they are.
So don’t preach to me about crime rates Rag. You’re the cause of crime Rag, you and your obsession with political power, and your willingness to exploit anyone and sacrifice their self respect and their hope and their right to a decent life, in order to achieve that power. Where progressives are politically ascendant, so is social disintegration, hopelessness, drug use and crime.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 9:47 am
What no arguments? Just “your leftist” this and “your leftist that”. What a bunch of minor league thinkers. Nice to see there are some who are willing to think outside of the current paradigm. And here’s the thing, I don’t have a clue (or care) where these commentators sit on the political spectrum. Why? Because this issue is not a simplistic left-right dichotomy. It’s been treated that way for decades and that’s precisely why we don’t make progress. Conservatives view any retreat from imprisonment as leftist weakness. The far left view incarceration as being unjustifiable. They’re both wrong. Incarceration works – if you’re trying to keep someone away from society. That’s what the far left can’t see: Incapacitation is where prison works. But it costs so much and creates so many negative externalities that this benefit should only be used in the most extreme cases. Why waste it on petty burglers or fine defaulters or marijuana smokers or deadbeat dads or..or…you can probably all come up with a group for whom prison is overkill. The thing is, they’re a significant proportion of the prison population. Take these out and you’re left with the hardest most violent and unpredictable individuals. This is where I would be happy incarcerating people. And I would agree with holding these people inside until they can demonstrate they no longer represent a risk to society using a much more stringent set of criteria than the current parole system uses.
The death penalty is fucking evil. For a start, no justice system is perfect and it would be inevitable that under such a system, innocent people would die. Research of death row cases in the US over the past thirty years has shown that at least 123 death row cases are doubtful – likely to be not-guilty. That’s an average of over three people a year over the past thirty years who potentially face wrongful execution. And I don’t know about you guys, but my moral compass says only one innocent death is too much.
For another thing, the death penalty – because it is applied in only some types of cases – is ethnically, gender and age discriminatory. I am not going to bang the institutionalised racism drum here. To be charitable, this skew is an artefact that young, black males (in the US) are disproportionately over-represented in the murder and severe rape crimes. For example, if you were to apply the death penalty in large-scale corporate fraud cases like Enron, for example, you would find the skew then favoured middle-aged, white males. But regardless the end effect of this is that the application of a death penalty results in disproportionate bias around race, age and gender. I confidently predict that if you were to apply a death penalty in New Zealand it would result in the disproportionate number of deaths of young, Maori males.
The final point about the death penalty is that it costs a lot to manage. Because of the zero-sum outcome of a capital case (you’re going to die or you’re going to live), there is an acknowledgement that the system would need to be wrapped in considerable layers of appeal and all manner of safeguards (interestingly, in spite of these safeguards, the US still has 123 doubtful positive cases). This costs a lot of money. IN fact, it costs more than straightforward life imprisonment. And if you start thinking about potential parole (even it is married with electronic monitoring) the cost of life of imprisonment drops even further. The only way to trim the cost of the death penalty is to remove all of the legal protections – which just means the State is more likely to be involved in state-sanctioned murder of innocent people.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Prison is nature’s way of telling you that you ARE responsible for your behaviour.
Vote:Which explains the left’s ideological problems on the matter.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:02 am
The rehabilitation argument is interesting. Kiwi in America says no country has been successful with rehabilitation.
Putting aside the scientifically validated evidence that some types of interventions can reduce recidivism (look up writers like Bonta and Andrews), every country successfully gets rehabilitative results if by rehabilitation you mean a reduction in the likelihood of recidivism as opposed to the more narrow interpretation (and the one used by Bonta and others) about interventions actively changing behaviour. You see, every country achieves reductions in recidivism because of age. As people age, across most types of offending, their likelihood of re-offending drops dramatically. The only group that conspicuously bucks this trend is paedophilia. Interestingly, though, New Zealand does have some of the best results in reducing recidivism in paedophiles using intensive therapy. So, you can invest in programmes to reduce recidivism and you can also get meaningful reductions in recidivism in serious violent offences by incapacitating offenders for most of their youth. Finally, it is clear that for most offenders, prison exacerbates not reduces the rate of reoffending. More constructive sanctions are likely to further reduce recidivism.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 10:06 am
RedRag
Please refer to the statistics I posted in this thread and advise which ones comprise the “lie” you accuse me of. Remember we’ve already had the definition argument in a previous thread and sorted that out.
Same to you Rexion
Vote:Please propose an alternative solution – one that works to keep societies safe, one that can actually be funded and one that has a hope of having the relevant laws to impliment it pass.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:33 am
“The death penalty is fucking evil”
I’m a moral subjectivist, so I see that as your moral position, not an objective fact.
“no justice system is perfect and it would be inevitable that under such a system, innocent people would die…”
People are wrongly imprisoned all the time, you have a way of giving them their lost years back? You have a way of determining their innocence or guilt at the end of their sentence so that these lost years can be returned to them?
“The final point about the death penalty is that it costs a lot to manage..”
NZ has spent a fortune on Hammed Zaowi, It’s not the severity of the death penalty that costs be the inefficency of the judicial system.
Capital punishment is used in the US as a “punishment”, in my opinion it shouldn’t be used to punish people for their crimes but rather simply to permanently remove those who will not stop hurting society through their crime. So It would only apply to residivist offenders, not to a one horrific crime where there might be less certainty who the perpetrator is but lots of baying for revenge.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Rexion, just more of the same old same old same old.. pseudo liberal assertion and distortion..
If your moral compass is so sensitive to the deaths and or victimisation of innocents, you would be calling for real solutions, not self serving candy floss academic bullshit that has more logic holes than I’ve got the time or inclination to deal with. You don’t have a clue, you’ll never have the solutions and its thru listening to prejudicial pseudo academic wafflers like you that we have ended up in this mess.
No matter how much of the same old trendy lame bullshit you write using all the buzz words like paradigm, dichotomy, externalities, zero-sum, (those terms that gall me so much and mark you clearly as an indoctrinated imbecile without one iota of imagination, initiative, common sense or (worst of all) the ability to think for yourself), the bottom line remains the same, and that is-
Society needs first of all to have within itself a strong moral code that is universally adhered to by all, and this code must be taught to each individual as the grow up, by their own parents. Not the state. Secondly, it needs a strong no nonsense justice system to reinforce that code of morality that ALREADY EXISTS within the community.
That Singapore has these two essentials is why it is comparatively crime free. Most socialist countries, where the social and political direction is dominated by Marxist ideology don’t have these two components and that is why they’re losing the battle.
You and your ilk Rexion by means of your stunted intellect and your diminished ability to reason and think critically, and your indoctrination with pseudo liberal academic bullshit, and the sad proliferation of such idiots in public life, are a major reason why so many countries do not have those essentials.
The sooner we stop listening to your kind of progressive garbage on this issue and so many other issues, the sooner the problem will be solved.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Thanks, Red. Thanks for reminding me that the most important feature of ignorance is the unwillingness to even listen to counter-arguments. Is there any room for anyone in your little solipsistic universe, I wonder? No, I guess not, we’re all just intellectual inferior communists.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Funny how the far-out claims made by socialists about capitalism always apply to socialism
instead…
Actually, it’s not funny at all.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 11:26 am
“No, I guess not, we’re all just intellectual inferior communists.”
As other posters here have pointed out, there is not one feel good scheme that has stood the test of a simple cost benefit analysis, yet still you people refuse to let go of your brainless schemes. Indoctrinated robots.
You have the blood of thousands of victims of crime on your hands. When are you going to start taking responsibility?
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Here’s a rehabilitation program that seems to work:
Vote:http://www.threestrikes.org/cag98_pgone.html
June 30th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Red, I am confused, you’re the one wanting to be a party to murder (advocating execution and hinting at summary justice too even when confronted with the prospect of a few innocent deaths). So, I am the one with blood on my hands? I am advocating making crims pay and for victims to figure more strongly in the equation – e.g. restorative alternatives to imprisonment. And don’t get high and mighty as if you’re on the side of angels. You and other mindless “it’s prison or chaos” dichotomists have no real interest in victims. You advocate prison because it makes YOU feel safer. It satisfies YOUR retributionist desires. And given prison actually creates higher levels of re-offending – those who advocate its extensive use are effectively creating more victims in the future. So, you pious git, let’s call a spade a spade. You don’t give a fuck about victims or reducing reoffending. Laughingly, you don’t even give a fuck about the cost to the taxpayer the burden of prison creates. All you care about is playing this game of insulting anyone who says “hang on, there’s got to be a better way” with cheap little insults and simple minded political sloganeering – or more aptly slogasneering. Your position is clearly amoral, costly and ultimately flawed. It’s not this that sticks in my throat the most, its your invocation of victims – as if you’re advocating anything for the benefit of victims!
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Rexion
On the subject of rehabilitation, you are correct in stating that NZ has excellent sex offender treatment programmes. I have some familiarity with this subject in that I chaired a charitable trust when I lived in NZ that at times had men and adolescents in such treatment. I have met some of the key treatment people in this field and have attended system reviews for sex offenders to acertain success of the programme and to increase the possibility of treatment success. The same is true for drug/alcohol treatment having personally gotten numerous people into rehab. Personally I have seen most people in the charitable organisations I’ve been involved with do well post-treatment but that is mainly because good groups or families were there to support post-treatment. Here’s the rub – even with excellent treatment (which is very costly and time consuming) only a fraction of offenders who could be treated are treated. Most programmes in NZ are voluntary and are used to reduce (or avoid) a custodial sentence. Of this small fraction who are treated, as good as the treatment is, the percentage who never offend is depressingly low. Please note – the success rate is much higher than those offenders who get no treatment. So even with world’s best practice you are barely scratching the surface of the problem and even in the US being wealthier and having more treatment options, the same dynamics apply. So in the area of sexual offending alone (and these numbers are much smaller than say the numbers of the drug/alcohol addicted violent offenders) even if you could quadruple spending (which is unlikely as you couldn’t even find near enough experienced psycologists, counsellors etc), you will still have many that slip through the net, come back out into the community and reoffend. I am a great believer in diversion programmes and things such as drug courts (where treatment is the preferred sentence rather than time in jail) but there are not enough treatment centres, addiction specialists to treat all those that could be treated and that’s in the US and the situation for A&D treatment in NZ is woefully worse (albeit better than it was when it was outright dismal).
So, as a matter of practical reality to keep communities safe, lengthier prison sentences and stricter laws leading to prison has actually become the easier option. In the perfect world, I would love for every substance abusing criminal to receive proper treatment and I do actually support increasing funding for same but as a first priority to keep people safe, I support incarceration. Its not perfect but for many juristictions in the US, it has worked well enough for a consensus to emerge that supports more prisons and longer sentences.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
“You and other mindless “it’s prison or chaos” dichotomists have no real interest in victims.”
For fuck’s sake you moron. I AM A VICTIM. So are so many people I know. Relatives and friends. My granny, who now lives in fear in a house with locks on every door, because over the last fourty years as crime rates have grown and grown and grown again, and swelled beyond all reasonable tolerance, fuckwits like you have been spouting the same progressive poison AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED APART FROM THE PROBLEM GETTING WORSE.
While you people have fiddled with your self indulgent claims to be the intelligentsia who will bring us solutions, Rome has burned.
Rexion, you’re not saying anything new, and while you and your lot have been saying that same old same old for the last fourty years, people have been maimed killed assaulted robbed, blinded, crippled, and had their dignity and humanity stripped from them and live in fear and apprehension too frightened to open their door to a stranger, and fuckwits like you ARE STILL SPEWING YOUR GARBAGE.
You have blood on your hands. Accept your responsibility for the state of things today. Stand aside and allow common sense to reign. I’ve had it up to here with your feel good academic egotistic bullshit.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I’m guessing Angie is more a “Mao” girl than a “Free Tibet” type girl.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
I like way Red thinks his neanderthalic abuse constitutes commonsense. I love the way he invokes Granny Red to attest to the increasing level of crime in our society. Well, I don’t know about you lot, but I prefer a little bit more hard data than Granny Red’s lock count. Here are some facts:
Since 1970 the rate of recorded offences (per 100,000) has increased. BUT the peak was in 1992 and it has pretty much continued to decline ever since. The current crime rate is about the same as it was in the early eighties. So, let’s just clear this up: Statistics New Zealand and their “socialist agenda” lying data are saying the overall crime has continued to be in decline since 1992.
Most recorded crime (over 50%) relates to dishonesty not violence. Drugs and anti-social – not violence makes up the second most common type of offence.
Rather embarrassingly, police clearance rates plummeted to a low point of 29% in 1991. Luckily they have improved to 40+% now…but this is still behind the 1970s clearance rates.
Violent crime has increased over the past ten years. Serious assaults have increased from a rate of 3.5 per 100,000 to 4 per 100,000. Not dramatic – but evidently enough to deserve another lock on gran’s door.
Thankfully sexual crimes have reduced over the past decade. The rate of sex attacks per 10,000 people has reduced from 0.6 to 0.5. Not dramatic – but a slight reduction.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Sorry that rate for sex offending is per 100,000.
BTW: Just looked at the common theme (and it’s pretty common) over Red’s postings. You ever noticed that when the facts don’t arrange themselves nicely to fit his prejudices, he declares anyone who uses evidence as being “academic”. Like that’s an insult?! Does anyone else hear the gentle twang of banjos and the words “Dang! You and your fancy book learning” drifting through in a thick southern US accent?
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Here is the quote from frog blog.
“as we’ve told you many times before, we don’t censor anyone’s views, unless of course they are offensive or advocate violence”
BTW: here are Frogblog’s rules regarding posting:
“The main categories of posts that will be deleted or edited are:
Spam comments.
Comments which are defamatory or potentially defamatory. Comments that attack others in a grossly offensive way. Humour and sarcasm are fine, but attacks which seek to personally denigrate others are not. Comments which use extremely vulgar language:”
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/policies/
For me this raises several questions for David (and other moderators if there are any)
1) Does kiwiblog have any such rules?
2) If so, what are they?
3) If not, are there any informal rules?
I ask these questions because being regularly blocked for no apparent reason is quite confusing, and if I was sure of what the rules were then I could avoid being blocked.
Thankyou.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Easily explained rog…..
There’s a hi-tec fuckwit filter at Dave’s…you only get past it occasionally.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
roger nome : being regularly blocked for no apparent reason
I think that you’re are being blocked for using too many HTML tags. I happens to me a few times before. The key is to avoid using lots of HTML tags.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
You have read this Roger nome?
Vote:http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2004/12/posting_policy.html
June 30th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Good rules – thanks for the link. Now the C word in question discussed in the comments was it Cunt or Christ? The delicate use of C***T left me uncertain. Both Christ and Cunt can be viewed as offensive (not by me, personally). And would “Christ is a Cunt” be considered doubly offensive? I only ask because with Redbaiter on the prowl, I feel someone (probably me) is going to use at least one of the aforementioned C words.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
A few posts above Kiwi in America has repeat posted some totally misleading and false data that he attempted to pass off some weeks ago.
Take just one important category:
Aggravated Assault
US ’95: 41.8 US ’05: 29.1 Change:-30%
NZ ’96: 44.7 NZ ’06: 52.7 Change: +18%
Current differential: NZ 79% higher aggravated assault rate
He achieves this utterly spurious result by conflating two different crime category definitions between the two countries.
In the USA “Aggravated Assault” is defined as:
Aggravated assault is an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. This type of assault is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by means likely to produce death or great bodily harm. Attempts are included since it is not necessary that an injury result when a gun, knife, or other weapon is used which could and probably would result in serious personal injury if the crime were successfully completed.
The equivalent charges in NZ are usually “grievous assault” or “attempted murder”, but KIA conflates all the much higher figures figures in the NZ category of “serious assaults” (which includes things like pub punch-ups and domestics) in order to arrive at a completely wrong result.
The rest of his results are similarly distorted. The relevant reference is here:
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-5.html
Vote:July 1st, 2007 at 2:45 am
RedRag
We’ve had this out before. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program in the US defines aggravated assault as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. Because the NZ stats break down assaults into a much larger variety of types of assaults I have left out robbery, minor assaults, intimidations and Other and only added serious and grievous as they approximate the US definition of aggravated assault. You post a link to the NZ Justice Ministry commentary on crime stats comparison where some unnamed bureaucrat draws the conclusion you now hang you hat on (more as butt covering in my opinion) with nothing but his/her opinion to back it up. In your world, because a government department says something and puts it in a report that is now on the internet it must be the locked-in-concrete gospel truth. You obviously know very little about what goes on in the civil service and about what is and isn’t included in reports like this.
You fail to comment on all the other crime comparisons I posted that are in the US’s favour (except murder which anyone will acknowledge is worse in the US). The stats from a state like Minnesota with a similar population and urban/rural mix to NZ are actually half the US average but I recall last time I mentioned that, you tried to claim it was like trying to compare crime in Auckland with Golden Bay which was ludicrous on its head as MN has a large capital city (Minneapolis – St Paul) slightly larger than Auckland and then a similar number of small cities between 25,000 and 75,000 as NZ.
The truth is that crime in the US is lower than NZ. The stats show it and people here feel it for all but a cluster of high crime cities where Democrat policians with similar soft-on-crime inclinations have ruled for years.
Vote:July 1st, 2007 at 4:25 am
and only added serious and grievous as they approximate the US definition of aggravated assault.
And that is your mistake. Sorry but the NZ definition of “serious assault” is quite different to the US definition of “aggravated assault”. These words have specific and different legal definitions in each jurisdiction that do necessarily correlate with your imprecise attempts to mix them up with everyday English language meanings.
This page from the same report very clearly makes the comparisons.
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-12.html
Read the whole report and you will see why your numbers on your other categories are wrong as well.
So far your only response to this clear cut formal report is to smear and discredit the author because the facts therein disprove your story. That really isn’t good enough. Show me some other authoritative official source (not a partisan hack piece) that similarly compares US and NZ crime definitions and I’ll be interested….but so far you haven’t been able to do this.
And besides…if you are objecting to this report solely on the basis that it is a government report…then why the hell are you using the official American UCR data? Is there some reason in your mind why American govt data is ipso facto the gospel truth, but NZ govt data must be all lies?
The truth is that crime in the US is lower than NZ. The stats show it and people here feel it for all but a cluster of high crime cities
So can we leave out the similar clusters of “high crime” areas that exist in New Zealand? Just as they exist in any other country. You cannot selectively manipulate the basis for your comparison like that and have any credibility.
. The stats from a state like Minnesota with a similar population and urban/rural mix to NZ are actually half the US average
Well given that the formal comparison between the US and NZ has the whole USA at 4 times higher crime rates, if Minnesota is 1/2 the USA average then I might conclude that this most conservative, relatively mono-cultural, low crime American state still has twice the NZ numbers. Whoop-dee-do.
Or lets do some comparisons between the US and a range of other nations:
Murder rate (per 100,000 people):
United States 8.40
Canada 5.45
Denmark 5.17
Germany 4.20
Norway 1.99
United Kingdom 1.97
Sweden 1.73
Japan 1.20
Finland 0.70
Murder rate for males age 15-24 (per 100,000 people):
United States 24.4
Canada 2.6
Sweden 2.3
Norway 2.3
Finland 2.3
Denmark 2.2
United Kingdom 2.0
Netherlands 1.2
Germany 0.9
Japan 0.5
Rape (per 100,000 people):
United States 37.20
Sweden 15.70
Denmark 11.23
Germany 8.60
Norway 7.87
United Kingdom 7.26
Finland 7.20
Japan 1.40
Armed robbery (per 100,000 people)
United States 221
Canada 94
United Kingdom 63
Sweden 49
Germany 47
Denmark 44
Finland 38
Norway 22
Japan 1
The fact is that comparisons are between countries is difficult and will throw up apparent contradictions, but which ever way you cut it, the US crime rates are God-awful. Give me those nasty socialist “soft on crime” Finnish numbers any day of the week thanks.
The truth is that crime in the US is lower than NZ. The stats show it
Bollocks. They do not and there is an absolute mountain of statistical evidence to suggest otherwise. I could readily link to any number of other govt websites that prove my case, but you would deny them all as lies. It really baffles me why you are holding to such an intellectually untenable argument.
Vote:August 6th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I do not believe it would be right to abolish prisons. I like the system the way it is more or less, but I do think that there needs to be things in place, such as equal employment opportunity schemes, to try and reduce crime.
As for any suggestion of the death penalty, I am 100% against the death penalty being implemented here in NZ. A thief goes to prison, they don’t get robbed legally because they robbed someone illegally. The same should go with murderers and all other criminals. Keep sending them to prison, and try to make sure that we only have a small amount of criminals in our society by implementing a variety of programmes that will try to ensure that good opportunities exist for everyone.
Vote: