Kiwiblog

The Herald reports:

Gang tensions are believed to have sparked the on-going prison riot at Spring Hill jail south of Auckland, where inmates are setting fires and damaging cells.

But who is to blame? It isn’t the gangs. Oh no. According to the Greens, it is the Government. Andrea Vance tweeted:

Greens say double bunking and smoking ban to blame for heightened tensions in prisons.

This would be hilarious, if it were not so tragic. The smoking ban by the way has been in place for two years, and the double bunking for three years.

Yet the Greens have divined they are to blame for the riot!

Nothing to do with the gangs. For gang members are just victims of society, as are those poor prisoners who can’t smoke and have single cells.

Imagine the fun with a Green Minister of Corrections!

Stuff reports:

A security inmate was locked in a visiting booth with his partner for hours because of the “poor practice” of staff, a report into the incident says.

The partner had driven to Rimutaka Prison from Opotiki last November and was granted an extra 30 minutes.

They were put in a non-contact booth and became worried when their time elapsed and no-one came to get them.

After they spent several hours yelling, the woman smashed an observation window but was unable to escape. Three hours later, another prisoner heard their yells and alerted the supervision officer.

Unless the room is set up in such a way that they are entirely physically segregated, I’d welcome several hours in a room with my partner if I was a prisoner!

Anne Tolley has released what is effectively a league table of our 17 prisons. It’s great to have such transparency on how our prisons are doing on various criteria.

All 17 prisons are now measured on their performance against each other in a range of areas including security, assaults, drug tests and rehabilitation programmes. They are then categorised in four performance grades, with the resulting tables released quarterly.

The information is used by Corrections and prison managers to identify and share successful practices, and focus on areas which need improvement.

The table has six prisons in the “exceeding” category, eight in “effective” and three “needs improvement”.

Mount Eden is the privately run prison. In the first half of 2012 it was in the “needs improvement” category, then in Q3 went to “effective” and in Q4 is “exceeding”.  It is the most improved prison.

Of course Labour and Greens are vowing to close it down.

The Dom Post editorial:

A good prison system should have three functions. It should keep the public safe from dangerous criminals, punish those who have seriously or repeatedly broken the law and rehabilitate offenders.

By and large, New Zealand’s penal system does the first two reasonably well. When it comes to the third, it has been an abject failure. …

But while the prison system is good at keeping inmates locked up – escapes are rare – it is not so good at preparing them to reintegrate back into society once they are released. The recidivism rate among former inmates is alarmingly high. Nearly 40 per cent of those freed from jail each year are back inside within 24 months of their release. …

That is why the Government’s to investigate the merits of “working prisons” should have the support of every party in Parliament.

Under the scheme, every inmate at Tongariro and Auckland Women’s prisons will be engaged in some type of work or rehabilitation activity for 40 hours a week. The scheme is already running at Christchurch’s Rolleston Prison, which has a contract with Housing New Zealand to refurbish earthquake-damaged properties.

Provided the expansion is carefully planned to ensure jobs are not taken away from workers in the community, it could have a significant effect. According to the Government’s figures, reoffending rates for inmates on Release to Work programmes are 16 per cent lower than for those who are not, and prisoners who undertake work in jails per cent lower.

Yet the Herald said the scheme will do more harm than good!

The Herald editorial is rather bizarre. The headline is:

Work in jail scheme will do more harm than good

Now that is a very definitive statement. It is not saying there are complications, or it *may* do more harm than good. It is a definitive statement that it will definitely do more harm than good.

Yet I read the entire editorial, and they don’t actually produce anything to back up the assertion. They talk about the complications and the extra costs that may be incurred, but that is again vastly different from stating outright that having additional working prisons will do more harm than good.

Now let us look at what the Herald says is so awful:

Ms Tolley has conceded the plan will require “significant infrastructure upgrades”.

Presumably she is referring to the workplace equipment that will need to be installed in prisons. The costs do not, however, end there. There is the expense involved in work training and tuition for the inmates.

Oh my God. We will spend money on training and tuition for prisoners. How awful.

I’m skeptical of many types of government spending.  There’s a lot of programmes I would personally cut, to allow a reduction in taxes. But you know I don’t have a huge problem with training and tuition for prisoners.

Already, however, the British Prison Officers Association has complained that this is exploitative of prisoners and risks damaging the wider economy. “We have concerns about simply using prisoners as cheap labour for companies to cut their costs,” it has said. That cutting means, inevitably, that in some cases prisoners are taking the jobs of people in the community.

That is a potential concern, but we already have some work being done. The challenge is making sure the work done has minimal impact on other jobs. But again the editorial provides no substance to back up their assertion the expansion of work in prisons will “do more harm than good”.

Additionally, there is the risk that an increasing emphasis on getting inmates into work will lessen that on education, employment training and drug and alcohol addiction treatment programmes. This rehabilitation work was, commendably, at the forefront of Government policy announced last year.

Quite the contrary. The plan is part of that programme, as in fact the editorial them acknowledges:

A key part of this programme is providing greater support for prisoners to find jobs when they are released. Theoretically, that process should be aided by the Government’s work initiative.

So again we have an entire editorial that is at odds with the assertion in its title. It is bizarre.

They say:

Admirable idea falls down on numerous practicalities.

Yet they have not documented these. All they have done is say hey it may cost some money (no shit Sherlock), and you need to be careful of the impact on the labour market.

I never thought we’d see a newspaper argue against money being spent on giving prisoners training and tuition so they are more likely to gain employment when released.

Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:

More prisons will be turned into working prisons where all prisoners will be placed in a 40-hour week programme of work and rehabilitation, Prime Minister John Key said in his statement to Parliament today, the first sitting day of the year.

It is part of the Government’s goal of reducing reoffending by 25 per cent by 2017.

“The Government will increase employment opportunities for prisoners by establishing more of our prisons as working prisons, where all prisoners will be engaged in a structured 40-hour week of employment and rehabilitation activities,” he said. …

Of the country’s 19 prisons, only one at present is deemed a working prison, Rolleston.

Seems like an excellent initiative to me. Hopefully they won’t stop at three prisons. It would be impractical to do at the maximum security prisons, but I think having a regular work routine will help prisoners reintegrate back into society once their term is up.