Imprison or deport?

Newshub reports:

It’s believed taxpayers could save millions of dollars if foreign prisoners were deported instantly.

As of December 2017, 242 inmates who were earmarked for deportation were serving time in New Zealand prisons.

Newshub can reveal those prisoners will cost taxpayers more than $200 million by the time they are all released.

South African-born psychiatrist Colin Bouwer served 17 years for the murder of his wife in 1999. Using today’s figures, it would have cost $1.8m to keep him locked up before he was deported in October 2017.

Sensible Sentencing Trust founder Garth McVicar says there’s no room for criminals like Bouwer.

“It is an obvious solution,” he told Newshub. “We get rid of 240-odd, 250 inmates, we reduce their cost by $30 million.”

There is some attraction to this. But part of prison is punishment. I can’t justify you kill or rape someone and all that happens is a ticket out of here.

But possibly what you could do is automatically parole and deport them once they are eligible for parole. That way they serve at least a third of their sentence. A prisoner normally won’t get parole if they are likely to reoffend, but if they are deported from NZ then we don;t have to worry about them offending here again.