Labour’s empty the jails plan

Newshub reports:

Hundreds of criminals could have avoided jail time under a proposal from the Justice and Corrections departments.

The idea was to prioritise home detention instead of incarceration and address the overpopulation of Māori in prison – but it didn’t work out like that.

Tommy Doran’s come a long way from his teenage years committing petty crime to fund his meth addiction.

“As it does for a lot of people who meth gets their hooks into, it led to my incarceration,” he told Newshub.

He’s done his jail time and he’s now doing an honour’s degree in criminology. He said home detention isn’t a silver bullet.

“I don’t think the solution lies in just taking them out of prison and sticking them in their home where they probably did a lot of their using and offending.”

But that’s a solution a document – released under the Official Information Act – recommended to the Government.

It was to the Minister of Justice, proposing an increase in the use of home detention to safely reduce the prison population. Judges would prioritise home detention when a short prison sentence – anything under two years – would usually be imposed.

While it would reduce the prison population by around 600 beds after three years, and save $7 million annually

The Government is obsessed with reducing the prison population, regardless of the impact on the community.

The way to reduce the prison population is to reduce the level of criminal offending. It’s not that hard to comprehend. Have fewer people raping and bashing people, and fewer people go to prison.