Left-wing journalism Anthony Hubbard, has a piece about the governments current klutz, Kelvin Davis
Kelvin Davis was a killer in opposition. His relentless campaign of prison leaks and revelations helped end the career of National’s hapless minister of corrections (the since-retired and forgotten Sam Lotu-Iiga).
Now Davis is the minister of corrections himself and it’s all sunshine and good cheer. “Exciting” is a recurring word.
The friendly MP for Tai Tokerau is excited, for instance, about the revolutionary policy of slashing the prison population.
Yeah, because slashing the prison population and spilling more than 3000 violent ratbags onto the streets is a real vote winner.
The first one that kills someone is going to be on his head.
No Kiwi politician or party has seriously proposed this before. New Zealand remains one of the keenest jailers in the West, and governments of both sorts have outbid each other on law and order.
And he will be the last who does when it goes pear shaped.
“Governments for a long, long time have tried to outdo each other as being tough on crime. We actually need to be smart on crime.”
Labour promises to cut the prison muster by 30 per cent in 15 years, but how? If you ask Davis, you get a wash of generalities – “multifaceted solutions” – and pledges to examine the research.
If we are going to be smart on crime then why is the dumbest hammer in the bag doing the job?
Instead of concentrating on the prisons – they are just marshalling yards – you need to consider the wider problems that produce an ever-expanding horde of prisoners. These “drivers” are what matter most.
“We actually have to look at things like the mental health situation, we have to look at the housing situation, we have to look at poverty, we have to look at how our people are being treated now – because one of the biggest drivers of the prison population is violence.
“How do we address that? What are the drivers of violence? Is it having a lack of money, is it having no hope, and despair? …
“What are the drivers? And we have to work that out and then base our solutions on that.”
The Government has “to look at all the options”.
What a load of horse dung. While he is having “conversations” and working out what can be done then these bastards need to be locked up. It is what voters want. We want the bad bastards off the streets and we really don’t care what happens to them in prison either. Crim-hugging womble politicians like Kelvin Davis think they have all the answers but I bet he won’t offer up his place as a halfway house for them.
Don’t we need something a little more specific? Will cutting the prison population, for instance, involve cutting prison sentences?
“Possibly, yeah. We need to look at all the options. We need to make decisions based on decent evidence, based on what’s worked.”
What about letting people out earlier on bail? This, too, seems one of the options, though “we’ve got to keep the country safe. This is a balancing act, this isn’t a quick fix. We keep the country safe but also address the types of crime, also the drivers of crime.”
Davis’s vagueness raises questions about how much research he and Labour did before deciding on the policy. Or is he just keeping his powder dry for the upcoming political battle?
Certainly he understands that prison reform faces huge political problems, including the resistance of many voters.
Davis is just like his leader, a lightweight long on sloganeering, short on specifics. Labour already has a soft on crime reputation and with attitudes like that it deserves it. The voters will tear them apart. As I said, the first ex-prisoner released by Davis and Labour will be the poster child for a law and order backlash with Ardern and Davis being sent out on a tumbril.
I hope they do release 30% of the prison population back on the streets. They are all likely to come from Labour electorates so the uproar and backlash will be from their own voters. The only fear I have of such an action is that someone is going to get killed because of the a stupid crim-hugging decisions of an insulated and out of touch womble politician. Holding that politician to account is the easy part, bringing that victim back to life is impossible.
Davis made this rod for his back, with all his grandstanding. I can’t wait for the next stabbing, or bashing, or murder in one of Davis’ prison to occur. He will get his grandstanding right back at him.
He still has some rather impertinent questions to answer about how he got elected in 2014 while his party was campaigning against #dirtypolitics.