Let’s look on the bright side. The people voted this way (quite significantly) so they must be seeing something positive there. I already know all the downsides so let’s discuss the upsides.
Looking forward to public services being asked to do more, but not receive any more funding. Stretching them thinner, and making them shittier.
Looking forward to a “restoration of law and order” incarcerating more people, separating families and causing more crime. While not addressing the problems that caused the crime in the first place.
Looking forward to the RBNZ being told to lower interest rates and artificially inflating property prices; making it harder for young families to buy in the communities they live and work in, and increasing the cost of living for every day people as they’re strangled by landlords.
Looking forward to dying from heatstroke in 50 years time from global warming due to increased and prolonged reliance on fossil fuels.
All jokes aside, I’m looking forward to criminals actually facing consequences for their actions, that’s one policy Labour utterly screwed up on.
Which criminals though.
Wage thieves? Polluters? Tax evaders? Or just the poor ones?
You joke, but people are in favour of all criminals being punished. That’s not even a good straw man.
This is all very well and good, but the evidence shows harsher prison sentences does little to reduce crime rates.
That’s a cool opinion piece, but here is some actual science:
I’m definitely saving this post for later, thanks for the quality sources.
I’ll need to give those a read tomorrow. And possibly save them for the next time someone spouts nonsense at me.
We are having an interesting discussion about these sources here. It might provide you with more information and context.
Only the second article has any real support for the claims, and that just shows that criminals who are sentenced for 10 years or more a much less likely to reoffend than those sentenced less. This is almost certainly just backing up a known fact that people convicted of any violent offense are less likely to be re-arrested in the years after release than those convicted of property, drug, or public order offenses.
I posted a new Zealand article that was easier to read, the study the article drew it’s conclusions from was this study by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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I can’t access this article to investigate further, but I will point out is from the 1980, which is over 40 years ago. I will also point out that their main concern was concerned with “the rational image of man in utilitarian thought, the philosophical framework in which modern deterrence theory is grounded.” which does not sound very data driven.
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This is definitely an interesting article. After reading further, it appears to show a statistically significant relationship between longer prison sentences and reduced recidivism. This effect is really only shown above 5 years, and specifically above 10 years. I did not see in this study where they tracked increased punishment for the same crime. Simply put, they showed that criminals who commit serious crimes and are incarcerated from 5 to more than 10 years will recommit fewer crimes than criminals incarcerated for less time. This doesn’t suggest increasing punishments for lesser crimes, unless you want to lock ram raiders up for over 10 years.
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This study does not imply at all that increased punishments lead to lower crime. It is talking about considerations and assumptions made when making studies to inform policy, and suggesting that (to paraphrase) it’s more complicated than one single thing.
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“In line with previous research, we find that detection plays a consistent role in reducing acquisitive crime, but that severity of sanctions is ambiguous.”
They do not claim any certainly over decreased crime rates, and in fact say that the data is “ambiguous”.
- In the US, harsher punishments began in the 70s during Nixon’s “harsh on crime” mentality. Actual crime rates didn’t begin to drop until the 90s clearly showing at best the most tenuous link between these two things.
Here’s a bonus article from Australia.
Of course there will be the odd study that shows a slight drop in crime, but overwhelmingly they do not. By far the biggest effect is post-prison rehabilitation.
I posted a new Zealand article that was easier to read, the study the article drew it’s conclusions from was this study by the U.S. Department of Justice.
This isn’t a study. It’s a press release. There are some citations down the bottom. Which one(s) do you believe support your premise?
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Why do you think a 40 year old study on human behaviour is suddenly invalid? Have humans evolved so spectacularly over 40 years that we no longer respond to negative and positive stimuli the same way? That’s a while claim requiring some wild evidence.
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It doesn’t explicitly show that locking ram-raiders up for longer reduces recidivism or propensity to offend. I provided it to refute the your claim that “the evidence shows harsher prison sentences does little to reduce crime rates.” It does do that.
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My argument is precisely that it is more complicated than one single thing. I am not arguing that severity is the only proven effective deterrence method. In fact, certainty of conviction is even more effective! You argued that severity does little to deter crime. I am providing evidence that it does. You can read the full study here if interested. From the conclusion:
After having algebraically and empirically explored the loglinear model, I reach an important conclusion: the functional effects or weights of the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and the severity of punishment do not really vary as much as deterrence scholars would lead us to believe. Potential criminals mentally combine the three deterrence components, regardless of whether they are risk neutral, averse, or acceptant. If the weights really do not vary, then, according to Becker’s risk solutions, criminals are really risk neutral. This being the case, it is entirely plausible to doubt if it is necessary to tax deterrence theory with the consideration of the psychological element of risk where policymaking is concerned.
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They found a correlation with severity and burglary only in this study. That does not mean a correlation for other crimes is absent. Remember: an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Even if the correlation were only present for burglary, I would be very happy with fewer burglaries.
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I refer you to page 178. The rate of incarceration only began to meaningfully increase in the 80s. It is well established that criminal policies rarely immediately affect social change. This often takes many years or decades, which is what we see in the data. I grant that sociological studies on criminology are very difficult to attenuate noise, but we don’t and cannot have controlled studies. In this case the methodology looks good, and it’s extremely well cited. Indeed, this is a far higher level of rigour than I am used to seeing in criminological research. If you wish to throw out this study on the premise you argue, we may as well throw out the entire school of sociology and criminology.
Of course there will be the odd study that shows a slight drop in crime, but overwhelmingly they do not. By far the biggest effect is post-prison rehabilitation.
In short, the research on rehabilitation treatment reviewed here provides an encouraging indication of the relatively large effects that might be attainable in actual practice, but cannot be interpreted as evidence that current practice has such effects or, indeed, that it has any positive effects at all.
The research is encouraging, and I hope we see more of it. However it is hardly conclusive, and it certainly doesn’t indicate we should ignore sentence severity as a necessary and critical component of deterrence.
This isn’t a study. It’s a press release. There are some citations down the bottom. Which one(s) do you believe support your premise?
Why do you think a 40 year old study on human behaviour is suddenly invalid? Have humans evolved so spectacularly over 40 years that we no longer respond to negative and positive stimuli the same way? That’s a while claim requiring some wild evidence.
People haven’t changed, of course, but society has changed a lot since the early 80s. Any data from such a study is limited to the 80s and earlier. This doesn’t entirely invalidate any findings (whatever they are, since we can’t read the actual article), but it means we should weigh more recent studies more highly.
It doesn’t explicitly show that locking ram-raiders up for longer reduces recidivism or propensity to offend. I provided it to refute the your claim that “the evidence shows harsher prison sentences does little to reduce crime rates.” It does do that.
Firstly, I will acknowledge that I should have been more careful with my statement. Thank you for keeping me intellectually honest. I should have said “studies do not support the finding that increasing sentences leads to reduced crime rates”, which is a slightly different statement.
That being said, the study does not support this. It shows that criminals who are imprisoned longer are less likely to re-offend, it does not show that increasing prison sentences reduces crime. These are not the same things. For example, longer prison sentences tend to be for violent crimes, but it is a known effect that violent crime offenders have lower recidivism following incarceration than non-violent offenders.
My argument is precisely that it is more complicated than one single thing. I am not arguing that severity is the only proven effective deterrence method. In fact, certainty of conviction is even more effective! You argued that severity does little to deter crime. I am providing evidence that it does. You can read the full study here if interested. From the conclusion:
The article does not support your assertions. In fact, your statement that ‘certainty of conviction is even more effective than fear of punishment’ is precisely what the article questions. Its conclusion is, to paraphrase, that criminals do not weigh risk of being caught and severity of punishment if they are caught differently, but rather they are all equally weighted, and that policy should not weigh one factor above the other. Crucially, it says nothing about the actual importance of these factors to criminals. Equal weighting can still be 0. In the end, all it says is that criminals are complicated, and that many things factor into their propensity to commit crime. I agree with this, but it does not support the idea that harsher punishments will reduce crime rates.
They found a correlation with severity and burglary only in this study. That does not mean a correlation for other crimes is absent. Remember: an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Even if the correlation were only present for burglary, I would be very happy with fewer burglaries.
Absence of evidence is exactly what I’m arguing. There is an absence of good evidence that increasing punishments will lower crime. There is concrete evidence, however, that post-incarceration interventions lower recidivism. Also, you cannot take part of the data and ignore the rest, which is exactly why they conclude that there is not enough of an effect to draw a conclusion based on their findings. In other words, their findings do not show a statistically significant effect that increasing punishments lowers crime rate.
I refer you to page 178. The rate of incarceration only began to meaningfully increase in the 80s. It is well established that criminal policies rarely immediately affect social change. This often takes many years or decades, which is what we see in the data. I grant that sociological studies on criminology are very difficult to attenuate noise, but we don’t and cannot have controlled studies. In this case the methodology looks good, and it’s extremely well cited. Indeed, this is a far higher level of rigour than I am used to seeing in criminological research. If you wish to throw out this study on the premise you argue, we may as well throw out the entire school of sociology and criminology.
There is a lot going on in this article, and it would far to long to analyze everything in-depth right now. So, instead, I will provide two more recent studies which contradict certain aspects of the findings here. I could do more but I need to work.
This 2019 study found that, contrary to the article being discussed, legalizing abortion had a large effect in reducing over all crime.
This report found only a 5% effect of increased incarceration in the drop in violent crime from 1990 to 2000, and after that no effect at all. Additional to this, the exact same drop in violent crime in Canada was observed over the same time period, with no increase in incarceration rate, casting doubt into the effect it played in a global trend.
The research is encouraging, and I hope we see more of it. However it is hardly conclusive, and it certainly doesn’t indicate we should ignore sentence severity as a necessary and critical component of deterrence.
That was not the only study. This one discusses the effect of in-prison physical and mental health to recidivism.. This review concludes that post-release programmes have a positive impact on recidivism in most western countries.. This Scottish review concludes that, while there are many factors, “Rehabilitative interventions with the strongest evidence base for reducing reconviction rates are cognitive-behavioural programmes which address criminogenic needs.”
Overall, there is not, in my opinion and the opinion of the Department of Corrections, the evidence that increasing the severity of punishments reduces crime, and that the greatest effect is addressing the causes of crime in the first place.
I apologise that I haven’t provided a follow-up. They keep me very busy at work. I will try to check back in over the weekend to respond in kind. I would like to thank you for staying respectful and data-driven, even when I was not always equally respectful.
Homie, watching you get shut down by actual evidence has been brilliant to watch.
Fact is, violent crime is up under Labour, whatever the underlying cause may be, and the current approach isn’t working.
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Longer sentences do not function as a deterrent, that’s true. It does, however, mean offenders cannot commit violent crimes, and in general be a menace to society, from behind bars.
If you’re saying National will punish violent offenders more than they are, but keep the current incarceration levels, then I’d agree with that sentiment.
Of course there is the problem of completely understaffed prisons at the moment, but that is a problem regardless of the colour of the tie of the PM.
Our incarceration rate will no doubt go up, but I, and most NZers I suspect, accept that.
I agree most will. My only problem is it doesn’t solve the underlying problems, it just puts more burden on the taxpayer.
Ultimately, I agree violent and sexual crimes are being sentenced too lightly, but outside of this I would prefer to address the problems that cause crime (poverty, education, etc etc). We don’t need to be locking up kids, because it does more harm than good. I’m happy to lock up rapists though, for example.
What happens to their kids?
Do you think their kids are better off with or without a parent like that in their lives?
The parent doesn’t get removed from their life. What happens is the kid grows up thinking the law is stupid and police are the enemy, because they have to see their parent once a week at a scheduled meeting instead of them being able to have the parent support them at their rugby game on Saturday.
They don’t hate the parent, they hate the justice system that locked them up for the childs entire childhood because of one stupid thing they did as a young adult that didn’t even hurt anyone except the insurance company (and they only hear one side of the story so you can’t argue back on that).
And that parent gets out of jail at 30, has no friends except from prison, and they can’t find a job because of their criminal record. They end up in a life of crime, in and out of prison, and their kid follows in their footsteps.
Contrast this to the parent that did the same crime, did some home-d but could keep their job and be therefore their kid. They realised it was dumb, the kid grew up away from the prison system, learnt that police are not the enemy, and neither the parent or child ended up in a lifetime of crime.
By the third generation, you have kids who have never known crime.
But that is so, so many election cycles away, and polititions are calling for blood on people who seem different to us, so people vote for it. Meanwhile business is booming in the for-profit prison, and yet crime rates haven’t gone down because statistically “hard on crime” approaches only have short term impacts on crime.
Bookmarked that one, great comment Dave
one stupid thing they did as a young adult that didn’t even hurt anyone except the insurance company
Sorry, but even most children would see this as absolute nonsense, especially if this was a violent crime.
instead of them being able to have the parent support them at their rugby game on Saturday.
You’re reeeally giving this hypothetical person the benefit of the doubt by assuming they’d be present in the child’s life in a positive way.
Contrast this to the parent that did the same crime, did some home-d but could keep their job and be there for their kid.
If they learn the first time, sure. How many chances do you think people deserve?
making it harder for young families to buy in the communities they live and work in
Yay let’s all spend $100 a week commuting to work and back.
Looking forward to dying from heatstroke in 50 years time from global warming due to increased and prolonged reliance on fossil fuels.
National will do everything they can to sabotage cheap petrol. The Marsden Point Refinery will never function again, and National supports the Russia Sanctions Act, making sure we never buy petrol from the #2 producer in the world, meanwhile #1 producer (Saudi Arabia) increases the price. India and China will continue using diesel and oil as usual and here in NZ the yuppie elite will drive their Teslas, and using fossil fuels will be a dirty poor people thing. It’ll mostly be poor people like me who can’t buy a new $15,000 EV with 70 battery health who will be driving petrol cars 5 years from now.
I’ll be demonised for my carbon sins.
Luxon says climate change is a fact and it’s caused by us, so it’s only a matter of time before a fanatical nutjob proposes a ban on natural gas. There is nobody advocating for continued use of fossil fuel, they all want it gone, just a matter of how long.
China will continue to use the Power Of Siberia pipeline and use quantities of gas that we cannot imagine, but kiwis will be told that having a bbq is bad, and driving an LPG forklift is bad. In Christchurch we had very strong winds yesterday and within a few hours of the government alert system pinging our phones, Redditors were speculating that the Nor West wind is proof of climate change.
If people can afford the latest technologies that’s great, but I’m poor and I want to continue using fossil fuels especially when my rent is so high. What if it’s the weekend and 1 of the other 11 tenants is using the only washing machine and dryer? How do I wash my laundry if I don’t have a petrol car to drive to the laundromat? I can’t believe the greenies are going on about housing trusts and not taking about ridiculous zoning and regulations that prevent us from having a world class city. I can’t cook where I live, I can’t do my laundry. The washing machine is constantly breaking and playing up. It’ll just lock a person’s clothes and not open for 3 days. It’s a disaster. So until I have my own apartment with a bike shed and laundry, I’m probably going to need fossil fuels.
Lol Jeff I’m a greenie and I talk about ridiculous zoning and regulations all the time. You aren’t alone or crazy for wanting to fight this fight.
You shouldn’t need a car to live in a city. That’s a symptom of decades of woeful city planning modelled on America, where car company lobbyists call the shots. Endless car-dependent urban sprawl is locking young people out of stable housing options close to where they work. “Intensification” in the world of our new CEO Mr Luxon and his landlord mates means cramming more beds into already over-crowded flats and boarding houses and building 2-story seven-figure 80m2 luxury shoeboxes, rather than building the 10-story buildings with stacks of self-contained apartments that a proper central-city needs to have.
Here’s how I would fix it:
- relax resource consent requirements for 10-story buildings around key urban areas such as malls and inside the four aves; also relax rules on three-storey intensification projects to build self-contained semi-detached townhouses
- encourage mixed-use buildings — ground floor is retail/food (there’s your laundromat), next one or two floors are commercial office space (there’s your job) and the next three to seven stories are self-contained one-or-two bedroom residential apartments (there’s your home with your own kitchen)
- start doubling rates annually on undeveloped land in the central city - including gravel pit parking lots - to get some movement on finally transforming these into places for people to live and work in this city
- deeper local government investment in social housing with targeted rates on unaffordable housing projects - ie if the project does not make some honest effort to provide ongoing affordable housing they get slapped with a special rate that goes towards funding social housing for those in need
- adopt 15-minute city principles (no, they aren’t a globalist conspiracy) so that getting into a car is not a rewuired part of your daily routine - you can just walk/bike to the doctor, school, movies, pub, maccas, supermarket, library, etc. That also means improving cycling infrastructure and public transport availability.
Some of these are things our Green-aligned city councillors have been pushing consistently for years, and recently they’ve been having increasing success. You are welcome to come join us in this fight, we need your help.
Also, yearning for more fossil fuel investment right now is a bit like building a horse barn in 1912. Even leaving aside the environmental impact (which is massive, and real, and something we all should all be working to fix), green options are already becoming cheaper to implement, and they hugely reduce our dependence on the international oil market which is famously a controlled cartel market and not in our favour as a tiny island nation with low productivity.
Some exceptional ideas in here, ka Pai!
so they must be seeing something positive there
I’m not so sure about that compared to just being “not Labour”.
Labour showed this term that they’re merely interested in maintaining the status quo and that all the progressive policies in the previous term came from the Greens and NZF.
Swinging back and forth between two parties that don’t significantly change anything is the system working as intended.
Neoliberalism has created managed democracy in every wealthy country the world over. You can choose “blue neoliberals” or “red neoliberals”. One is slightly more greedy, one is slightly less greedy and together they create a careful balance that keeps them from the guillotine.
The moment anyone suggests anything outside that, they’ve got a class unity the rest of us can only dream of. They’ll throw millions of dollars and every for-profit media and sleazy marketing agency they’ve got at making sure the status quo doesn’t change.
It’s why world over you keep hearing “the slightly less greedy ones aren’t doing enough, time to give the extra greedy ones a try”.
The only way out is to vote for genuinely progressive parties, routinely dumping them as neoliberals rush to metastasise within their ranks.
Unfortunately, social media is as close as we’ve ever come to mind control and AI will only refine that further.
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I guess that’s it.
Labour showed this term that they’re merely interested in maintaining the status quo and that all the progressive policies in the previous term came from the Greens and NZF.
So the public voted for the opposition? How does that make any sense?
Average price of a moldy, rat-infested house going from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000NZD.
Good for people who own property I guess, including my future self. But I want nothing to do with this corruption. Time to shop for other potential countries to be a citizen of.
You’re not poor, you’re just an undeveloped millionaire.
So much doom and gloom in this thread, it’s brilliant.
Lol you nailed it, the only benefit seems to be for assholes to go “nyah nyah” while everything gets worse over the next three years for thousands of people
I believe Labour has become incredibly racist. Prioritising people for healthcare on the basis of race is literally and explicitly against the Geneva Convention. The plan to grant an unelected ethnic group disproportionate control over NZ’s drinking water was so cartoonishly evil it’s hard for me to fathom. One of the most patently anti-democratic and racist things I’ve ever seen in politics in NZ.
I look forward to dismantling all race based policies, and focusing on need instead. Poor people need our help.
Literally none of that is true though.
No need to lie about it. It’s all out in the open. We can see for ourselves. If you like the policy just own it. You’re a racist and you believe healthcare should be given to people in part on the basis of race.
Racial background been a factor in health decisions for ages in certain situations. Just like age, weight, sex and smoking are. To be clear we are talking about situations where all else is equal between patients, then racial background based risk factors are included to decide who gets surgery first.
I absolute believe clinically significant factors should be a part of health decisions, regardless of what they are.
Ethnicity has only ever been used as a data point for the best health outcomes. Some diseases progress differently in different ethnicities. It has never been used to prioritise healthcare in NZ. The former is fine. The latter is an actual war crime.
Either way, an argument of “it’s not new” isn’t a defence of systemic racial discrimination for healthcare.
The RNZ article outlines really well why that Herald article you posted was, at most, very misleading. However, to summarize:
- The Equality Adjuster Score is used to increase equality of outcomes in patients, and includes many factors including severity of disease, time on waiting list, geographical location, age, sex, weight and other risk factors including racial background, additional health complications, deprivation, and much more. Note that these factors are not all weighted equally. Racial background “might only get one or two extra points out of 100 on that score because of their ethnicity”.
- Clinical need is by far the most important factor, but as you have already acknowledged, there are clinical reasons for including racial background into consideration.
- Maori and Pacific peoples are worse outcomes compared to Pakiha in all aspects of health, and the decision to include racial background as a small part of the EAS is an attempt to address this.
- The alarm bell was rung by some surgeons in Auckland – but there’s strong clinical support for the new equity adjuster. Surgeons had a big part in its development. It’s been expressly supported by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. The adjuster is not managerially or ideologically driven. Further, the starting point for the adjuster is clinical priority, based on medical diagnosis. That trumps everything else. . Critically, the EAS was developed under guidance from actual medical professionals.
Either way, an argument of “it’s not new” isn’t a defence of systemic racial discrimination for healthcare.
The fact that it isn’t new should tell you that this isn’t something that has suddenly sprung up under Labour. It is a known fact that racial background affects health outcomes. There absolutely is systemic racial discrimination in healthcare. It’s just not in the direction you think it is.
The latter is an actual war crime.
Lol
Shut down by the facts yet again. You’re having a bit of a time on here lately, aren’t you?
Nope. That article is an appallingly biased take on a complex issue, which does not explain the situation at all.
There is a clinical benefit for considering racial background in health decisions. That is all.
Looking forward to seeing actual consequences for committing crime, less wasteful government spending which should hopefully reduce inflation, and better education standards to set our kids up for University.
Edit: Ohh, this was the sarcastic look on the bright side question and not actually wanting to know what others are thinking. I guess I won’t answer these types of questions anymore.
How do you expect kids to achieve “better standards” without funding or resources?
No. I was not being sarcastic, I am legitimately trying to find something positive because otherwise its just miserable. Thanks for honestly answering the question
Yeah, welcome to the circle jerk.
There won’t be any significant change, and they will become bigger spenders than Labour when it comes to prisons. Supposedly the prison system is at maximum capacity and it’s just not popular to build more prisons (even though we should). I’d be in favour of National if their policy included building something like the Black Dolphin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dolphin_Prison) but then having normal prisons for people who commit minor offenses, like swearing on the phone or not paying their parking fines.
As far as I’m concerned Luxon is just a twink who takes it up the can. He’s not the far-right over-zealous Christian bigot that Reddit says he is. He’s not going to make any significant changes - and his policies will cost the tax payer more. How many prisons will they need to build to keep people locked up? This is the question that nobody is asking. What is the cost to the tax payer? And what will they do as an incentive to not ram raid, not join gangs and not commit crime? The minimum wage isn’t enough to live on. If I suddenly have to buy a new car I’ll have to ask my folks for some money. National and Labour are crap parties and I don’t understand why anyone votes for them, they have destroyed the economy, made everything unaffordable.
If you don’t go to uni at 17, get a degree by age 20, get into middle management in your 20s, then you’ll just never own a new Mazda or a house. Even if you do everything perfectly, at best you can own a small townhouse and have 2 children by the time you’re 40. The quality of life keeps going down, even for the upper middle class. We stress out and work hard just for basics. This country is a hellhole.
