speaking to Lisa Owen on Checkpoint, imnofox spoke about justice policy

Lisa: “Your manifesto calls for a repeal of the three strikes law.”

imnofox: “Yeah, definitely. The central principle of just sentencing is that there is a proportionate response to wrongdoing. The ‘three strikes’ law doesn’t do that. From relatively minor offences to quite major offences, this law ignores this, and effectively all mitigating and aggravating factors alongside it. It’s the ‘lock em up’ approach that fails to deter crime, increases our prison population, and puts greater costs on our justice system. Mandated sentencing, longer sentences, tougher sentences, and fewer human rights for prisoners is the whole vision. It’s certainly much better than New Zealand First’s proposed method of just killing them all, but that’s quite a low bar.”

Lisa: “But has the law worked?”

imnofox: “No, there’s no evidence of success. It’s failed to work as a deterrent, and hasn’t reduced offence rates. And that isn’t surprising. Imposing harsher and harsher sentences isn’t ever about deterring crime, it’s a political gimmick in order to make the public feel like they’re getting the justice, or really, revenge, that they crave. And that’s all ‘three strikes’ is, a political gimmick developed by a flailing ACT party desperate for relevance, despite all the expert opposition to this bad law.”

Lisa: “Okay, but what are you going to replace it with?”

imnofox: “We need to focus on rehabilitation to reduce reoffending, and we need to reduce our prison population. That means we’ve got to decriminalise all illicit drugs, not just the few pickings of previous governments, prioritise non-prison sentence for non-violent offences. There are numerous levels of sentencing available that we ought to be exploring more, treating imprisonment as much more of a last resort. Suspended sentence, fines or reparations, community work or supervision, community detention or intensive supervision, home detention, and then, as a last resort, imprisonment. Many of these sentencing alternatives aren’t being used when they should be as an alternative to prison, and if we want to start reducing recidivism and deterring offending we’ve got to break the cycle of people, disproportionately Māori, jumping between prison and the streets.”

Lisa: “You mention the overrepresentation of Māori in our prisons and justice system, what next on that front?”

imnofox: “So Māori are 15% of our population and 50% of our prison population. The Wai 2540 report from the Waitangi Tribunal recognised the failure of the Department of Corrections to effectively act on Māori recidivism rates. Part of the issue is the very selective use of Māori perspectives in prisons, so we really need to quickly start placing more and more value on te ao Māori within the context of the justice system. Really, we need an independent authority to oversee a better Māori strategy in the justice system, in line with te Tiriti o Waitangi. We’ve also got to strengthen and empower Māori-led kaupapa Māori programmes and initiatives, including things like Rangatahi courts.”

Lisa: “Can you really reduce offending just by reforming the justice system?”

imnofox: “No, I don’t think so. It’s quite important for government to take quite a holistic world view towards policy, thinking about how our health system can impact people, how the quantity and quality of our housing impacts people, how the job market impacts people, how our welfare system impacts people, our education system, and the rest. So we’ve also got to fix the relationship between the Crown and kids in state care, something like 85% of young people imprisoned by the age of twenty were dealt with by CYF as children, and that’ll require substantial reform with Oranga Tamariki, including reversing the weakening of the ‘whanau first’ approach for Māori. I think we’ve also got to make mental health services more available for everyone, including prisoners. Prisoners are three times more likely to have a mental disorder, and while we’ve made great progress in improving access to mental health services generally, we’ve got to do more both for those outside and inside prison. Our housing situation is bad too, especially our severely low state housing stock. Over 6,000 families were turned away because of the shortage last year, and we radically need to build more, replenish our state housing stock and scrap National’s attempts to privatise them. That’s also quite important for those on bail or parole, who often do not have access to secure housing which is a key factor in recidivism.”

Lisa: “Well, that’s all we’ve got time for today. Thanks for speaking with me, and enjoy the campaign!”

imnofox: “Thanks Lisa.”

imnofox left the studio and jumped on his ebike to quickly get back to the on-the-ground campaign