Columnists love cynicism. It's what we do: adopt an arcane view of the human condition steeped in misanthropy. Although I suspect this is, perhaps, a more common characteristic of journalists. The original tall poppy loppers.So I should be describing National's deal with the Act Party last week – that establishes a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy – as the kind of shallow flim-flam. What you expect from politicians caught between a rock and their manifesto commitments. Except this hybrid beast – dammit – might just work. And the fact that all the usual naysayers, from the criminologists to the Corrections Association, loathe the policy only serves to reinforce that feeling.
It also represents a remarkable transition for Act list MP David Garrett, who was ridiculed by some media last year as a boorish buffoon. The three strikes policy is his baby and enough has survived National's contribution to still claim paternity. In short, the policy properly aligns sentencing for serious criminal acts with parliament's intent. The great frustration for generations of politicians has been that they create the law, only for the courts to screw it up.
Sentencing is a classic example. The law isn't even much use as a reference given that the courts can, and do, set their own generous compensation to mitigate any maxima. To make matters worse, parole provisions frustrate even that intent. Now violent and/or sexual offenders get a strike for their first offence, no parole for their second, and the maximum prescribed sentence for their third.
For some sentenced to life, it will actually mean life. The three strikes policy is essentially parliament telling the judiciary that it cannot be trusted. Although it is also a vote of no confidence in its own parole system, driven by an underlying imperative that caged crims cost money.
So it that this combination of penny-pinching and liberalism allowed psychopaths like William Bell and Graeme Burton to go their murderous ways. The evil poster children for an incompetent justice system. Indeed, it is the notion that prison and prisoners are expensive that acts as a real policy barrier to a proper punitive experience for evildoers.
And, the desire to manage, rather than punish, the incarcerated was cited last week by the Corrections Association, the union representing prison guards, as the reason they are opposed. In essence, an argument born of cowardice. That parolling bad people makes their job easier by acting as an incentive for inmates to be nice to them, not nasty.
Prison guards will be killed, claimed president Bevan Hanlon, as a result of denying parole to the worst violent and/or sexual offenders. The logic is ludicrous and, if applied, would mean that the more dangerous the inmate, the quicker they should be released.
But then our prisons tend to resemble three-star motels. They are made onerous by the company rather than the conditions. Certainly if one is a gang member, then prison has evolved into a fraternal glee club. Which is why some prison guards have a relaxed attitude towards drugs inside. Anything, they reason, that makes their job easier.
The government's response to those concerns last week has been that it will simply provide more beds and build more prisons if numbers swell as a result of this new policy. That is as it should be.
We want the deranged, the psychotic and criminal classes as far away from us as possible, for as long as possible. Releasing the addled and anti-social back into our community can only create new victims. Indeed, you might argue that the cost of recidivist reoffenders – their arrest, charging, legal aid, trial, sentencing and the like – is actually more expensive than throwing away the key. Certainly for their victims.
And, although criminals are not the brightest species on the planet, neither are they wholly moronic. The three strikes policy has the capacity to reduce offending by scoping a harsher environment. The Californian experience shows that the stick can work: the policy sends an understood message.
Of course, there will be much hand-wringing from the usual suspects as the bill passes through parliament. The Kim Workmans, Greg Newbolds, Denis O'Reillys and the like will parade their sympathy. They will claim that none of this will rehabilitate these poor prisoners as functioning members of our society. And they're right: it won't.
But then we don't care. We prefer the three strikes offenders to be out of society altogether. We're not interested in their being given another chance – they blew it. And blew it. And blew it again. Welcome to the consequences. We're not talking about nice people having a bit of bad luck. We are talking about the scum of the earth. Society has an inherent right to protect itself from such. And a duty to ensure that the potential for decent folk becoming new victims is also reduced.
Which must be the next imperative for government. Because victims' rights remain at the fag end of the justice system's considerations. Victims are regularly denied proper restitution, are kept poorly informed, and inadequately counselled. It remains unfair that an overstretched police are expected to co-ordinate many of these roles – in turn leading to a resentment from too many victims that the police simply do not care.
Perhaps that might be David Garrett's next task. Who says lowly list MPs have no influence? Although the lesson for National's backbenchers is much grimmer. Leave your party, shack up with a surrogate and have some real influence on government policy.
Sunday Star Times, January 24 2010