Crime in New Zealand - The Relationship Between Crime and Imprisonment

The Relationship Between Crime and Imprisonment

Despite the falling crime rate, New Zealand has followed the pattern of many Western countries by locking up more and more of its citizens. The number of people in prison has been growing steadily for the last 50 years and since 2010, the rate of imprisonment has been just under 200 per 100,000 of population. This gives New Zealand the second highest rate of imprisonment out of 29 countries in the West. New Zealand's rate is much higher than countries it tends to be compared with, such as Canada (117), Australia (129), England and Wales (154) and is more on par with many third world countries like Morocco (where the rate is 199), Gabon (196), and Namibia (191).

In New Zealand, as in most western democracies, the rate at which people are sent to prison primarily depends on trends in penal policy and sentencing law - in particular laws affecting the availability of community-based sentence options for judges, the use of remand, and the maximum length of sentences for any given offence. Penal policy is inevitably affected by the prevailing political climate. Indeed, Professor John Pratt of Victoria University in Wellington says that while crime is driven primarily by socio-economic factors, the growing rate of imprisonment in Western countries has been driven by penal populism - a process whereby the major political parties compete with each to be "tough on crime" by proposing laws which create longer sentences and increase the use of remand prior to sentencing. The news media contribute to penal populism by sensationalising violent crime and the process is fuelled by victims groups like the Sensible Sentencing Trust vilifying judges, politicians and the Parole Board for failing to lock offenders up or keep them in prison.

In July 2009 Dame Sian Elias, the Chief Justice, argued against what she described as the "punitive and knee-jerk" responses to crime because of its potential consequences for prison overcrowding. In a controversial speech to the Wellington District Law Society, she called for a more rational approach to penal policy and said the focus on victims had made courtrooms "very angry places" and had put at risk the impartial system of deciding criminal blame. She also said that if action to address the growing prison population was not taken, Government might be pushed into the use of executive amnesties to reduce the growing prison population. In response, Minister of Justice Simon Power said "The Government is elected to set sentencing policy. Judges are appointed to apply it."

In addition to sending more and more people to prison, New Zealand also seems to have had a history of locking people up for relatively minor offences. In 1930, the Under Secretary for Prisons reported that ‘34% of the total number of persons committed to prison were serving terms of less than one month, 58% for terms of less than three months and 73% were for terms of less than six months. The proportion of people in prison for serious crimes was relatively small. Even today, 70% of all offenders in prison will be released within seven months.