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Darroch Ball
Co-leader/Spokesperson
Sensible Sentencing Trust.
Apparently, Newshub had the jump on everybody this week when they ‘revealed’ statistics that showed a massive increase in the number of inmates bashing corrections officers. The problem is that the numbers and data they reported on showing the dramatic increase are nothing new.
The Corrections Association must be apoplectic having to constantly address this same issue month after month in the media. The issue of increasing numbers of assaults on prison officers is not a new one and has been headline news for at least the past four years. The story hits the headlines every couple of months not only because the problem isn’t going away, but because the numbers of assaults keep hitting new highs. As you may recall the latest iteration of this issue a month ago, involved the Association President contemplating a vote of no confidence in the Minister of Corrections Kelvin Davis.
How the media can’t see that this chronic infection of the corrections system has been allowed to fester unabated over the past four years beggars belief. The constant spin and soundbites they get from Davis must surely be starting to make them cringe, realising he isn’t really saying anything. Maybe they should report on the fact that Davis has had four years to fix this as the Minister and all he has done is watch more and more officers being bashed every week.
What must be burning the Association the most, is the fact that they have been screaming out for harsher penalties to act as deterrents for years and have constantly been ignored by Davis.
Thug inmates who bash guards often don’t even get charged, and even when they do, they get slaps on the wrist. The Association can clearly see this is a major factor to the ballooning numbers and have voiced this to Davis and to parliament.
But what does Davis want to concentrate on? Kapa Haka, hugs, and hot cups of Milo.
What is needed is some serious cumulative sentences to be handed out. The very fact that these thugs are already inmates should in itself highlight that they are in the majority, violent, career criminal, gang members.
After four long years as minister, Davis has only just now signed off on an apparent ‘action plan’ to deal with the escalating violence. I guess the recent threat of a vote of no confidence in him sent a shiver up his advisor’s spines.
The problem is that this ‘action plan’ reportedly concentrates on ‘officer training and more consistent police prosecutions’. It seems pretty patronising to let corrections know that they have been the ones provoking prisoners into bashing them and they will need some “better training” to fix that. And Davis is either clueless or deliberately ignoring the fact that “more police prosecutions” will be utterly meaningless when having more prosecutions will only lead to more weak sentences being handed out. This is what the Association has been screaming out for years.
Kapa Haka won’t fix this. Hugs won’t fix this. Having guards carrying tasers is just next level stupid.
The only thing that will fix this is to stop the soft approach, start listening to the Corrections Association, and bring in proper sentences that will stop these violent scumbags from laughing all the way out the gate.
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