By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

in agricultural exports, particularly due to declining meat and wool prices (Belich,2001). The collapse had originated from the expansion of service sector industriesand consequently resulted in a declining export share (Tizard, 1975). While Britainhad remained the leading market for New Zealand during the early post­war yearstaking 66 percent of New Zealand exports in 1950 – by 1970 this had reduced to just36 percent (Belich, 2001). Despite these economic difficulties, there was no retreatfrom the idea of the strong central state. In the early 1980s, the leader of the NationalParty, Sir Robert Muldoon, sponsored a ‘Think Big’ state interventionist schemedesigned to strengthen the economy and relieve citizens of any doubts they hadregarding economic wellbeing (Belich, 2001). The strategy required that thegovernment borrow heavily from overseas investors (creating large external deficit)whilst using the borrowed funds for large scale industrial projects (such as asynthetic­petrol plant) (Smith, 2005). At that time, however, the solution toeconomic problems was still to have faith in the strong central state.Penal Policy in New Zealand from 1954 to 1984The presence of a strong central state that was committed to welfare was extended toall members of the community, even those who came into contact with the criminallaw. The underlying assumptions of penal­welfarism that prevailed in otherAnglophone countries during the post­war era were also evident in New Zealandpenal policy development: reformation, rehabilitation and welfare, and proportionatepunishment, as well as there being a consistent reliance on criminological expertiseand knowledge. Two pivotal documents published by the Department of Justice wereextremely influential in this regard:(a) ‘A Penal Policy for New Zealand’This report (Department of Justice, 1954) addressed what was in 1952 thought to bethe high rate of imprisonment in New Zealand – 55 per 100,000 of the population(New Zealand official yearbook, 1954). As noted previously, the Māori populationwas disproportionately represented in prison statistics accounting for 12.6 percent ofarrests and 13.1 percent of convictions, while this group accounted for only 5 percent25