By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

IntroductionIn September 2007, New Zealand imprisoned 200 people per 100,000 of thepopulation; amongst Organisation for Economic Co­operation and Development(OECD) countries, this rate was second behind the United States (Department ofCorrections, 2008b).250200Imprisonment rate per 100,0001501005001990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008YearFigure 1: Imprisonment rate in New Zealand (Including Sentenced and Remand Inmates) from1990 to 2008 (Department of Corrections, 2006, 2008b; Ministry of Justice, 1997, 2008;Statistics New Zealand, 2008).New Zealand’s level of imprisonment is illustrated in Figure 1 (displaying originaldata produced from population estimates and prison population statistics from 1990to 2008) 1 . What can be seen is a steady increase in imprisonment up until 2001, after1This figure excludes data prior to 1990, as the current population estimates are based on a residentpopulation concept and are not comparable with estimates from earlier years which are based on thede facto population concept (Statistics New Zealand, 2008). Resident population estimates refer to theestimates of all people in New Zealand excluding overseas travellers and New Zealand residentstemporarily overseas. Also, the count includes births and deaths of the resident population, andpermanent and long­term population (Statistics New Zealand, 2006b). The de facto population7