By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

If we think it is fear [that makes people behave themselves], then wewill advocate more and more punishment. But if we think otherthings motivate people to be good citizens, we need to address howwe can rebuild our communities, and how we can deal with the widerjustice issues in this country.(New Zealand Parliament, 2002b: Par. 5)Suggestions about community intervention strategies (or related issues ofreintegration and rehabilitation) were given little attention. ‘Reintegration’ was onlymentioned on 64 occasions, the vast majority of which (61/64) were brought to thedebate by left­wing or centre left politicians. This illustrates the change in penalmood in New Zealand. Penal discourse was no longer focused on the reformation ofthe prisoner, or on expert oriented analysis, but was instead based on punitivity andits ability to fulfil public expectations.The Growth of the PrisonNonetheless, New Zealand’s imprisonment rate, which had grown to one of thehighest in the OECD, second only behind the United States, came to increasingprominence in 2006. The Labour government had underestimated the force that thepunitive penal environment would have on judges, who were already sentencingoffenders to lengthier sentences. Previously, judges had been warned to take note ofpublic expectations whilst sentencing, with Justice Minister Phil Goff stating that‘public opinion does not take kindly to being ignored’ (Bain, 2000a: 1). As a resultof growing pressures, and a lack of sentencing alternatives, judges were imposingincreasingly lengthy sentences in a bid to meet public expectations. Thus, while in1985 there were only 10 prisoners on preventive detention in New Zealand (Hurd,2008), the number in 2009 is 215 (Koubaridis, 2009). Further, a Ministry of Justicereport noted that ‘minimum non­parole periods of more than 10 years have beenmore commonly imposed on life sentences than previously’ (Ministry of Justice,2008: 112). One particular case resulted in a 33 year non­parole term for triplemurder, the longest non­parole sentence issued in New Zealand (R v Bell, 2002).In addition, the pressure to incapacitate had become even more prominent, withjudges increasingly using custodial sentences over other sanctions due to a lack ofavailability of community sanctions (Ministry of Justice, 2008). The Sentencing Act76