By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

attempting to satisfy public expectations, using the Sentencing and Parole Acts as away of getting ‘tough’ on crime, before moving on to more ‘liberal’ ideas.Overall, however, politicians lost the ability to control public participation in penalpolicy, which in turn made policymaking increasingly emotive. To please publicexpectations the Labour government introduced the four statutes – the SentencingAct, Parole Act and Victims’ Rights Act 2002, and the Prisoners and Victims’Claims Act 2005 – as an attempt to ‘sign’ its way out of trouble. In the ensuingparliamentary debates the Labour government placed much emphasis on the morepunitive aspects. This, however, backfired. The liberal aspects fell by the wayside,while the punitive aspects were not ‘tough’ enough to satisfy expectations. Thereduction in parole eligibility only confirmed public suspicions that politicians werenot at all ‘tough on crime’; while victims were, for all intents, only given theopportunity to be re­victimised under the government’s victim legislation. At thesame time, the public and political debate became predominantly punitive. Furthererosion of prisoners’ rights was one consequence of this. Meanwhile, imprisonmentrates in New Zealand continued to rise.78