Corrections

Oh dear, a child sex offender is in threat of a bashing:

The Department of Corrections has caved in and agreed to move a child sex offender out of a south Auckland community after a third public meeting and threats of vigilante action.

Corrections promised 20 Otara residents that a time frame for the man’s relocation would be confirmed by the end of today.

The promise follows a meeting in Otara earlier today where Corrections managers met with a group of worried parents and residents.

Otara Network and Action Committee chair Adele Hamilton says there is concern for the man’s safety after his whereabouts were revealed.

”We need to advise our community that we’re working with the Department of Corrections on having the person removed,” she says.

Auckland Council community advisor Tipi Arthur helped facilitate the meeting and says the community was clear in its demand to have the man removed and it was now waiting for confirmation.

White Island is pretty vacant, I think that would be a suitable place.

Liberal panty-waists like to moan about our prison population and compare us to the US and their incarceration rate. When you confront them with a possible solution they rarely have one or talk about gay solutions like more hugs and cuddles for the poor mis-understood criminal. The liberal panty-waists encouraged over the years by politicians too afraid to grasp the nettle came up with Home Detention….like that was ever going to work.

One guy who knows just a little bit about crime thinks the US should look at bringing back flogging as a way of reducing incarceration. His argument is as much for NZ as it is for the US.

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore policeman who now serves as a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, is disgusted with the nation’s prison system. His novel solution: bring back flogging. He argues that the tactic could help reduce the prison population, the recidivism that jail breeds, and the cost of running the world’s most expensive and least effective prison system.

I can just see the comments that are going fly over this post.

I propose giving a choice for people to receive a flogging in lieu of jail or prison time. My goal is to be more humane. Given the choice between ten lashes and five years in prison, who wouldn’t choose the lash? I know I would. Because flogging would happen only with the consent of the flogged, it would be hard to argue that it’s too cruel to consider. If the choice were so bad, nobody would choose it.

I think one lash for every six months of potential incarceration is a fair deal. Some people say flogging isn’t harsh enough. Others say it may be too soft — though I really hope we haven’t reached the point in our society where whipping is considered too light a punishment.

Really struggling to find an argument against that logic. For years it was the same choice school boys, including myself, faced. Detention or a stroke of the cane? I always took the cane.

The actual flogging would be done as it is in Singapore and Malaysia, where it involves tying a person down, spread-eagled, on a large structure, pulling down his or her pants, and flogging the bare behind with a rattan cane. Make no mistake: it’s painful and bloody. It’s not a gentle spanking. But the process is over in a few minutes. Then a doctor can tend to the wounds and the person can go home.

I think merely presenting the choice helps us question the purpose of prison, and suggests how destructive incarceration is for the individual and society. It’s worse than flogging.

The Singapore/Malaysian style is brutal, but I hazard a guess that the recipient won’t be wanting a repeat. But I am sure people like the Sensible Sentencing Trust would argue that incarceration has led to a decrease in crime.

I agree that some offenders usually need to be locked up — pedophiles, terrorists, serial rapists, murderers — but there aren’t very many of these people. And they need to be incarcerated because we have reason to fear them. For most other crimes, flogging would be better. Arresting a drug dealer, for instance, does not reduce drug use. It simply creates a job opening.

Incarceration can actually increase crime. We know that the children of incarcerated parents — and we’re dealing with well over a million such children — are more likely to become criminals. We also know that people who do time are more likely to commit crimes when they get out, and that 95 percent of prisoners are released. I believe crime has decreased not because of our massive level of incarceration, but despite it.

This gets to the core issue of prisons: they fail at their basic mission of “curing” the criminal. We need to abandon the utopian ideal that prison is good for the soul. What could be a worse environment for rehabilitation than years of confinement surrounded by a bunch of criminals?

Interesting. But can we flog the pedos, rapists and murderers as a supplementary punishment to their incarceration?

We need to give criminals the resources they need to lead non-criminal lives. But giving housing, jobs, education, and health care to ex-convicts is a tough sell, especially when we don’t even give these essentials to non-criminals.

Without rehabilitation — which most prisons don’t even pretend to attempt — we’re left asking the basic question “Why prison?” The answer is always deterrence and punishment. Well, there’s no reason to think flogging would be any less of a deterrent than incarceration. And prisons don’t punish well, at least not relative to the amount we spend on them. Could we not spend the current $30,000 per year per prisoner more productively?

Admittedly there may be other, better ways to punish — methods that involve neither prison nor flogging. I certainly hope so. But as it stands, we’re stuck with prisons because we lack alternatives. Harsh as it may be, flogging is more humane, less destructive, and much cheaper than what we have now.

Home Detention isn’t working, for society, the criminals love it. Prison doesn’t work either, other than the criminals are off the street. Perhaps a return to corporal punishment is warranted.

The Human Rights Commission is becoming a joke. David Fisher writes in the Herald on Sunday about a bizarre case of a crim’s missus wanting to be a Corrections worker in the same prison as her husband is jailed and somehow when she doesn’t get the job it is a breach of her Human Rights.

A woman has been given the go-ahead to sue the corrections department for refusing to employ her as a guard in the prison in which her husband was remanded.

Lydia Butcher wanted to work at the Northland Region Corrections Facility, a prison at Ngawha Springs near Kaikohe.

But her husband of 12 years, 38-year-old Carl Butcher, was sent there on remand for firearms and assault charges. When Department of Corrections bosses found out, they refused to hire her, saying she should have told them.

The case is headed for the Human Rights Review Tribunal after mediation over the issue failed. Robert Hesketh, the Director of Human Rights Proceedings, said the case was going ahead. “We are her lawyers,” he added.

So it is worse, she neglected to tell Corrections on her job application that her husband was banged up. I note that we have comment from one Robert Hesketh. I thought that name was familiar so took a little wander through Google. oh right, it’s that Robert Hesketh, the convicted fraudster ex-Judge.

In January 1997 Judge Robert Hesketh appeared before a district court, and pleaded guilty to eight charges of fraud. The charges related to $815 worth of false accommodation and travel expense claims while employed as a judge in the Whangarei District Court. Hesketh repaid the money before being fined $8,000 and ordered to pay $2,000 costs.

Right, so we now have a convicted fraudster serving on the Human Rights Tribunal taking a case on behalf of a woman whose husband is a convicted armed offender, all because she didn’t get a job at the same prison as her husband.

It is understood the foundation of the case against the department is that Lydia Butcher should not be discriminated against because of her husband’s criminal behaviour.

What next? The only thing that could make this more farcical is if she has convictions that haven’t been disclosed as well.

It is joke cases like this that makes people wonder if we shouldn’t just disband the Human Rights Commission forthwith.

Dean Wickliffe is having a sook and a whinge about the crap food he got in the pokey when he served time for murder.

Corrections Minister Judith Collins has a message for the long-term prisoner who is demanding healthier menus: “stay out of jail if you don’t like the food”.

Dean Wickliffe, one of New Zealand’s longest-serving inmates, wrote to Corrections boss Ray Smith asking for greater variety of more affordable and healthy food for purchase in prisons.

But Collins said: ”If he was so worried about the food in prison, he had choices in his life.

”One of them was to not commit crime to end up in prison for long stretches. Hopefully before committing any other crimes, he would like to remember the food he found so boring and tasteless.”

Dean Wickliffe has forgotten that he was in prison for a long time not a good time. Wickliffe should be thankful he spent time here and not in the US where they have Nutraloaf.

There are many different recipes which include a range of food, from vegetables, fruit, meat, and bread or other grains. Some versions may be vegetarian or completely vegan. The ingredients are blended and baked into a solid loaf form. In some institutions it has no fixed recipe but is simply the regular prison meal (including drink) blended together. In one common version, it is made from a mixture of wheat bread, non-dairy cheese, various vegetables, and mixed with vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes. Prisoners do not need utensils to eat it, and it is generally served on a piece of paper, rather than a tray.

In fact I just bet that Judith Collins will now ask Corrections to implement Nutraloaf nationwide at all prisons. It has been tested legally of course:

In April 2010, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County Arizona won a federal judgment for the constitutionality of nutraloaf.

Judith Collins released some great news in parliament today. Contrary to all the wailing and whining from the sooks, pinkos and crim huggers container prisons have been a resounding success.

Good to know that Corrections is planning on building more and multi-story facilities out of them. Apparently the design is so good that Corrections may well be able to licence the designs to overseas prisons.

Respected journalist Phil Kitchin from the Fairfax stable suggested that a contractor holding a non tendered contract with a government department was outrageous.  In fact the way the article was written it was clearly intended to suggest that there was some element of corruption involved.

From the same Fairfax stable, we have Michael Forbes in the business pages today giving the thumbs up to a Whanganui boat building company for negotiating a “syndicated procurement clause” that allows the police and other govt agencies to bypass the tender process and deal direct with said boat building company.

Mr Fothergill also had the good sense to negotiate a syndicated procurement clause in its contract with the police, which allowed other government agencies to bypass the public tender process and go straight to Q-West as a preferred service provider.

This then makes for an interesting conundrum for Fairfax. One well respected writer thinks untendered work is almost corruption and another writer lauds the person responsible for orchestrating non-tendered work as having “good sense”.

So make up your mind Fairfax – corruption or good business? One or the other please.

Watch Bomber go falsetto.

I have another idea for Crusher - Nutraloaf.

from Boing Boing

The authorities at Cook County Jail have a new way to punish unruly inmates: Nutraloaf, a dense block of food-like stuff that meets the requirements of providing prisoners with daily calorie intake and nutrients, but deprives them of enjoyment. Chicago magazine sent food critic Jeff Ruby out to try it. He reports:

Nutraloaf

An employee from Aramark Correctional Services–a branch of the Philadelphia-based company that also provides fare for college dorms and NFL stadiums–presented me a Styrofoam container sagging with a blunt ginger-toned mass roughly the size of a calzone and with the appearance of a neglected fruitcake. It had nothing else in common with either.

The mushy, disturbingly uniform innards recalled the thick, pulpy aftermath of something you dissected in biology class: so intrinsically disagreeable that my throat nearly closed up reflexively. But the funny thing about Nutraloaf is the taste. It’s not awful, nor is it especially good. I kept trying to detect any individual element–carrot? egg?–and failing. Nutraloaf tastes blank, as though someone physically removed all hints of flavor.

Turns out, there’s a pretty interesting debate going on right now as to whether Nutraloaf—and similar dishes at other correctional facilities—falls under “cruel and unusual punishment”. So far, Ruby writes, all the lawsuits brought against excessively bland food have failed.

I’m thinking that this should be standard fair not a punishment. Nutritional, yet bland. Maybe at Christmas they can have gravy with it…..nah!

The most effective minister in the National government would have to be Judith Collins.

Everything she has said she would deliver she has, including two heads on a plate for each of her departments.

First Howard Broad announced his retirement, just in the nick of time, so he could put his spin on getting the arse by the Minister and now Barry Matthews takes one in the chook as well.

Corrections Department boss Barry Matthews is set to retire at the end of the year.

The department began advertising yesterday for a new chief executive, the Dominion Post reported.

Matthews came under fire early last year following a report into the department’s handling of the parole system.

Corrections Minister Judith Collins demanded accountability over the failures, reported by the Auditor-General Kevin Brady, and refused to say she had confidence in Matthews.

A spokeswoman for the department said he would step down “by the end of the year”.

Judith Collins is a patient and careful hunter of the common or garden variety of the Vacuus Civilis Vernula.
I think she needs to conduct training for the other ministers in hunting the elusive Vacuus Civilis Vernula.

Money wasting tenders on Maori

Cactus Kate has a good post on the sorry excuse that are Bro-tocracy and their leadership.

Maori have become the basket cases of the South Pacific developed countries. Some 16.4% are unemployed (doesn’t count the DPB and sickness beneficiaries). Despite resources over the years that have been showered up on them over any other racial group.

I put it down to all those years of hands up, subsidies for employing Maori and educational preferential treatment and Maori leaders have STILL no answer for their problem. That’s right, the Maori Party are in Government. They have been for two years. Treaty claims have been settled, the Iwi have the money to create their own jobs. They have their own resources to manage and attribute Maori employment to. Still nothing positive to show.

Maori unemployment is Pita’s problem.
Maori disgraceful domestic violence statistics are Pita’s problem.
Maori’s disgraceful child abuse statistics are Pita’s problem.
Maori crime statistics are Pita’s problem.

You want tino rangitiratanga, your own named race-based political party, you want to be allowed self-governance and control, you want the rest of New Zealand to butt out and leave you alone – then you have to own your own problems.

Continually Pita seems to own nothing, be responsible for nothing.

Which brings me to a discussion that a few of us had last night while sipping Chili Tequilas. I received the nightly email from GETS and saw the Tenders as outlined above. This got the more entrepreneurial amongst us thinking. Perhaps the Blogger’s Union should set-up a consulting firm and start applying for some of these Tenders. If troughers advocates like Shane Bradbrook can make a considerably good living from not stopping a single person smoking, then we sure as hell can provide even better analysis for the same money. It isn’t like the bar is very high, so we should be able to create a rather large trough with which to fund our blogging. The team thus far even includes some very well educated individuals, a Doctorate, a couple of law degrees, architecture qualifications plus general roust-about abilities. Certainly there was more intellectual clout around the bar table alst night than in any of the current Maori troughing advocacy groups out there.

All we need now is a group set of keffiyah so we look cool as we take photos of ourselves swanning around all the tourist hotspots that miraculously have necessary conferences that cover areas of our expertise.

Anway back to the two tenders at hand. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Evaluation of the Department of Corrections’ partnership relationships with Maori

An evaluation of partnerships between Maori and the Department of Corrections has been approved as part of the Department’s 2010-11 research and evaluation work programme.

The Department currently has three different types of partnership relationships with Māori groups. This evaluation is intended to analyse the current processes, systems, and contract arrangements in order to inform the Department about the effectiveness of those partnership relationships, and to offer insights which will inform the on-going improvements of these relationships.

Individuals and organisations interested in undertaking this evaluation are invited to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI).

Now I reckon we can crowdsource this EOI. You can download/view the EOI document from here. This is money for jam. We also need to vreate a glossary of appropriate terms to use, such as; paradigm, step-change, partnership etc.

A quick look at the EOI document shows an alarming disconnect (note buzzword) between reality and the Department of Correction. Quite simply this sort of nonsense isn’t going to help Maori.

Strong partnerships are key to reducing Māori re-offending and are one of the ways that the Department addresses its vision to succeed for Māori offenders. The Department has pledged to expand its work with Māori groups to support and improve the work it does to reduce re-offending by Māori. It will do this by acknowledging and accessing hapū and iwi expertise and leadership to better support Māori offender pathways out of crime; by acknowledging and using the strengths of offenders, stakeholders and communities; and by incorporating the Māori world view to diminish the perceived connection between offending and being Māori.

Utter tosh. The partnership between Maori and the Department of Corrections can be easily described thus:

“Maori are convicted and represent a significant percentage over and above their population footprint because they are a criminal race and refuse to adhere to the rule of law. The Department of Corrections forms a partnership with Maori when they become incarcerated for their continued and repeated offending. The relationship is one of Guard/Prisoner. The Department keeps the criminal Maori of the street in accordance with the law and criminal Maori behaves him/herself in prison or the lag gets harder.”

See this is money for jam, perhaps it could even be called something suitably quango-ish….like Truth Based Evidential Consulting. However the Corrections Departments delusions are somewhat grander than that.

Significant Relationships

Relationships that are signed by the Minister for iwi whose structures, history and/or enabling legislation mean that they already have existing relationships with Government at the most senior levels. This type of relationship is not actively sought by the Department but can be necessary in particular circumstances.

I think this is translated into “Relationships that are signed by the Minister for iwi with choice troughing records relationships with Government at the most senior levels. This type of relationship is not actively sought by the Department but we have to feed the pros quite regularly or they get real uppity.”

Anyway, I digress:

The Project:

The Department invites individuals and organisations to express their interest in carrying out an evaluation of the Department’s Kaitiaki role and its partnerships with Māori more generally (the Project).

The purpose of this Project is to assist the Department to make decisions about what kind of partnership relationship/s between the Department and Māori are most desirable for both parties, moving forward. As such, the Project will report on the level of success of the various partnership relationships, from the perspective of all stakeholders.

I think that is pretty straight-forward. The Department wants to outsource its thinking to some other, probably equally stupid, organisation because it is all too hard to for themselves. I’m struggling to think reason as to why Barry Matthews should even bother retaining the the Department’s Strategy, Policy and Planning (SPP) group administrators. Considerable savings could be had by analysing the email groups associated with that sub-department and sacking the lot for such a retarded EOI, and presumably big trough bag of loot to write mumbo-jumbo that isn’t even needed. This is why the bill for external policy consultants is so f*cking massive.

Now onto the more retarded Tender.

Evaluation of the Department of Corrections’ partnership relationships with Maori

Māori over-representation in the offender population is a long-standing issue of concern for the Department. Lack of progress in reducing levels of over-representation suggests a need to explore different approaches to rehabilitation. This research aims to build a knowledge base of interventions, initiatives and approaches that have been successfully used with Māori to address a range of problematic behaviours. Such an approach will look beyond just crime reduction schemes and the correctional/justice sphere, to a range of other domains where interventions have proven to be transformative for Māori. This could include health, education, or community driven programmes and services, as well as work carried out amongst other indigenous populations. The Department is looking for original thinking that goes beyond the current approaches, and seeks to look at the intervention literature using ‘fresh eyes’.

Knock me down with a feather. This project should be very short indeed, maybe about fice minutes in duration, because I bet there isn’t a single document in existence, except the letter from some Dutch guy offering to solve the “Maori problem” at a guinea a head, that provides an insight to what works to change offending behaviours by Maori.

The short answer is nothing works for Maori. In fact nothing maori works. Just look at the troughing advocacy in Maori Stop Smoking areas. millions of dollars have been spent, and they want more, and not a single person has been helped to stop smoking. They often call, quietly mind, don’t want to lose the trough, for a ban on smoking. But it always comes with the hand out for money.

If money was the answer to solving Maori problems, then they’d all be solved. Never before in the history of the world has so much money been poured into an indigenous race with such poor outcomes. If money is the answer then it must have been a bloody stupid question. But of course everyone knows what that iwi isn’t a word, it’s an acronym. I Want It.

If I was the Minister of Corrections I’d be very unhappy about such silly tenders being put out. It shows the absolutely lightweight thinking the taxpayers are unfortunately are having to pay for. It really does make the case, in those two tenders alone for the complete outsourcing of all prisons, and then paring down the Department to a shadow of its former self.