Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Citizen Key II: The High School Years

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  • Russell Brown,

    Williamson ranks up there with Max Bradford for successful sector reform.

    Burrrrrrn!

    True, though. Interestingly, the only two old-school holdouts on telecoms regulation in the National caucus were Brash and Williamson. So Brash goes and the Moz gets a promotion ...

    I guess the best you can say about Williamson is that at least he's not one of those economic liberals who contrives to be a social conservative.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    E.g. "New Zealand has high rates of imprisonment and high rates of recidivism. I draw only one conclusion from that : the system isn’t working."
    You may think that's an OK thing to say but on various levels it's crazy. (1) Clark indulges in the fallacy of thinking that you can draw any conclusions about imprisonment rates without knowing how much crime there is ...

    No she doesn't. It's quite reasonable to say that a corrections system that produces very high rates of imprisonment and high rates of recidivism is not filling its purpose.

    (Collins sometimes makes an analogous mistake of drawing conclusions about divorce rates without knowing how many rotten, divorce-worthy marriages there are). If the underlying behaviors are very bad then even very high imprisonment (divorce) rates might be too low.

    What a strange comparison. The corrections system is directly shaped by government policy, and paid for from the public purse. The size and nature of the prison muster is determined far more by policy than by the underlying crime rate. You need only to look at the US experience with various forms of gimmick sentencing to see that: they're not sending people home from overcrowded prisons in California and Texas because the crime rate is so much greater than it used to be, but because their systems have been compromised by stupid sentencing laws. The 2004 American Bar Association report was quite enlightening.

    So, yes, in that sense it is "the system". You just need to decide what sort of system you want.

    OTOH, since the reform of divorce laws (1975?) I don't think government policy has had much impact on divorce rates. And for all the people publicly agonising about "skyrocketing" divorce rates, they've barely changed in the last quarter century. Last year there was exactly half a divorce more per thousand marriages than there was in 1981: 12.4 vs 11.9.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Glaister,

    No she doesn't. It's quite reasonable to say that a corrections system that produces very high rates of imprisonment and high rates of recidivism is not filling its purpose.

    That's a technicality - recidivism is a higher order statistic that's sensitive to so much including lengths of sentences and also both apprehension and conviction rates. One can try to operate on it if one wants, and smart new ideas about how to run prisons are always worth trying, but with who knows what results. At any rate Clark has on many other ocasions not included the "and recidivism" proviso, and laments about different (simpliciter) imprisonment rates of Maori and non-Maori (__not__ joint different imprisonment and recidivism rate, whatever that would mean) have been widespread.... so, even if Clark said just enough technically to avoid the fallacy I mentioned, she does in fact regularly commit the fallacy (and basically did so here), as do many others. So, nice try, but you're carping.

    What a strange comparison. The corrections system is directly shaped by government policy, and paid for from the public purse.

    Yes the cases differ in various respects, but the similarities are powerful too: anti-social behavior and its symptoms/consequences; anti-marital/family behavior and its symptoms/consequences. A hell of a lot of people on the right including Collins on various occasions wring their hands about family break-down and focus on divorce rates etc.. Unless they're very careful it can sound like they're asking people to be trapped in godawful situations/marriages (when they don't have to be) - a lot of DPB teeth-gnashing has this character too - just as someone complaining about imprisonment rates (simpliciter) runs the risk of sounding like they're asking society to accept being trapped with additional criminals in their midst (when they don't have to be).

    The size and nature of the prison muster is determined far more by policy than by the underlying crime rate.

    Right, one can say the same thing about divorce in fact. Both divorce law change and all sorts of wider cultural attitudes can alter the family/marriage break-down rate while leaving underlying anti-marital behavior rates (dom. violence etc.) unchanged. It isn't "policy" in quite the same way in the two cases. But, for example, concepts such as "frivolity" can and have been applied equally well to divorce as to imprisonment. Your bitching about "gimmick" sentences is part of that (on the characteristic lefty side).

    On another level, however - the level of my previous note - one wants to try to hold some of those other background factors fixed in ones thought. Modulo all that, by God, crime rates had better be a principal driver of prison rates over the long haul.

    You need only to look at the US experience with various forms of gimmick sentencing to see that: they're not sending people home from overcrowded prisons in California and Texas because the crime rate is so much greater than it used to be, but because their systems have been compromised by stupid sentencing laws.

    Reducing imprisonment rates by changing what you think is prison-worthy and dealing with the consequences is a fine option. It might be the best option. (And go back to that slob boyfriend who irritates/beats you while you're about it....)

    The 2004 American Bar Association report was quite enlightening.So, yes, in that sense it is "the system". You just need to decide what sort of system you want.

    I think I've answered this already, but, put slightly differently, yes systemic issues can be important but there's also a sense in which they can drop out, and, in any case, underlying behaviors are also very important, and the fallacy is to pretend that the latter's not so.

    OTOH, since the reform of divorce laws (1975?) I don't think government policy has had much impact on divorce rates. And for all the people publicly agonising about "skyrocketing" divorce rates, they've barely changed in the last quarter century. Last year there was exactly half a divorce more per thousand marriages than there was in 1981: 12.4 vs 11.9.

    I'm no fan of that agonizing, but I don't worry much about imprisonment itself either. The rationality of that perspective (and the irrationality of any other) is what I've been maintaining. The standard stats in the US held that about 10% of the 90's fall in crimes there were due to additional imprisonment (that's what I remember fron the infamous Donohue and Levitt paper on the topic) - not obviously a great return on investment.... hence some of the rethinking now. Something similar is true in NZ I'm guessing... But, setting costs aside, after an original surge in imprisonment after longer sentences etc. are imposed, the imprisonment rate will (other things being equal) stabilize at a new level and that may be OK. Yet we'd predict that, if all other policy levers were denied to them, that wouldn't stop lefties ever after from bemoaning "exploding" imprisonment rates. Happily for lefties, however, there are many more direct and obvious policy levers to push in the prison case so they won't just have to moan or exhort ad infinitum. Instead, they can experiment to their hearts content, you know, with getting the recidivists back amongst us where they belong. Haw haw.

    Since Nov 2006 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Peasant,

    How truly odd that someone capable of such sustained argument and complex sentences could genuinely believe Clark and Collins to be comparable?
    Seems a bit fishy to me. Me thinks he protesteth too much.

    Since Dec 2006 • 7 posts Report Reply

  • John Farrell,

    Interesting to look back at past comments.

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 499 posts Report Reply

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