Greens Oppose Families Close to Offenders

The reason why a new prison was built near Dunedin was so families could visit more often. The old prison was so small, it was only useful for transfers and short term stays.

But apparently, only the second of these facts ever came to the attention of the Greens:

“The Greens do not support building new prisons except where they replace existing, degraded options. This new prison certainly does that, in replacing the archaic Dunedin prison. After a recent visit to Dunedin Prison I was shocked at the conditions the prisoners have to live in. I was especially concerned at the extremely poor facilities for visiting families.

“However, this new prison is significantly larger than the old one which causes some concern. I acknowledge the need for more beds due to overcrowding, but the overcrowding is a direct result of this Government’s and other opposition parties’ obsession with the rhetoric of being tough on crime while touting policies that fail to address crime reduction.

But then facts should never get in the way of a good Green policy eh?

ILMTW has just pointed out over my sholder that the Greens have proposed several policies likely to increase crime.

They also say:

“If we continue down this route we are locking New Zealand into a situation where we will have to pour endless sums of money into prison construction,” Mrs Turei says.

No, we’ll be able to pay for it with the vast reduction in:

• Health Costs from serious assaults, shootings etc
• Insurance premiums coming down
• Increase in tax from less income lost through crime
• Company profits increasing through reduced need for security etc, leading to increased company tax take
• Don’t forget those carbon emissions lost because of car trips to the police station, crime scene, court cases etc

I’m sure readers can add a few to that list.

Of course if the Greens hadn’t shut down our only private prison (that would be the one with the lowest recidivism rate – funny how the Greens think that’s important now) we could make money off these chumps.

Heck, why don’t we just start a fund to lock up the whole Green Party, I’ll chip in my $2 – it’s an investment in our future. 🙂