The Panel, RNZ National, Wednesday 22 August 2018
Jim Mora, Joe Bennett, Rebekah White, Emil Donovan
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-26-08-2018/#comment-1517789https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2018/08/general_debate_26_august_2018.html/comment-page-1#comment-2291814
First topic for today’s program: the Crime and Justice Summit. Serious topic, and one which attracts some thoughtful and brilliant minds. Professor Greg Newbold was what Mora likes to call “the talent” in this discussion…..
JIM MORA: Andrew Little’s Crime and Justice, uh, Summit looks, ah, set to recommend have fewer people in prison, you would infer, and the pulling of other levers, as the Prime Minister puts it, to both keep New Zealanders safe and better treat and rehabilitate those behind bars. And as we’ve discussed before, doing both at the same time will be the trick. But, Panelists, you are all for this?
REBEKAH WHITE: I really—
JOE BENNETT: All for what?
REBEKAH WHITE: You go, Joe.
JOE BENNETT: No sorry, I just want to clarify, what am I “all for”?
JIM MORA: Okay. All for both the extra rehabilitative approach and getting prison numbers down.
REBEKAH WHITE: Sounds great in theory. How do you DO that?
JIM MORA: Yes, we do ask that as well.
REBEKAH WHITE: Ha ha ha.
JOE BENNETT: Heh, heh, heh, heh….
MORA: Joe, do you have an opinion on it?
JOE BENNETT:Ummm. I’m no criminologist. It’s, it’s, it’s very hard, isn’t it. Ummmm, the, I remember going to a prison once, visiting a prison, ahem, Christchurch Men’s Prison, um, for, with regards to some columns that I had written, and I went there a couple of times. And it was an appalling place. Ummm, just the bottled testosterone there, it bristled, it was, it was, you felt soiled and horrible and horrid to be there, and you couldn’t imagine that it was rehabilitative. Ah, but I remember the Governor there saying to me, and he had far more reason to know than I would, he said that only two things rehabilitated the inmates in his prison, and one was they got God, and the other one was they got the love of a good woman. And I throw that out there for what it’s worth, I can’t verify it, I can’t vindicate it, but he sounded as though he knew what he was talking about.
MORA: Memorable.
JOE BENNETT: Mmmm.
MORA: Memorable. Criminologist, uh, Professor Greg Newbold isn’t at the Summit. We’ll seek his views on it shortly, but first actually we want to ask him something else from a listener. Greg, good afternoon.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Hi. G’day.
MORA: Here’s the question for you, ahh, first up, uh. “Jim, at this summit are lots of people with all sorts of ideas on how to reduce recidivism. Lots of them make a living from this sector. Has anyone sat down and asked the criminals and prisoners what their ideas are as to what would motivate them to change their behavior and their lives? Is there any research like this?” asks Chris Malcolm. Greg, what’s the answer? What do prisoners want, what do they think will work?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Aww, they wanna get outa jail. Mo– heh!— mosta them, ahhm, they would come up with ideas, they’re not criminologists, I mean, I was in jail myself, as you know—
MORA: Mmmm.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: —for five and a half years, and um, awww, everybody had different ideas about what they’d do when they got out. The problem was that a lot of guys in prison say, when they’re in jail, they say, Ohhh, I’ve ruined my life, I shouldn’ta done this and I shouldn’ta done that, and when I get out I’m not going to make the same mistake, and then they get out and make the same mistake. You got 86 per cent recidivism in New Zealand over five years. So, ahhhhmmm, y’know, what prisoners say and what they actually do are two different things.
JOE BENNETT: Can I ask a question?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah. Please.
JOE BENNETT: Is there anywhere in the world which has, say, half that recidivism rate?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Ah, no, not that I know of. The United States has got pretty much the same as us. Ummm, we’ve got a pretty high recidivism rate, I’ll tell you, the United States is around seventy-FIVE per cent—
JOE BENNETT: What about Scandinavian countries?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah I mean people talk about Sweden and so on but you never see any real data from it. I went to a prison in Sweden once, and it was a pretty nice jail, but you know, you’ve got a different social situation and a different demographic makeup over there, so you can’t compare them. You’ve got to compare apples with apples.
MORA: When you were IN jail—
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Mmm.
MORA: —did you get an inkling of, if not what they wanted when they got out, which was to get out, but of what they needed, Greg, of what other fellow inmates needed to make them, ah, better citizens afterwards?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Ahhhh, not really, um. Most of the guys—I was in maximum security for most of my time—most of the guys up there had had horrific backgrounds, really terrible family backgrounds and childhoods, and that’s where the problem lay. A lot of them were very damaged before they came to prison and had histories of offending going back to when they were in school, absenteeism, neglectful parenting, abusive parenting, no parenting at all in some cases, and when you have a kid who’s been brought up in those circumstances, you’ve got a person who’s very very difficult to do anything with. It’s a problem which begins in childhood and is very difficult to turn around in adulthood. Quite often these guys wake up once they reach their forties and fifties, but between that age of seventeen to, say, 35 to 40 they can be pretty dangerous and pretty crazy.
MORA: And I know there are intentions, I’m sure they were voiced at the summit today and yesterday, about turning it round far earlier on in life, and that’s been discussed a lot.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Oh yeah.
MORA: Anzac Wallace, at the Summit yesterday: “If we are 52 per cent of the prison population”—meaning Maori—“why aren’t we 52 per cent of the people speaking?” Is he right, that we need the Maori voice louder here, Greg?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Well it’s no good just having—just ’cause you’re a MAORI on, uh, on, on crime or prisons. Ahhhhmmm, so I don’t think, uh, ahh, ahh, y’know, there’ll be Maoris at that thing that have got backgrounds, but ah, um, it, that’s not going to solve a problem, having a whole lotta people speaking who don’t know what they’re talking about. Um, you got seven hundred people there, and most of them won’t have any real background in criminology or corrections at all, they’ll just be people who’ve got nothing better to do for two days.
JOE BENNETT: Ha ha ha ha ha!
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: And you’ll have a big talk fest there, and everyone will come up with their own personal plans and bright ideas, but it’s not really going to make any difference.
JOE BENNETT: If you were Minister of Corrections what would you do?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: This isn’t the first one, there’ve been heaps of these bloody summits in the past. The reason I’m not there is that I’ve been to so many, and that’s all they are, talk fests, and so I didn’t bother going, I’ve got better things to do.
MORA: Were you invited, out of interest?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah yeah, I was invited to, uh, to, uh, apply to go up, which was essentially an invitation to go there, but I didn’t respond to it because I thought it would be a waste of time.
JOE BENNETT: Can I ask a question? Greg, if you were suddenly appointed Minister of Corrections today, what would you do?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: I’d start building prisons.
MORA: Seriously?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: I’d build a, I’d stop, uh, double bunking, and um, I’d set up a program for inmates who self-identify. A lot of prisoners aren’t really that interested in reforming, and I mean, where Maori are concerned, for example, 70 per cent are gang affiliated. Well, if you’re gang affiliated, um, then, uh, your chances of actually going on to a crime-free lifestyle when you get out are pretty limited. So I’d get guys who self-identify, who want to get out of gangs and don’t wanna go to jail, and I’d make things available to THEM, and the others I’d say, well get on with your lag and get out and good luck to you when you get out.
MORA: One obvious question, and I mean, I don’t really want to get into the Scandinavian model again today, because we’ve talked about it a bit on the Panel but there ARE places overseas, and countries overseas, with lower recidivism rates than ours and, getting back to the original question that Chris asked about getting into the minds of prisoners, and it was interesting to hear your viewpoint on that, and also what Anzac Wallace said, uh, isn’t it necessary to get better acquainted with the minds of Maori prisoners if we’re going to get that terrifically high number of people in prison down?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Y-y-yeah, well they talk about the Maori mind, Corrections talk about it. I don’t think Maoris have got different minds than Pakehas, quite frankly. I know lots of Maoris, they don’t think any differently to me, I was in jail with them, we all thought the same. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a Maori mind. And, ummmm, as far as that, you know, these recidivist rates, you can’t compare them internationally because they don’t ha—, there’s no standard measure for recidivism. They have different criteria and different follow-up periods, and unless you have the same follow-up period and the same criteria, you can’t compare different countries with their recidivist rates because you’re comparing apples with pears.
MORA: So you’re saying that when we hear about the success of individual overseas rehabilitative treatments, and someone says we’ve got the recidivism rate down from 49 per cent to seven per cent and measured that—
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Oh yeah, well they’re—BLOODY rubbish, absolute rubbish. AB-solute bloody nonsense. You look at that, you could look, I guarantee you, you give me that, that report and I’ll have a look at it, and I’ll find all the flaws in it. RUBBISH.
MORA: Heeeee-e-e-e! [chortling] We’ll assemble them all and present them for your, um, perusal! Ha ha!
JOE BENNETT: Ha ha!
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah yeah, give me—
MORA: Okay—
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: I’ll critique the bloody lot.
MORA: So you think nothing works. I mean, people are sending in ideas on the text, uh, “a low rate in Utah of recidivism, where prisoners are adopted by families.—Paul.” I mean, we hear all the time if you can connect prisoners with whanau for example more efficiently in prison, they are far less likely to go back to prison, so I mean, there’s a lot of pretty impressive anecdotage about this Greg.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah it is, it’s all anecdotal, that’s all it is. You could get, y’know, I mean, they talk about, they talk about strengthening family ties, Christ, most of the guys in jail come from GANGS. If you, if you, heh heh, if you strengthen family ties, specially whanau ties with Maori, all you’re strengthening is the GANG association. So, um, y’know, ya gotta be pretty careful about what you’re talking about with your, with your, ahhm, when you, when you talk about strengthening whanau [chortling] whanau links. A lot of them come from intergenerational crime families [chortling]
MORA: Well the same applies—
REBEKAH WHITE: You go.
MORA: Sorry Rebekah, I was just going to say the same applies to intergenerational Pakeha crime families you would think.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, it does. It does, it does. And they—
MORA: Rebekah you were going to say something.
REBEKAH WHITE: Go.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: But the Maori problem is particularly bad because whereas about 30 per cent of all inmates have gang association, where Maori’s concerned it’s SEVENTY per cent. It’s a HUGE problem.
REBEKAH WHITE: So going back to those families and those associations, is there research around what kind of interventions are successful at, um, correcting the course of life that someone might be on?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Can you repeat that please?
REBEKAH WHITE: So is there research around what kinds of interventions can be, um, carried out?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah there’s a whole lot of Canadian—
REBEKAH WHITE: What are the most effective ones?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yes there’s a whole lot of Canadians which have done this very complicated regression analysis and they’ve got these programs which they say work. See, the problem is that most programs, and Integrated Centre Management, which we adopted in New Zealand in 2002, tried to emulate it. But the problem is: most of these programs that work take place in highly structured laboratory type situations where they’re fully resourced, they’ve got specialist Ph.D.-qualified people applying them, and they do have some effect on some people. But you can’t apply that across the board in a prison population of a hundred—where you’ve got ten thousand five hundred people in prison.
REBEKAH WHITE: So we haven’t researched this in New Zealand?
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, they TRIED it, they tried it with Integrated Centre Management, they tried to apply it. But they couldn’t apply it in the real world context. It’s okay to apply these things in a laboratory context but if you try and apply them in the real world they don’t work ‘cos you don’t have the resources. Unless you’re going to spend millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, ahhhmm, you’re not going to succeed in these things. So you’ve gotta be realistic about it. In New Zealand the Integrated Centre Management program didn’t alter recidivism rates one bit.
MORA: It’s interesting hearing the contrarian voice on this, from outside the Summit, as it were, Greg, but you’re painting a pretty grim picture of a New Zealand where our only successful strategy will be to build the mega-prison and lock more people away.
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: Yeah, well I think you’ve gotta, we’ve gotta improve prison conditions. I mean you can’t even HOPE to get the kinds of achievements, the kinds of outcomes that are desired if you’ve got people crowded up in multi-cell situations. I’m writing to a bloke at the moment who’s doing a degree at the private prison in Wiri and he’s having a hell of a lot of trouble studying because he’s got a cell-mate who wants to play the guitar all the time, while he’s trying to study. You know, if you’ve got, you do get people in prison who really do wanna get out and they’re taking realistic steps to stop themselves from reoffending, but if they’re stuck in an environment where achieving their goals is impossible, then they’re bashing their head against a wall.
MORA: All right, understood, and thanks for your—
PROFESSOR GREG NEWBOLD: We’ve gotta create good prisons, with plenty of room and well resourced, and the first thing you need to do is start building capacity.
MORA: All right. Professor Greg Newbold, thank you for joining us today on The Panel.
Murray Olsen18.1
Jenny
North
ghostrider888
Morrissey
Paul Buchanan on Hugo Chávez
Radio New Zealand National, Sunday 17 March 2013