OnPoint: Manufacturing Dissent
90 Responses
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Email Web
Others just need varying levels of treatment while in prison to ensure they don't return.
Which brings us full circle. Privet or public treatment providers?
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With the current woeful shortage, I'm not sure people would mind.
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Email Web
There is a woeful shortage within the public sector. However, there is no shortage, that am aware of. There are a few hundred of them over here. But lets not go there, due to possible contamination.
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I mean mental health services in general.
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Email Web
Those are mental health practitioners, in general, and there are lots of them.
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Steven, I'm not going to get into an argument. For ages there have not been enough mental health services available for New Zealanders. That's a broader systemic and funding issue and individual practitioners have little influence over it.
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Email Web
The Howard league's numbers from 1999 show Women inmates diagnosed with Post traumatic stress disorder at 37%, male remand prisoners 23% PTSD and sentenced male prisoners, 19%.
Nothing to see here...
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Email Web
Steven, I'm not going to get into an argument. For ages there have not been enough mental health services available for New Zealanders. That's a broader systemic and funding issue and individual practitioners have little influence over it.
But hay, lets all go out and buy wide screen TV sets, then discuss fuck-wit TV personalities.
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Embedding disabled by request - watch here.
Ghosts - - - of the Civil Dead (1988).
Not the Sensible Setencers' favourite movie. -
Steven - wha?
Something's clearly got you pissed off, but I'm not sure what or who.
Or how the fact that crap tv is currently playing on my (relatively small) flat screen tv affects my, or anyone else's, ability to discuss anything.
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Email
Total: 340 above the original forecast by 2018. About a tenth of the total increase. It's not nothing, but it's not the source of the problem, either.
I'm confused (perhaps because it's Friday and my brain has unwound).
If I read correctly, 90% of the forecast increase in numbers is not the result of tougher sentencing. I understand the crime rate is in decline, yet our imprisonment rate is set to rise significantly (a whole lot more than 10%). So what is the source of the problem then?
Doesn't seem to make sense.
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Email Web
Something's clearly got you pissed off, but I'm not sure what or who.
Well...
Steven, I'm not going to get into an argument. For ages there have not been enough mental health services available for New Zealanders. That's a broader systemic and funding issue and individual practitioners have little influence over it.
"I'm not going to get into an argument" But...
Maybe, I could have said "I feel angry" because what Sacha just said to me, is very patronizing.
Also, Sacha's last word, is one of pessimism. So what the hell, lets just throw a rope around the rafters. Or, watch the television.
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If I read correctly, 90% of the forecast increase in numbers is not the result of tougher sentencing. I understand the crime rate is in decline, yet our imprisonment rate is set to rise significantly (a whole lot more than 10%). So what is the source of the problem then?
Have you considered that the crime rate may be in decline because of the higher rate of imprisonment?
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Steven, I like what you say in this place, but I could see that it wasn't going to be a quick discussion if it continued down that track and I stayed in it.
I have responded on the other thread about the ACC counsellors and funding, which I didn't dig up last night though I remembered it was there. You know I'm happy to have lengthy discussions here, but I was not in the mood last night and so I was signalling that. Maybe not well enough. Sorry if it came across as dismissive.
I am not pessimistic. And I am on your side.
As a strategist I was just suggesting that the target for action is not individual therapists if you want to fix this situation which you are so obviously passionate about. You have some power and lots of credibility because of your experiences.
But the therapists are not where you need to direct that energy, except maybe recruiting them as allies. The politicians and officials in the background who control funding and direction of health services are where the answer lies. I was saying that the broader problem has been going on for decades, and the current issue is the tip of a very large iceberg.
Doesn't mean you can't do something about it, just that you have to know what you're pusing against so you don't get exhausted and drown.
I'm sorry if that came across as patronising - never my intent.
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Have you considered that the crime rate may be in decline because of the higher rate of imprisonment?
I have wondered about that. It strikes me that it's hard to prove. Clearly some kinds of crime are prevented by imprisoning potential offenders. But:
- some violent offenders continue to offend in prison;
- if prison reinforces criminal propensities, then the offences prevented by confinement might be counterbalanced by offences committed afterwards;
- the demographic most likely to commit crime is declining as a proportion of the population so you need to factor that out.That's just off the top of my head.
Also, prison costs a lot of money. If you are imprisoned until you die, you'll never assault anyone (on the outside) again, but there's a reasonable chance that you wouldn't anyway. From a cost-benefit point of view there is a sentence length where the cost of incarceration outweighs the benefit to society of preventing any future offences. So yeah, maybe increased sentences are preventing some crime, but we kind of knew that anyway. What we need to understand is the complex relationship between sentence length, crimes prevented, recidivism and so on. Then we can answer the question of where the correct balance is.
In other words, that may be a correct supposition, and yet I would still want to review our current policies and would find it plausible that when all factors are considered, sentences are too long and too frequent.
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Email Web
I'm sorry if that came across as patronising - never my intent.
No worries, I do understand your intention, thanks.
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Email Web
Have you considered that the crime rate may be in decline because of the higher rate of imprisonment?
Maybe less crime is being detected, because criminals are becoming more sophisticated.
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Email
Have you considered that the crime rate may be in decline because of the higher rate of imprisonment?
I hadn't considered that, however it doesn't seem as if that would explain the predicted higher rate. If the crime rate is in decline then we should see fewer being sent to prison than the numbers being released (who were imprisoned at a higher rate).
My big mistake may be assuming that imprisonment rate is directly proportional to crime rate. I took it that Keith had covered that in his sentencing remarks - but there could be other factors (conviction rate for example).
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Email Web
I honestly think there's just some people in society who haven't learned to internalise "if I do this I will go to jail" at least to the extent that it makes them think otherwise before committing a crime (for some it might be more like "if I do this I probably wont get caught").
I think these people are the ones we're more likely to see committing crime - but equally it means that increasing sentences has no effect - because they don't think it applies to them - by the time they do get caught it's too late.
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think these people are the ones we're more likely to see committing crime - but equally it means that increasing sentences has no effect...
No deterrent effect.
Once they're inside, they not committing burglaries (or whatever).
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Email
Um, not quite! Because, of course, prisoners can assault etc other prisoners and prison guards.
(Probably they offend at a much reduced rate, or at least you'd hope so, but they can still offend on the inside.)
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Email Web
Have you considered that the crime rate may be in decline because of the higher rate of imprisonment?
In which case, why is the rate of imprisonment meant to continue escalating? If the crime rate is in decline because we're locking more people up, the tipping point must surely have been reached. That we're continuing to lock up increasing numbers of people says that we can't possibly be at the point where the crime rate is decreasing because more people who commit crimes are inside than outside.
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Its near on amazing just how many prison inmates are in jail for a crime which involved alcohol.
There's a definate link between the consumption of booze and recorded crimes ....
And we keep pushing the booze.
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Email
So - why do we keep drinking it?
This is the mammoth in the room: humans actually need stimulant/enhancement/depressant-but-feel-good/analgesant
and/or hallucogene - to continue to be. Like, live-
quite a few of us get a hormone high (from various activities) and quite a few of us get a kind of reverse/perverse high frompennitential/fasting type practises.All sane adult humans know - we die.
Few sane Western-educated humans (I'm one) believe that death is anything but extinction - you die, that's it (EXCEPT for whatever works you have created.)
I think ANZ has an extremely irreligious = sane population (we know about all those slaughtered sheep1) and - given there is - so far - no other alternative, - we try to blot it out-
so yeah, nz native, we keep drinking-
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Email
All sane adult humans know - we die.
Yep twice even for us this week. I like to celebrate death rather than mourn death too much but as soon as there is a kink in the works all hell can break loose. Go figure?
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