How to be really tough on crime

According to Tova O’Brien, politicians became obsessed with fighting crime in the 2023 election. National said it wanted to re-establish boot camps for 10 to 17-year-olds. ACT wanted to put 17 year olds into prison. NZ First wanted to crack down on gangs. Labour wanted to fund another 300 frontline police officers so they could lock more people up. These are all tired, old law-and-order policies based on fear mongering – basically lock ‘em up and throw away the key approaches.

Law and order comes up for auction at just about every election, whereby the main political parties compete to be the toughest on criminal offenders. Criminologist, Prof John Pratt referred to this competition as penal populism. Over the last 20 years or more, tough on crime policies have put so many people in prison that New Zealand had one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the Western world. The so-called Sensible Sentencing Trust played a huge role in this as politicians turned to uninformed farmers like Garth McVicar, instead of academics that actually understood something about the causes of crime.

This lock ‘em up approach is based on a theory – or rather an assumption – known as deterrence. The idea is that the fear of being incarcerated, will deter people from committing crime; and having been sent to prison will deter you from further offending.

New Zealand’s recidivism rates provide ample proof that this theory doesn’t work. Incarceration takes offenders off the streets temporarily, but just about everyone gets released eventually. In the meantime, being forced to hang out with other hardened criminals means that prisons are more likely to be universities for crime.

What doesn’t work?

Any policy designed to reduce crime in society needs two key components. First, it needs to target the underlying causes or drivers of crime, rather than just taking offenders off the street. Second, there needs to be solid evidence that the policy actually works.

So what about providing more rehabilitation in prison? Both National and ACT have succumbed to this unenlightened approach. National is proposing to improve access to rehabilitation programmes for prisoners held on remand, while ACT’s law and order policy is to make it mandatory to attend rehabilitation programmes in order to be eligible for parole.

Unfortunately, Corrections annual reports show that prison-based rehabilitation programs are almost totally ineffective. Most crime is either committed under the influence of alcohol or drugs or committed to obtain money to feed a drug habit. Corrections is well aware of this, and provides drug treatment programmes in prison. However, in 2020/21, drug treatment in prison reduced subsequent reconviction rates by only 2.2%. In 2021/22, the figure was 3.15%. These are tiny reductions which only occur in the first 12 months after release from prison.

In 2021, the Corrections Department’s Annual Report listed 23 different prison-based interventions intended to reduce recidivism. Corrections assesses the impact of all these programmes in the first 12 months after the prisoners are released. In 2021, the average reduction in reoffending across all 23 programmes was only 2.3%. The best performing programme (prison-based employment) reduced reoffending by 4.3%.

Despite the fact that these programmes have very little impact on reoffending rates, in 2022, the Department spent $322 million on them.

New Zealand is not the only country that has struggled with this. Worldwide, the history of trying to rehabilitate criminal offenders has been so fraught with failure that for many years, criminologists and justice officials used to believe that “nothing works”.

What does work?

There is one policy that does work – drug courts. There are two such courts in Auckland (known as the AODTC or Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court). Between 2012 and 2018, the AODTC was evaluated more extensively than any other justice related intervention in New Zealand history. The Ministry of Justice found it reduces reoffending of graduates by 86% more than a matched group of offenders. This result is 28 times better than the 3% reduction achieved by drug treatment in prison. That’s the evidence.

**Andrew Little: The drug courts that work where prisons don’t**

Andrew Little was a member of Parliament when these evaluations were being conducted. In 2017, he became Minister of Justice and was so impressed with the early results, he said drug courts would be “rolled out across New Zealand in 2018”. One extra drug court has been established in Hamilton, but since then, no funding has been made available to roll them out anywhere else.

Given the overwhelming evidence that drug courts are more effective at reducing reoffending than any other intervention, if politicians want to be really tough on crime, rolling out more drug courts is the only evidenced-based policy available. So far, The Opportunities Party is the only party that has read the evidence and made this part of their platform. TOP seem unlikely to be represented in parliament, but at the moment, they are the only political party prepared to be really tough on crime.

Its easier to get addiction treatment in prison than in the community

The information in this article is taken from a 6,000 word research assignment: ‘Identify the Challenges facing the New Zealand Alcohol & Other Drug Court (AODTC)’ prepared for my Honours degree in Criminology at VUW.

The prison population has dropped by over 2,000 since the Labour coalition came to power in 2018. Nevertheless, the ‘tough on crime’ mantra espoused by political parties of virtually every persuasion has driven the prison population to record highs. In March 2018, the muster reached 10,820. In the last 20 years, this pressure – known as penal populism – has forced successive governments to build six new prisons. It has pushed Corrections’ costs from $361m in 1997 to $2.4 billion in 2020 ($1,843 million in operating expenses plus $603 million in capital expenses). That’s a six-fold increase over 20 years.

Whichever political party has been in power, the Corrections Minister at the time has then claimed his Department had a responsibility to rehabilitate these extra inmates. In 2012, the National Government ratified this responsibility announcing that Corrections had to reduce reoffending by 25%.

The demand to rehabilitate these inmates has enabled the number of prisoners accessing addiction treatment in prison to jump from 174 a year in 2005 to 500 in 2008, and then to 1,000 in 2011. In the 2019 ‘Wellbeing’ budget, Corrections Minister, Kelvin Davis, announced even more funding would be made available enabling 1,200 inmates to attend prison based treatment. That’s a seven-fold increase.

Corrections provides addiction treatment via intensive Drug Treatment Programmes (DTP) in nine of its 18 prisons. The Department claims these programmes have “delivered a consistently positive reduction in reimprisonment, though typically modest in scale”. Modest is right. Corrections’ Annual Reports show these programmes reduce reoffending by only 5% in the first year after release. In 2015, the figure was 4.8%; in 2021, it was less than 1%.

Addicts dying on waiting lists

While prison programmes have expanded exponentially, the availability of addiction treatment in the community has contracted – bearing in mind, addiction services receive only 11% of total public expenditure on mental health and addiction services. In 2005, the NZ Herald reported that, due to years of underfunding, so many treatment centres in New Zealand had closed, the number of residential beds in the community had more than halved. The headline read: Addicts ‘dying’ on waiting lists.

In 2019, the National Committee for Addiction Treatment reported that 150,000 New Zealanders experience problems with substance use every year, but less than one third can access help. In some parts of the country, addicts wait up to six months for treatment. The same year, the Drug Foundation said: “strict criteria, long waiting lists, difficult locations and unsuitable services all prevent people from accessing help” and called for funding for addiction services to be doubled from the current figure of $150 million a year.

In other words, penal populism has given the Minister of Corrections more influence over government spending on addiction treatment than the Minister of Health, such that it is now easier to get substance abuse treatment in prison than in the community. This is a travesty when you consider that prison programmes reduce reoffending by only 5%, while the drug court in Auckland (known as the AODTC) achieves a 54% reduction in reoffending in the 12 months after treatment. In other words, the drug court is 10 times more effective than drug treatment in prison.

The MOJ’s flawed cost-benefit analysis

Given their effectiveness, it’s strange the Government seems so reluctant to roll them out nationwide. It was only in 2019 that former Justice Minister, Andrew Little, agreed to establish a new one – in Hamilton. In October 2020, the Government announced another one would be set up in Hawkes Bay. Before making a decision to expand, Mr Little ordered the MOJ to conduct a cost benefit analysis of the AODTC. This was completed in June 2019 and claims the AODTC provides very marginal savings (returning $1.33 for every $1 in cost).

Unfortunately, the Ministry’s analysis is seriously flawed. To begin with, it compared the cost of running a drug court with the cost of a traditional court even though these serve entirely different purposes – one to treat and heal, the other to punish. It would have made more sense, and been a great deal more informative, to compare the cost of treatment in drug court with the cost of drug treatment in prison – where the purpose is the same: to reduce drug related offending and keep drug addicted defendants out of prison.

The MOJ also failed to take long term benefits into account. For example, their analysis claimed the savings achieved by one defendant in the AODTC avoiding prison for 12 months was only $12,847. Based on this figure (which applied to 220 graduates), total savings to the taxpayer were only $3.32 million. The MOJ appears to have used the $12,847 figure because the total number of offenders going through the AODTC, and avoiding prison is so small, it has negligible impact on Corrections’ operational costs.

The crux of the problem is that the AODTC only deals with 100 offenders at a time, leading to a very limited number of graduates who manage to avoid a prison sentence. But if ten or twenty times that number were put through drug courts, economies of scale would kick in, and hundreds would stay out of prison. Corrections could lay off staff and possibly close a prison. The resultant savings would have a huge impact on the cost benefit ratio. Unfortunately, the Ministry failed to take into account the cost savings that would accrue if sufficient drug courts were established such that they actually led to a drop in the prison population. On this basis, they mistakenly concluded that the financial benefits from the AODTC are marginal.

Who is Andrew Little listening to?

In summary, the prison population has exploded due to penal populism – which, in simple terms, is the result of politicians listening too closely to the ‘lock ‘em up’ brigade. Cabinet then listened to every Minister of Corrections, each of whom argued for more drug treatment in the new prisons they were building. More recently, as Minister of Justice, Andrew Little commissioned a flawed cost-benefit analysis from his own Ministry – the same Ministry that produced projections claiming we needed more and more prisons.

Now that he’s Minister of Health, let’s see if Mr Little is willing to listen to health professionals and treatment providers and request an independent cost-benefit analysis of the AODTC – one that compares the benefits of addiction treatment in the community with treatment in prison. And let’s see if that analysis takes a long-term view, preferably one that covers 15 years, which is how long Mr Little said it would take to reduce the prison population by 30%. Without that, sooner or later, we’ll be back to building more prisons.

Why the Auckland drug court failed to reduce the prison population

In 2018, former Justice Minister, Andrew Little, announced the Labour-led Government wanted to reduce the prison population by 30% over the next 15 years. At the time, the muster had surged past 10,000. We were locking up so many people that, at the rate we were going, Little said the country would need to build a new prison every two or three years. Although the 30% goal was clear, how Mr Little and his Labour colleagues intended to achieve it was not.

One piece of legislation contributing to the problem is the Bail Amendment Act, passed in 2013, in response to the murder of Christie Marceau. This more than doubled the number of offenders held in prison on remand. Repealing this onerous law, which according to some authorities breaches human rights, would bring the muster down. Although Labour now has an unencumbered mandate, so far, the new Minister of Justice, Kris Faafoi, has had little to say other than offer platitudes about the need for “dispassionate and evidence-based examinations of ‘adverse events’.” Another strategy bandied about by Andrew Little in 2018 was to expand the use drug courts – designed to keep recidivist, high risk offenders, whose crimes are driven by alcohol and/or drug addictions, out of prison.

The first drug courts were set up in 2012 by the National Government. One was started in Waitakere, the other in Auckland. Together, they were known as the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court or the AODTC. To get into the AODTC, offenders have to commit a crime serious enough to warrant up to three years in prison – assuming they were sentenced in the usual way in the district court. But in the drug court, they are ‘sentenced’ to treatment rather than to prison. This could involve residential rehabilitation, mental health treatment, anger management, or any other counselling and support the judge and the treatment team deem appropriate.

The process takes up to 18 months. Participants come back to court on a regular basis so the judge can monitor their response to treatment and their compliance with drug testing to ensure they remain abstinent. The process is so intensive, the AODTC can only handle 100 participants at a time.

Drug courts 10 times more effective than treatment in prison

Internationally, drug courts are one of the most effective interventions available to reduce reoffending. The two drug courts in Auckland are no exception. Since the pilot was established in 2012, 46% of participants have graduated (see Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court quantitative outcomes evaluation 2018–19). Graduates are 62% less likely to reoffend and 71% less likely to return to prison in the first 12 months after treatment. When non-graduates are included in the analysis, 54% (of participants overall) are less likely to reoffend and 58% less likely to go back to prison. Compare those figures with addiction treatment in prison which reduces reoffending by only 5% in the year after release. It means the drug court in Auckland is up to 10 times more effective at reducing reoffending than treatment in prison.

Unfortunately, this has no impact on the prison population. That’s because the AODTC only takes 100 participants at any one time. The 46% that graduated is made up of only 220 offenders who stayed out of prison over the six years the pilot was running – an average of 37 less prisoners each year. Given that New Zealand has been incarcerating up to 10,000 people, 37 less is a mere drop in the bucket. That doesn’t enable the Corrections Department to lay off any staff, let alone close a prison.

In order to have any impact on the prison population, we would need many more such courts and would need to keep hundreds of offenders out of prison. Unfortunately, the Government has been extremely reluctant to roll drug courts out nationwide.

The target group

Clearly, there is no shortage of potential drug court candidates. According to Corrections, the vast majority of prisoners have alcohol and drug/and or mental health problems; 42% are assessed with a moderate to high risk of re-offending, which is the target group the drug court is designed to tackle. That’s around 3,500 inmates who could benefit from addiction treatment in a drug court. If 46% graduated, the prison population would be reduced by about 1,600. The Government would be well on its way towards reducing the muster by 30%. We could even close a prison.

Since it costs $120,000 to keep one person in prison for 12 months, this would lead to substantial savings to the taxpayer. With 1,600 less prisoners, the savings would be in the vicinity of $192 million a year. After five years, that’s nearly $1 billion.

Despite the extraordinary effectiveness of the AODTC pilot, former Justice Minister Andrew Little announced that only two new drug courts would be established – in Hamilton and Hawkes Bay. That may keep another 50 or 60 offenders out of prison. But it won’t make any difference to the prison population, and it won’t lead to any savings.

This begs the question: Why is the Government so reluctant to roll drug court out nationwide? The short answer is that Andrew Little, has been listening to the wrong people. This link takes the reader to a fuller explanation.

Gavin Hawthorn: sending him to prison does not make us any safer

**Gavin Hawthorn: 13 convictions for drink driving**

News that Gavin Hawthorn has recently been convicted of drink driving yet again has caused oodles of outrage in the media. Hawthorn has already killed four people in two separate accidents. In 2004 he was convicted of manslaughter over the death of his friend Lance Fryer and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released in 2013 and has now been caught drink-driving again – for the 13^th time. On this occasion Judge Johnston sentenced him to six months home detention and disqualified him from driving for two years.

The headlines were horrified. Stuff stated it like this: Recidivist drink-driver Gavin Hawthorn convicted again, leading to call for permanent driving ban. Newshub harrumphed that it was ‘Appalling’: Porirua man Gavin Hawthorn escapes jail after 12th drink-driving conviction. The Herald highlighted: NZ’s worst drink driver caught drunk behind the wheel again. Duncan Garner was especially incensed arguing that:

“This judge has failed to keep us safe as New Zealanders. We’ve been let down by his profession once again. He has let us down, now we are in harm’s way.” He went on to say the case was an example of why the public “have little confidence in the justice system”.

Blaming judges is misguided and myopic. This is what Garth McVicar and the senseless sentencing trust have been doing for years. All that has achieved is a burgeoning prison population and a crisis in capacity. At $100,000 per prisoner, per year and a reoffending rate of 60% within two years of release, clearly this is a failed strategy – and a massive waste of taxpayer money.

Keeping us safe

The justification for all this moral outrage is the dubious assumption that sending ‘dangerous’ people to prison ‘keeps us safe’. Does it? Let’s look at the facts.

Gavin Hawthorn killed his last victim in 2003. Between 2003 and 2017, another 5,402 people have died on New Zealand roads – an average of 360 people a year – or nearly one every day. Half of these deaths are caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or both.

The point is that most of these people died during the ten years that Hawthorn was in prison. Clearly his incarceration did not make us any safer. Giving the judge a hard time for not sending him to prison on his current conviction does not change this reality.

So, what’s the solution? The only intelligent comments in the media came from Andrew Dickens on NewstalkZB who asked rather quaintly: What to do with our drinkiest drink driver? He argued with considerable insight that:

“Indefinite incarceration and licence deprivation is not what this man needs. What he needs is to STOP FREAKING DRINKING.”

Drug courts

Dickens’ answer to the problems posed by the likes of Gavin Hawthorn is to put him into a drug court (in New Zealand known as AODTC – Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Courts). To be eligible, defendants must be alcohol or drug dependent and facing a prison sentence. A treatment plan for each participant is developed by the judge, taking into account the views of treatment providers, support workers and lawyers; it involves rehabilitation, counselling, drug-testing, community service and making amends to victims.

Dickens describes the process like this:

“They’re a three-phase, 18-month-long programme designed for high-needs and high-risk addicts who are facing prison, or who have tried but failed treatment programmes in the past.”

Drug courts have the potential to help thousands of offenders, not just drink drivers. And there is no shortage of available candidates in New Zealand. In 2011, judges told the Law Commission that 80% of all offending was alcohol and drug related. In 2017, Northland district court judge, Greg Davis, who sees a lot of methamphetamine related crime, said up to 90% of all offending was related to issues with addiction.

Currently, the only two drug courts in the country are both in Auckland. Hawthorn is serving his sentence of Home Detention in Paraparaumu – so a drug court in Wellington would be helpful. We need such courts in all our major cities.

Compulsory AOD assessment

Another strategy is available to target drink drivers in particular – one that also involves assessment and treatment. Currently out of 20,000 people convicted of this offence each year, only 5% – those disqualified indefinitely – are required to have an alcohol and drug assessment to see if they have their drinking under control before getting their driver’s licence back. Many of the remainder are sent to prison – just like Gavin Hawthorn. If any drink driver who incurred a second conviction was required by law to have an AOD assessment before their disqualification could be lifted, fully half of the 20,000 drink drivers would be assessed. As a result, there would be a lot less people in prison.

An evaluation of the NZ drug courts shows they also reduce imprisonment – 282 participants have been kept out of prison during the six years the two Auckland courts have been operating.

So if the government implemented these two strategies, this would shift the focus of our justice system away from punishing alcohol and drug addicted offenders towards treating them instead. This would surely help Justice Minister, Andrew Little, get closer to the Government goal of reducing the prison population by 30%. Maybe it would even moderate the media to tone down their moral outrage.

Qualified addiction counsellors not wanted in NZ prisons

In April last year, Radio New Zealand reported that the Corrections Department was paying for non-existent alcohol and drug counsellors. The story omitted the fact that most of the AOD counsellors who do work in the prisons are not actually qualified – at least not in addiction treatment.

The qualifications required to work as an AOD counsellor in prison are described in tender documents issued by Corrections recently. The documents relate to Drug Treatment Units (DTUs), the prison programme that inmates with addictions are required to attend. The tender states:

“DTU programme clinical staff and the DTU clinical manager will have a relevant qualification in psychology, counselling, psychotherapy or similar.

no-experience Remarkably, the document does not specify that the ‘relevant qualification’ has to be a graduate degree. Nor does it state that clinicians require a qualification in the assessment and treatment of addictive disorders.

Currently an AOD agency called CareNZ has contracts with Corrections to run eight of the nine DTUs. CareNZ also has contracts with a number of DHBs up and down the country to provide addiction treatment to the public in community clinics. The DHB contracts are a great more specific. For example, CareNZ’s contract with the Waikato DHB says:

“Clinicians employed to deliver these services must have a level VII (graduate) AOD specific qualification.”

Clearly, the DHB’s want value for money; they want professional clinicians to treat addicts – ones who are specifically qualified in the treatment of addictive disorders. But Corrections doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps that’s because their clients are only prisoners – so any old counsellor with any old qualification will do. If that’s their attitude, no wonder drug treatment in prison doesn’t work.

Review of DTU’s under CareNZ

And it doesn’t work. Hundreds of inmates are put through these DTU programmes each year and they reduce reoffending by less than 5%. Mind you, 11 of the 12 rehabilitation programmes in prison don’t work. Corrections management are concerned about this because in 2011, Government set the Department a goal to reduce reoffending by 25% by June this year.

carenz The Department seems to think the poor performance of the DTUs is CareNZ’s fault. They even initiated an evaluation of CareNZ’s performance by an independent consulting company, Julian King & Associates. Amazingly, the independent review reported that CareNZ was doing fine. See Corrections pays consultant to whitewash failure of rehabilitation programme.

So when RNZ reported that Corrections was paying for non-existent counsellors, Corrections’ Southern Regional Commissioner, Ben Clark, spun the story like this. He said:

“If we had cause for concern that Care NZ weren’t delivering an effective service to our offenders, and weren’t giving the taxpayer good value for money, then absolutely we would look to put that money elsewhere, but so far we have no evidence of that being the case.”

Less than 12 months later, Corrections has decided to put the taxpayers’ money elsewhere. They’ve put the DTU contracts up for tender. The tender process is nearly complete and my sources tell me that six of CareNZ’s eight contracts have now been offered to other AOD treatment agencies. But as described above, neither CareNZ nor any of the new treatment agencies will not be required to use qualified or experienced clinicians.

Prison inmates have extra needs

comorbid This makes no sense whatsoever. There are now over 10,000 people in prison in New Zealand and up to 90% of them have problems with substance abuse. At least 45% of inmates also have underlying personality disorders, mental health problems, and learning disabilities. They often use alcohol and drugs to alleviate the symptoms associated with these disorders.

Not forgetting that addictions are hard to treat at the best of times; treating inmates with coexisting disorders is even tougher. The counsellors who work in prison therefore need to be as qualified, if not more qualified and more experienced, than AOD clinicians in the community. At the very least, they need to have a graduate degree in the assessment and treatment of addictive disorders; and they need at least five years’ experience working with addicts in the community before starting work in a prison.

So what’s happened is that Corrections has used CareNZ as a scapegoat. That particular agency’s role in the prison system has been cut, but nothing will change if the clinicians doing the counselling can’t cut the mustard. To use another analogy, changing agencies is akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; unless the right people are sitting in the right chairs, the ship is still going to sink.

$350 million missed by Peter Dunne

New Zealanders want the Government to toughen up – not by putting more people in prison but by tackling the death and social destruction caused by binge drinking. Research conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Health shows huge public support for moves to raise the minimum price of alcohol. The survey shows the vast majority support raising the price with only 24% opposed; 65% support reducing the hours alcohol can be sold; more than 75% support raising the drinking age to 20 (including 68% of people aged 18 to 24); 82% support increasing restrictions on alcohol advertising; and 65% believe there are too many liquor outlets.

The research validates recommendations in the Law Commission’s recent report on proposed changes to New Zealand’s liquor legislation. The Commission’s recommendations were also endorsed by Prof Doug Sellman and hundreds of medical professionals in New Zealand as the ‘5+ Solution’ – based on the most up to date international research on how to reduce alcohol related harm in society.

Raising the price

The research indicates that raising the price of alcohol – by increasing the tax component – is the single most effective intervention that any government can take. Increased levies would affect two groups in particular – the young, who tend to have limited income to spend to alcohol, and binge drinkers who spend a significant proportion of their income on alcohol. These are the problem groups in society that need to be hit the hardest.

Peter Dunne apparently had the results of this survey sitting on his desk in mid-2010 while National was in the process of seeking further submissions from the public on this issue – but refused to publish it. He sat on the report for over a year and, when it finally became public two days ago, he was accused of suppressing the results. Interviewed on National Radio, he denied suppressing anything, but gave two reasons for failing to publish it. One was that “the data was essentially consistent with a range of public views already available”. The other was that the $10,000 it would have cost to publish “could be better spent elsewhere in the health sector”.

Hollow arguments

These are hollow arguments. Until now, the two main sources of information about public attitudes to binge drinking came from unscientific media polls and public outrage at the damage alcohol has been causing. Coverage given to the death of 16 year old King’s College student James Webster from alcoholic overdose may have been a turning point in public opinion.

However, the research that Peter Dunne had sitting on his desk was conducted by a Ministry of Health committee using scientifically validated methodology and procedures. As such, it was the only reliable source of information on the public attitudes to alcohol law reform available. So to argue that there was no need to publish the report because the data was essentially consistent with an existing range of views is nonsense. Media stories are anecdotal and unreliable and ideally should not be used to guide policy and legislation. For that we need facts, figures and reliable research.

The argument put forward by Mr Dunne that the $10,000 needed to publish the report “could be better spent elsewhere in the health sector” is even more facetious. Mr Dunne expanded on this in his radio interview by saying that Government didn’t want to spend the $10,000 because it was scratching around to find money for its methamphetamine strategy at the time. Once again, Mr Dunne is missing the point – well two points actually.

Alcohol the biggest drug problem

The first is that alcohol is by far the biggest drug problem in the country – not methamphetamine. Alcohol kills over 1,000 New Zealanders every year and according to Bryan Easton, a leading economist, it costs the country about $16 billion a year. In comparison, methamphetamine is involved in perhaps two deaths a year – not from overdose but because of the occasional murder committed under its influence – while alcohol is involved in over half of the 60 to 80 murders committed every year. If a choice has to be made between the social destruction caused by alcohol or by methamphetamine, dealing with binge drinking provides a lot more bang for our bucks.

The second point Mr Dunne has overlooked is that if the Government actually adopted the recommendation to increase the price of alcohol – as supported by the ‘suppressed’ research – this would raise $350 million. That’s what the Law Commission said a 10% increase in the price of alcohol would achieve. And right now New Zealand needs every source of revenue it can find. Christchurch needs rebuilding, public servants are being laid off left right and centre, and the country is facing the biggest deficit in its history.

And we have a binge drinking culture which is out of control. Under the circumstances, Government’s reluctance raise the price of alcohol (and adopt the other measures supported by this research) is hard to fathom. This ‘suppressed’ research suggests Mr Dunne is not interested in what the public clearly wants the Government to do – raise the price – and pick up $350 million along the way. As Revenue Minister, there’s a lot you could do with it; and you’ll get your $10,000 back.

A Dunne deal – compulsory alcohol and drug assessments on all parolees

United Future’s Peter Dunne has just thrashed out an agreement with Prime Minister John Key whereby Mr Dunne retains his role as associate Minister of Health and National will implement a number of United Future’s policies. Among those policies is one I have been advocating for some time – that the Parole Board should be given an alcohol and drug assessment on all prisoners appearing before the Board.

Currently this doesn’t happen which means the Parole Board is ‘flying blind’. This was a comment on the problem by the Head of the Parole Board, Judge David Carruthers. It became the title of my new book: Flying Blind – How the justice system perpetuates crime and the Corrections Department fails to correct.

Flying Blind points out that section 43 of the Parole Act requires the Department to provide “copies of all relevant information relating to the offender’s current and previous convictions” but that the Corrections Department has been ignoring this requirement for years. The book identifies the lack of alcohol and drug assessments on parolees as one the systemic failures of the Corrections Department which contributes to New Zealand’s high rate of recidivism. On page 141, it says:

“The failure to comply with section 43 is a serious omission which compromises the Board’s ability to keep the community safe. It means that prisoners are frequently released without attending substance abuse treatment in prison or on release, because the Board was not told that alcohol or drugs were involved in their offending.”

Flying Blind documents a number of other systemic failures by the Corrections Department to assist prisoners reintegrate back into the community. One of these is the lack of addiction treatment agencies in the community who will take offenders from prison. One has to ask: What is the point of assessing prisoners coming up for release when there are so few treatment programmes available in the community that will take them?

This is all part of the appalling lack of accommodation and support which is available when prisoners are released. Most of those who end up in prison have been the victims of dysfunctional families and all kinds of adversity in their childhood. There’s not much point in putting offenders through rehabilitation in prison but then not providing them with extensive support on release. In a press release, Mr Brooking said:

“That’s like expecting a man with two broken legs to start walking if you put a plaster cast on just one leg. It’s totally unrealistic – because both legs need fixing. If prisoners go back to the same alcohol and drug filled environment they came from, no amount of rehabilitation in prison is going to make any difference. The real problem is a lack of accommodation, halfway houses, treatment facilities and professional support in the community.”

Wine contains fantasy – a Class B drug

The NZ Herald reports that: “Drinkers of wine, sherry and port may be unknowingly breaking the law and consuming small doses of the party drug fantasy, an illegal class B drug. The revelation has brought calls for wine to be tested to see if there are traces of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), or its precursor gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) – the active ingredient in fantasy.”

National Addiction Centre director Doug Sellman said it seemed likely that some wine contained GHB, and called for more research.

“It raises the bizarre conclusion that many wines in New Zealand may, in fact, be technically illegal. There’s been no research done on New Zealand wines, and only one article in 2005 in the international literature.”

Wellington alcohol and drug counsellor Roger Brooking came across this research after being advised about it by one of his clients. He notes that Prof Sellman has made previous media comments that because of the death and social destruction caused by alcohol, it is the legal equivalent of a Class B drug anyway. It seems wine that wine drinkers can now get two class B drugs for the price of one.