Chris Luxon – ‘absolutely a good thing’

The previous Labour government set a goal to reduce the prison population by 30% – and in March 2022, it dropped to 7,677. Chris Luxon became Prime Minister in 2023. Within a year, the prison muster passed 10,000. In November, 2025 it surged to nearly 11,000.

Luxon described this as “absolutely a good thing,” and was unconcerned about the cost. He said: “I understand… the financial implication of… restoring law and order. The cost will be what the cost will be.”

In 2024, Corrections cost the taxpayer over $2.8 billion. Perhaps Luxon doesn’t care, but when other justice sector agencies such as police and courts are included, the total cost of ‘law and order’ comes to $7.3 billion a year. So he should care.

This is why.

1) First, the lock ‘em up approach he advocates is based on a decidedly dodgy theory known as deterrence – that the fear of being incarcerated, will deter people from committing crime – and having spent time in prison will deter them from further offending.

New Zealand’s recidivism rate provides ample proof this theory doesn’t work – prisons are more like universities for crime. Incarceration takes offenders off the streets temporarily, but just about everyone gets released eventually.

2) Second, very little rehabilitation is available in our prisons. Between 2016 and 2022, the number of prisoners attending rehabilitation programmes declined from over 8,000 to around 2000.

3) Third, these prison programmes are almost totally ineffective. In 2021, Corrections’ Annual Report listed 23 different prison-based interventions intended to reduce recidivism. The average reduction in reoffending was only 2.3%. The best performing programme (prison-based employment) reduced reoffending by 4.3%. In 2024, Corrections offered only eight prison-based interventions. The average reduction in reoffending was 2.6%.

4) Fourth, even though these programmes fail to reduce reoffending, Corrections demands more funding for them every year. In 2016, Corrections was allocated $180 million “to reduce reoffending.” In 2026, the Department was given $420 million. In other words, the cost of rehabilitation has more than doubled in the last ten years while the number of prisoners attending these programmes has dropped by 75%. That’s money down the drain.

Flawed research by Corrections and MOJ

There’s another reason why governments have been so willing to squander taxpayers’ money on prison programmes. Both Corrections and the Ministry of Justice insist on telling whichever Government is in power that it is money well spent. In 2017, Dr Peter Johnston, Director Analysis and Research for Corrections pretended: “Most of what we are doing to reduce re-offending succeeds.” In 2018, he claimed“The Department has been achieving very promising gains though these programmes.” These are gross exaggerations – refuted by the Department’s own research.

In 2022, the Ministry made similarly outrageous claims in its Long Term Insights Briefing on Imprisonment 1960 to 2050. This 120-page document presented to Parliament, said “prison-based rehabilitation programmes have consistently delivered better results than community-based programmes in New Zealand.”

86% reduction in reoffending in the AODTC

The Ministry is well aware this is not true. In 2019, it published an evaluation of the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court (AODTC) in Auckland. The AODTC treats high risk, high needs recidivist defendants whose crimes are driven by addictions. The Ministry found the AODTC reduced the reoffending of graduates by 86% and kept them out of prison – saving a minimum of $200,000 per defendant. This makes the AODTC at least 40 times more effective than Corrections’ prison-based programmes.

It seems the Ministry doesn’t want anyone in Government to know about the effectiveness of the AODTC. The Long Term Briefing has a chapter titled: “What works to keep people out of prison.” Even in this chapter, the Ministry ignored its own research and omitted any mention of the AODTC at turning around the lives of drug addicted criminals, and keeping them out of prison.

Show me the money

Currently, New Zealand has only three drug courts – in Auckland, Waitākere, and Hamilton. Each court costs about $3.5 million a year to operate. To give each defendant sufficient attention, judges work with a maximum of 50 participants at a time. If Luxon took $100 million out of Corrections rehabilitation budget and used it to set up more drug courts, we could have another 25. Alternatively, he could use the $105 million seized by police in 2025 under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act.

If each court kept 50 defendants out of prison, that would reduce the prison population by 1,400 in one year. At $200,000 per prisoner, that’s a potential saving of $280 million. And that’s just the potential savings that made by Corrections. There would also be massive savings from reduced costs to victims, reduced police costs, reduced court costs and so on.

By keeping all these high risk, high needs offenders out of prison, we might even achieve Labour’s goal of reducing the prison population by 30% – and keep it there. If that saves taxpayers’ money, surely Mr Luxon that would be: “Absolutely a good thing.”

Pretending to be tough on crime

Politicians of all persuasions like to tout their credentials for being tough on crime. The current coalition government is no exception: they’ve brought back three strikes, revamped boot camps, cracked down on gangs, funded 500 more police officers, and spent a fortune increasing prison capacity. In 2024, the prison population passed 10,000 and in mid-November, 2025 surged to nearly 11,000. Chris Luxon described this as a “good thing,” indicating he was totally unconcerned about the cost.

If governments really want to be tough on crime, instead of locking more people up, they should invest in interventions that reduce reoffending. In other words, they should address the ‘drivers of crime’ as Simon Power, a former National Party Justice Minister opined in 2009.

The drivers are all socio-economic: poverty, systemic deprivation, dropping out of school, unemployment, cultural alienation, parental violence, child neglect, sexual abuse, poor mental health – usually exacerbated by copious quantities of alcohol and drugs. Dealing with these is truly tough – borne out by the sorry statistics describing the prevalence of every one of these problems in New Zealand.

The one thing that works

There is one intervention that does work – alcohol and other drug treatment courts (AODTC). New Zealand has three – in Auckland, Waitakere and Hamilton. Only high-risk, high-needs offenders with addictions are eligible; and they must be facing up to three years in prison. If they agree to participate, and if they graduate at the end of an 18-month programme, they’re sentenced to supervision and avoid going to prison.

How tough is that?

Is that an easy option? No way! The AODTC involves mandatory drug testing two or three times a week, intensive drug treatment (usually residential), anger management, parenting courses, job training, mental health support and up to 180 hours of voluntary work in the community. The magic mustard that makes this work is a judge – one who has been trained in addiction treatment. Participants have to make weekly appearances in court and the judge monitors the offender’s progress every step of the way. Drug court judges let the defendant describe their progress and their difficulties, and offer lots of encouragement. But if offenders misbehave or return positive drug tests, they will be sanctioned and may spend a few days in prison.

In December 2025, a conference was held in Auckland on the future of drug courts in New Zealand. Graduates were invited to speak – all had struggled with serious addictions and all had been to prison on multiple occasions. Many said that serving time in prison, doing next to nothing all day was a far easier option; participating in the AODTC was the toughest thing they had ever done in their lives. For those who succeed, the results are transformational; they reconnect with family, get back to work and stay out prison.

Remarkable reductions in reoffending

So how effective is the AODTC? The Ministry of Justice has evaluated its success rate. At the conference in December, it was announced that almost half complete the programme, and a year later, those who do are 50% less likely to reoffend than comparable high-risk offenders in the District Court. An earlier evaluation in 2019 found the AODTC reduced reoffending of graduates by 86%. Despite this remarkable success, the Ministry told Cabinet the AODTC need ‘further refinement for it to deliver better outcomes.’

That’s absolutely absurd. Let’s compare the AODTC with the effectiveness of addiction treatment in prison. In 2024, Corrections’ Annual Report listed eight different prison-based interventions intended to reduce recidivism. The average reduction in reoffending was 2.6%. The three drug treatment programmes actually increased reoffending rather than reducing it. In other words, the AODTC is at least twenty times more effective than prison-based treatment.

Comparing costs

Let’s compare costs. Each drug court costs about $3 million a year. There are only three. But in 2019, the Ministry also told Cabinet that “the AODT court model is expensive to operate.” No additional funding has been allocated to roll drug courts out anywhere else. And yet, in 2024, Corrections was given $376 million to rehabilitate offenders. It spends this on programmes that make almost no difference.

The conclusion is obvious. Politicians should stop pretending to be tough on crime. Instead, they should get really tough – and allocate taxpayer funding to an intervention that actually reduces reoffending – and which, according to participants, is much tougher than prison.

14,000 prisoners on remand excluded from rehabilitation

More than 20,000 people spend time in New Zealand prisons every year and most are excluded from rehabilitation programmes. Being illiterate is one of the excluding criteria. Those on short sentences are also excluded. However, the largest cohort of prisoners prevented from attending are those on remand awaiting trial or sentencing. 14,000 New Zealanders end up in this situation every year – some for just a few weeks, others for years.

British research on remand prisoners: There are very good reasons to start rehabilitation while offenders are on remand. British research has found that remand prisoners tend to experience very high levels of social deprivation. They are five times more likely than sentenced prisoners to have lived in a hostel prior to imprisonment and are less likely to have had a job. They also have higher levels of drug dependency.

In 2005, Britain’s Home Affairs Committee produced a report on rehabilitation issues and recommended that:

“Remand prisoners should undergo a needs assessment on reception to prison, including mandatory drug testing, and the Prison Service should develop a separate prison regime tailored to meet their specific needs. This regime should include a short induction programme, education and work opportunities and drug and alcohol treatment programmes, with arrangements in place for continuation of treatment and programmes in the community…

“Time in prison can offer a window of opportunity to start to change. These measures are especially relevant to remand and short-term prisoners, because they are more likely to be in prison for drug-motivated crimes, and treatment is more urgent because they will be released sooner”.

New Zealand research: There is little research in New Zealand on the level of drug abuse and social exclusion experienced by prisoners on remand. But the thrust of the argument made by the British Home Affairs Committee applies equally well in New Zealand. Since 80% of crime is committed under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the average remand prisoner is highly likely to have problems with substance abuse. They often have unstable accommodation and are sometimes remanded in prison simply because they have nowhere to live.

We even build prisons especially for them. Earlier this year, the Corrections Department spent $218 million on a brand new prison in Mt Eden with nearly 1,000 beds – just to accommodate remand prisoners in Auckland. Although it houses up to 1,000 prisoners at a time, many more will spend time there in the course of a year. Not one of them will be allowed to attend a rehabilitation programme.