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.

Advice to Mark Mitchell: only drug courts reduce reoffending

On 5 May, Corrections Minster Mark Mitchell said he wanted to get rid of short prison sentences – because prisoners on long sentences have more access to rehabilitation and reoffend at lower rates. Mitchell has already made new funding available for prisoners on remand. At first glance, the logical approach would be to make rehabilitation available to prisoners on short sentences as well. Let’s analyze this superficial logic.

In response to Mitchell’s ridiculous proposal, Otago University criminology lecturer Fairleigh Gilmour said “rehab programmes within prisons helped”, but added that “Corrections wasn’t adequately resourced to offer them, so a lot of prisoners missed out.”

Money down the toilet

On the contrary, Corrections is extremely well resourced and has been spending more on rehabilitation every year. In 2016, rehab in prison cost the taxpayer $176 million. By 2024, that had doubled to $376 million. Despite the taxpayers’ generosity, between 2016 and 2022, the number of prisoners attending rehabilitation programmes declined by two thirds. In effect, Corrections is pouring taxpayers’ money down the toilet.

Labour leader, Chris Hipkins claimed the decline was due to delays in the courts. He suggested offenders spend so much time on remand, that by the time they come up for sentencing, they have already served whatever time the judge intended to impose. So they’re set free – ‘time served’. As such, Hipkins said: “they’re not getting access to the rehabilitation programmes that they should be.”

The courts may be slow, but that’s not the real issue. Neither does it matter that so few prisoners attend rehabilitation programmes. The real problem is that these programmes don’t actually work even for those that do attend. However, politicians have been conned into believing they do – so they keep pouring money into them.

Ministerial misinformation

Let’s look at how successive Ministers have supported this wilful waste of resources. Between 2008 and 2011, and again in 2016, Judith Collins was Corrections Minister under John Key. She said: “this Government is committed to the rehabilitation of prisoners.”

Between 2011 to 2014, Anne Tolley took over. She tried to justify spending millions on new prisons because “modern facilities were necessary to rehabilitate prisoners.”

In 2016, Louise Upston became Minister for 12 months. She said: “my views have changed” and claimed that “a continued focus on the rehabilitation and reintegration needs of prisoners is the best way to turn the tide on the growing prison population.”

Kelvin Davis, Corrections Minister under the Labour government from 2017 to 2023 said “rehabilitation was an incredibly important part of the prison system and essential to giving people the best shot at reintegrating back into society.”

We all know what Mark Mitchell thinks: in addition to wanting longer prison sentences he said “any Government that was serious about public safety would prioritise rehabilitation.”

What doesn’t work

What these Corrections Ministers all fail to understand is that rehabilitation in prison doesn’t work. Their misunderstanding is perpetuated by misinformation put out by Corrections management and other government officials. For instance, Chief executive Jeremy Lightfoot, claims that “supporting prisoners’ rehabilitation, is an important element of public safety in the long term.” He believes this because Dr Peter Johnston, Director Analysis and Research for the Department claims in the Corrections Journal: “The Department has been achieving very promising gains though these programmes.” These blatent mistruths enable the chief executive to advise whoever the Minister is that in the coming 12 months, more taxpayer money will be required to provide rehabilitation programmes than in the previous year (even though less prisoners are attending).

Unfortunately, Corrections has been supported in these curious claims by the former Ombudsman, Peter Boshier, and former parole board chairman, Sir Ron Young. Throughout his tenure, Boshier made repeated recommendations for Corrections to treat prisoners with humanity and provide more rehabilitation. Ron Young recently complained about the lack of rehabilitation available in prison and said prisoners wouldn’t be released until they “proved they have undertaken work to reduce the risk they pose to society… through a treatment programme.”

More humanity is welcome, but none of these recommendations for more rehabilitation are justified. In 1989, the Roper Report pointed out that politicians and the public held unrealistic expectations, believing that prison programmes could rehabilitate offenders. The Report said the evidence contradicted these misguided beliefs. Nothing has changed since then. In 2023, Corrections’ Annual Report (p.202) listed 8 different prison-based interventions. The average reduction in reoffending was only 3.6%. In the 2024 Annual Report (p.196), the average reduction was even less – 2.3%.

What does work

The only intervention in New Zealand which makes a significant difference to reoffending is the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court (AODTC). There are two such courts in Auckland and one in Hamilton. Not only does the AODTC reduce reoffending, it even keeps high risk offenders out of prison, saving millions in court, police, prison and health costs.

A Ministry of Justice evaluation in 2019 found the AODTC reduced reoffending of graduates by 86% (p.44). This result is nearly 40 times better than all prison based rehabilitation programmes combined – at a fraction of the cost. So instead of wasting over $350 million a year on prison programmes that don’t work, Mark Mitchell should put $50 million or so into rolling out drug courts. That would keep New Zealanders a lot safer than anything the Corrections Department does.

Who’s telling the truth – about why so many New Zealanders end up in prison?

Green MP, Tamatha Paul, has been criticized recently over comments she made about prison food, the presence of police officers on the streets and why people are in prison. As a criminologist, I am more concerned about the latter.

Here’s what she said (in a Tik Tok video on 6 March): “the vast majority of people who are in prisons are there for non-violent offences – things that they have had to do as a response to poverty such as stealing food or being dishonest, or they don’t have an address to get community sentencing or bail…”

She added: “Most of the people that are in prison are there because they suffer from traumatic brain injuries, disabilities, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, undiagnosed autism, undiagnosed ADHD. They’re being punished for being disabled, they’re being punished for being poor, for being Maori, they’re being punished for our system that we have in this country.”

Paul was taken to task by Police and Corrections Minister, Mark Mitchell, who described her comments as “total nonsense” and “an insult” to New Zealanders who have been victimised by those in prison. Mitchell seems to have relied on Corrections Department statistics for December 2024 which state that, out of 10,000 prison inmates, 8.4% of have been convicted of homicide, 20.7% for sexual assault, and 20.5% for acts intended to cause injury. In other words, almost half (49.6%) of those in prison in December 2024, had committed sexual or violent offences.

The problem is that only 6,000 of these prisoners are actually sentenced. The other 4,000 are on remand, waiting for their cases to slowly work their way through the court system. According to VUW lecturer, Christine McCarthy, half those 4,000 defendants will not end up with a prison sentence – because their offending was not serious enough. So they should not be included in Corrections statistics as violent offenders.

Its just a snapshot

There’s an even bigger problem. The statistics that Mark Mitchell has relied on are a snapshot of prisoners in December 2024. Murderers, sexual and violent offenders tend to get long sentences, so they make up the bulk of the 6,000 sentenced prisoners on that day.

However, the prison population is very fluid and altogether, about 20,000 people spend time in prison each year. Most are given a sentence of two years or less and are automatically released halfway through their sentence. Potentially, this means around 14,000 Kiwis who spent time in prison during the year are not in prison on the day the snapshot was taken. They are in and out quickly, so their low-risk offending profiles do not appear in the prison statistics that Mark Mitchell relies on.

What were they thinking?

In 2022, Ian Lambie, the Chief Science Advisor to the Office of Prime Minister published ‘What were they thinking? A discussion paper on brain and behaviour in relation to the justice system in New Zealand.’ Lambie explains in detail that the vast majority of those in prison suffer from brain injuries, mental health disorders, addictions, neurodiversity, and other conditions like undiagnosed foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism or ADHD. They make decisions to drink, take drugs, shoplift and steal, driven by poverty and systemic deprivation – and that’s why they end up in prison.

So Tamatha Paul was absolutely correct – the vast majority of those who end up in prison have not committed violent offences. Since she made this statement, Ms Paul has been attacked by Mark Mitchell, after which the NZ Herald said she expressed ‘regret’ about making this claim. Clearly, she was bullied by Mr Mitchell – and by the media. He should be the one apologizing – and I sent him an email telling him so.