For avid newspaper readers like me (admittedly a sadly fading sector in an age of smartphone-induced ignorance) a highlight is the amusement I deprive from reading the letters to the editor.
I suspect newspapers don’t receive many, the give-away to that suspicion by so often the same letter writer names cropping up.
The amusement I derive comes from the frequent lack of deeper thought in these missives.
Consider this nonsense from a Graham Booth of Taradale, which appeared in Stuff’s The Post a few days back.
Graham, who sounds more like a Kevin, wrote the following.
“For over a century NZ has attempted to address criminal behaviour, without addressing the root cause.
We had hangings for murders but that never stopped other murders”.
He then goes on to detail other examples of different crimes and punishments, repeating his murder punishment assertion, that these penalties are plainly not working, given these crimes continue to occur. That assertion is totally devoid of logic.
While we can never know exactly, the fact of punishment is logically a detriment, for while we continue to have murders, how many have not occurred because of the potential punishment?
To take Graham’s faulty logic to an extreme, let us assume we legislate to recognising no actions being criminal.
Within a month we’d be reduced to a state of anarchy. There’d no longer be the need for bitter divorce disputes, rather, the simple solution would be to knock off the other party.
There’d no longer be a need to work, given the option to simply take what you want. Very soon we’d all be building fortress homes and arming ourselves to the teeth.
No female could venture out as rapists would find themselves in paradise.
The cold hard reality is that crime and punishment are age-old partners.
So rather than a softer, kinder approach as Graham recommends, again to take an extreme hypothesis, if say shop-lifting was subject to hanging, overnight we can safely assume that contemporary scourge would grind to a halt.
In short, bleeding heart tolerance is not working and instead a case can be made for a much more punitive approach to end criminality.
17 Comments
Shutting down the Northern Club seems a pretty obvious way to start Bob.
Prisons and long sentences are things I don’t mind my taxes being spent on. But the govt keep going in the opposite direction.
Sounds like NZ before the treaty?
I’m more interested in the prisoner recidivism rate with Norway consistently being reported to have the lowest rate in the world. Norway’s approach is invest significant resources towards rehabilitating the prisoner with the belief that they are already being punished enough by being in prison so there is no need to make prison conditions tough. With the majority of our prison population being Maori, some people argue that this approach would not work with Maoris but I disagree.
Exactly.
For sure, hanging drastically reduces the rate of reoffending…
The socialist rag may eventually realise, desparate poverty of previous centuries has gone and twisting facts in an attempt to con the majority won’t work.
More the point anybody should take notice of Te Greenlabour ‘maniacy’ after what they’ve done to our country.
Their arguments don’t actually exist ; just rubbish from deluded spoilt fat lazy chidren.
Why on earth would anybody print rabid foaming mumblers ?!
Quite so Bob ..
Sounds like Graham’s gripe might be with our inconsistently and very average justice system, where it would seem only the barristers and solicitors win…
Isn’t that the approach the Democrats are takin gin the USA (California), where the cops aren’t interested, unless you shoplift more than $1000?
Exactly, smacking was effective for teaching kids or dogs or cats what not to do but the bleeding hearts insist that no form of punishment acts as a deterrent. They could check Singapore crime rate stats , no doubt they would come up with some convoluted story to explain away the glaringly obvious conclusion to be drawn.
who knew my thinking was so astute just based on my name 🙂
Theres a also a fundamental error that some twisted satisfaction of Punishment is the motive.
I think it’s much more mundane and pragmatic than that. It’s not about the criminal, it’s about society. We temporarily remove criminals from society to stop their behavior affecting the rest of us. After some time, they’re allowed back in. If they do it again, back you go.
Being in prison prevents them harming the rest of us. What they do with their time and when they get out again is up to them.
I remember a few years ago when a tagger got killed. It resulted in a significant decrease in tagging for a couple of weeks.
Yes the US is another perfect example of woke softness on crime. The only thing that stops criminal behavior is the fear of getting caught and fear of the punishment. Clearly our criminals think the odds of being caught are in their favor, and clearly are not afraid of the punishments.
I suspect Graham has never met many violent criminals. Should he meet some, he would quickly lose any thoughts of a softly, softly approach. In NZ, it’s fair to say that if you wind up in jail, you thoroughly deserve to be there, having doubtless burned through any number of opportunities to avoid it.
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