The ACT Party has announced it would combat the spike in violent crime by putting more than 2000 additional adult offenders behind bars over the next few years.
In an election year tough on crime policy announcement, ACT leader David Seymour revealed to 1News his party would spend more than $1 billion to ensure more offenders are sent to prison if in power.
"Labour's experiment of letting criminals out to see what happens has clearly failed," Seymour said.
ACT would review the use of electronic bail; introduce a mandatory three strikes, three-year sentence for burglars; and bring back its controversial three strikes policy for some types of serious offending.
"We estimate this will increase the sentenced prisoner population by 2094 over four years, bringing the total prison population back to its 2017 level – that’s 524 extra prisoners a year."
But Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis said people who are a danger to the community are being locked up.
"Those people who should be in prison are in prison. The reduction in the prison population has come from non-violent offences," he said.
"We already have 1000 spare beds (in our prisons) so it is a waste of money.
"What we see here is a non-stop spiral of more spending to build more prisons which the country simply can't afford."
Criminal justice advocate Sir Kim Workman, who has worked for police and led the prison service, said the money would be far better spent funding community initiatives than on locking people up.
"There's 40 years of evidence to show that boot camps are a really bad idea, and there's the same evidence to show that prisons don't work, so why would go there?"
But Seymour rejected the criticism.
"In a perfect world, no one would be in prison, but we don't live in a perfect world – we live in a world of lawlessness, where it's hard to do business," he said.
And the New Zealand Police Association's president Chris Cahill said cops on the front lines are concerned.
"There's certainly a lot of frustration that the bar's just gone too low to actually get a prison sentence. The reality is there's a lot of violent crime happening out there," he said.
Cahill said offenders have to be held accountable and at the moment, police don't feel like the Government has got that balance right.
"Do New Zealanders deserve to be put at risk constantly by the same offenders re-offending all the time?"
SHARE ME