No ideal alternative to prison system

Press, 26 October 1982, Page 29

No ideal alternative to prison system

It is asking too much of a penal policy to expect it to be a substitute for a better society where offending is a remote and unfavourable act, according to the Secretary for Justice. Mr S. J. Callahan. Mr Callahan was speaking at the inaugural public meeting of the Christchurch branch of the Movement for Alternatives to Prison (M.A.P.) at the Canterbury Public Library. Mr Callahan said that M.A.P. had a key role to play in a changing society, where some people were calling for alternatives to imprisonment and other groups were seeking a return to harsher penalties such as birching and capital punishment. "We need public forums." Mr Callahan told the meeting. The theme of Mr Callahan's address was "If prisons, don't work, what next?" and he said that he had no clear-cut answer. If prisons existed to contain prisoners, then they did that, he said. If they existed to rehabilitate people, they did not .succeed completely. Mr Callahan said that recent figures would dispel any theories that prisons were' places of rehabilitation.

"Could it be that we want prisons to provide reparation for people who are the victims of offences?” Mr Callahan asked. Prisons did not act as a deterrent for very many people either, Mr Callahan said. In spite of these negative aspects of prisons, they were only a part of a greater feature in society and could not be considered in isolation. "It would- be absurd to abolish prisons and the whole justice system if there is nothing to take their place,” he said. Mr Callahan said that it cost $15,000 annually to keep a person in prison, compared to $lOOO to keep a person in non-residential periodic detention and $4BO for a probationer under supervision. Other financial considerations of imprisonment included supporting the offender’s family, the loss to national productivity of having a person in prison, as well as the social costs. In spite of these considerations, prisons could not be dispensed with altogether. “We would have to acknowledge in today’s society that it would be quite impractical to suddenly do away with prisons,” Mr Cal-

lahan said. “We have many serious offenders and people who may be termed pretty hardcore criminals who quite properly have to be removed from society," he said. Mr Callahan said that the Penal Policy Review Committee was concerned about New Zealand's relatively high rate of imprisonment and possible alternatives to imprisonment. He said that periodic detention, which is not an innovation in New Zealand, had worked very well here and avoided the social and economic costs of imprisonment while providing reparation for the community. Deferred sentences, shorter sentences, reparation and restitution were aspects that were being examined with respect to the New Zealand situation. Mr Callahan said. “The Penal Policy Review does represent a major commitment to current public debate on improving what we have,” Mr Callahan said. However, he did not seem hopeful on a total alternative to imprisonment. “Alternatives to imprisonment, while adding to alternatives already available, may do little to reduce prison populations,” he said.