Election Promises

It’s full on election time, we have had the first debate. One thing that I thought was very cool was that TVNZ ran the debate in conjunction with YouTube. People were invited to record their questions for the leaders of the Labour and National parties on YouTube. The questions and responses, such as this one on Law and Order are also available to view on YouTube which means everyone has easy access to the parts of the

debate they are interested in. Great use of new technology and kudos to TV One.

And the NZ Herald has regular features talking about the different offerings on a topic, from each party. Today’s topics are law and order. I was telling my wife about the Act policy which I like.

Key things I like are that you serve the sentence you are given and 3 strikes and your out. I think this policy is based on the system that made many of the streets in New York safe. The first time I went to New York and wanted to go to the Cotton Club, I was told that taxi’s would take me there before dark, but they wouldn’t come back to pick me up because it was too dangerous in Harlem and taxi drivers were being murdered. In recent years the Zero Tolerence policy has made the area much safer.

They also said that if you are sentenced to 5 years in jail, you should serve 5 years. This is something that we have been asking for for years. The problem is that parties make all these statements, but they have very little credibility because they never seem to follow through. I am thinking that one possibility is using our political system to vote for a party like Act on the party vote to give them the legs to push through one of these policies.

Law and order is an election issue and in my humble opinion Helen Clark and the Labour Party want everybody’s vote and are saying they are against gangs and organized crime, but sympathizing with the reasons people join them. The National Party doesn’t seem to be much better. John Key is saying that he wants to lock up recidivist criminals and will build a new prison to house them. In my humble opinion young gang members who go to jail will add to their ‘mana’ (in simple terms Maori for honor or power) within the gang and will be heroes when they come out. They will be looked after ‘inside’ by their gang family and life won’t be too bad at all.

My wife said, “It’s all very well them saying these things when they want to vote for you, but after the election all the promises go out the window”, well actually she said something more colorful, but she’s pretty much on the mark. How many times have we been conned by politicians, voting for them on the basis of their election promises and then when they get in they have loads of great reasons why they couldn’t go through with it, usually blaming the outgoing parliament.

The addage is that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, a politician will always get in. It’s funny really that at election time we elect people that mostly we don’t trust to keep their promises and give them a mandate to run the biggest organisation, our whole country!

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Identity Tag Implants

The more I read and see on TV about recidivist criminals, the more I like the idea of implanted ID tags into convicted criminals. I know this sounds big brother and the late Philip K Dick, one of my favourite authors, spent a lifetime warning us against this sort of technology and the risks of abuse. But what about law abiding citizens and our rights to live in a safe and wholesome environment where we don’t have to be afraid to go for a beach walk on a hot summer’s evening?

I’m starting to think not only that this is a good idea, but I think at least for certain types of crime, particularly violence and sex crimes, convicted criminals should have these devices implanted as a condition of parole. Why should they have all the rights and we have to pay to support them after they have hurt us and our society and thereby taken away our freedom?

In the Sci-Fi books you read about implants that include RF transmitters that send out an alert if the implants have been surgically removed without authority and the underground businesses that find ways to do that, but having been able to read about all the ways that people envisaged the technology being nullified, I’m sure that we could create secure devices.

We already have electronic anklets for criminals under house arrest or on bail, so the concept has already begun, but I’m after something that is more pervasive. Way over 50% of criminals who go to prison for violence, sex and theft will return to prison again. It becomes their way of life. We should be able to harness technology that makes this more difficult. In a connected world we could have all sorts of preventative measures based around RFID or similar technologies.

For example:

• Sex offenders could have a code set up in their tags which sets off an alarm if they are in proximity to schools or locations where they might offend and part of their parole conditions would be that they are not allowed within a certain distance of at risk locations.
• Burglars could have a code that tells an activated burglar alarm who they are and simultaneously through the alarm’s monitoring service alerts police that John B(ad) Citizen has just tripped an alarm that was active at 15A Smith Street. Even if they made a getaway, they could be located through their tags and of course they have already been accurately identified, so a conviction would result with a minimum of police time and cost and of course reduced court/litigation costs.
• People who have non-molestation orders against them would trigger alarms and an automated arrest warrant issued if they come into proximity of addresses they have been forbidden to approach.
• Going a step further, serious recidivists,criminally active gang members etc and those under strict probation or parole orders could also be fitted with a GPS transmitter so that they can no longer hide. Imagine how much time, grief, lives and cost could be saved if repeat criminals could no longer hide their whereabouts!

You get the idea?

I was remarking to a friend the other day that every election year, crime and violence are election issues and all sorts of promises are made, but it never matters who is elected, because their stance instantly softens and we are so PC that it is always the poor criminals with their harsh upbringings who are looked after, while the victims fight and argue with the insurance companies who were so eager to win their premiums. The good guys lose and crime often does pay.

Our police do a wonderful job and I take my hat off to them. It is a tough life and they do their best to make the country a safer place, but the problem is that by the time they are called in, the crime has already been committed. Our jails are now safe havens where people can live an orderly life, with 3 square meals at a huge cost to the taxpayer. If they break a leg trying to escape, they get compensation! Then afterwards they are put back on the street where the majority will offend again. Let’s make it really difficult for them to do that.

Some people will say, they have done their time and they should now be treated as a normal everyday citizen. For people who do silly things as an odd abheration that doesn’t physically hurt or traumatise their victims, maybe I’d give them one chance. But if they are repeat offenders then as far as I am concerned, they have become career criminals and they lose their rights.

For all our great ideas, rehabilitation, training, discipline, encounter groups, counselling etc, our prison population is growing faster than our national population even though we have very low unemployment and we have a welfare state.

So what about the rights of the peaceful law abiding citizens. Remember us? If they aren’t protected, we may start to see the public fight back as we have seen in the last week where a peace abiding citizen chased after a tagger with a knife. The tagger is dead and both his and the citizen’s lives have been devastated. If you break into my house and I attack you to defend myself, my property or my family, I end up treated as a criminal, yet the criminal says the ‘system’ is unfair.

The PC brigade will talk about the risk of this technology being abused by corrupt people, and of course there will always be a degree of corruption, but on the whole we employ people in the forces who earn and deserve our

Tag ’em I say.