Time to consider the direct costs of crime, says the writer. Photo / George Heard
OPINION:
When it comes to having a view or an opinion it can, sometimes, come down to what you really think versus what you think you should think.
I suppose a better way of putting it is “head versus heart”. Or “logic versus gut instinct”.
And this is how I’m feeling after reading an opinion piece written by Cheryl Adamson, who is the general manager of the Parnell Business Association, in Auckland.
She’s calling out the Government, saying that it needs to start weighing up the cost of not locking up repeat criminal offenders against the cost that’s being placed on businesses and the wider community, as a result.
As she says in her article, the average cost of housing a prisoner is nothing compared to the financial burden being placed on communities affected by crime.
Retail crime, for example, is estimated to cost the country about $1 billion a year. Or, more specifically, costs retailers about a billion dollars a year.
Then there is the cost of policing all these people who, Cheryl Adamson thinks, should be either locked up in a prison facility or housed in some sort of mental health facility.
She talks in her article about the cost of running the justice system and how repeat offenders just add to that cost. And she talks about the emotional cost of crime on the community.
She also talks in her article about kids not feeling safe, and the depression and anxiety that people can suffer because of criminal activity going on around them.
The final point she makes is that crime in this country is starting to have an impact on our international reputation, which will have a negative flow-on effect for our tourism and education sectors.
And do you know what? I don’t think I can argue with anything she says. And this is where I get to the ‘head versus heart’ or ‘logic versus gut instinct’ thing.
Because, like you, I’ve heard all the theories about prison needing to be the absolute last resort if we want to steer someone away from a life of crime.
And I fully get the argument which says ‘why would you want to send someone - especially a young person - somewhere where they’re just going to be hanging out with criminals night and day?’
And yes, in my head, that all makes perfect sense. So my head tells me that if that argument all makes perfect sense, then I should be shouting down the likes of Cheryl Adamson from the Parnell Business Association.
My head tells me that what she’s saying is just knee-jerk and playing into the rhetoric of the likes of David Seymour from Act and Mark Mitchell from National and the Sensible Sentencing Trust and all those people who bang on about locking people up and throwing away the key.
But, after reading this opinion article, my logic is taking a back seat to my gut instinct. My heart is telling my head to move out of the way.
Because even though I get the argument against locking people up, I just think that when you consider the financial burden and the devastating social impact criminal activity is having on our businesses and our communities, then I can’t argue with the views in this article on the Herald website.
Of course, I don’t think locking up more people is going to be the silver bullet. Of course, I don’t think crime is going to disappear if every repeat offender is put away for a while. Of course, someone who goes inside for a while could very well come out worse than when they went in.
But, when you consider what the behaviour and activities of these criminals are doing to our society, the financial cost and the social implications, I’m going to go with my gut instinct and say that Cheryl Adamson from the Parnell Business is right when she says that the burden is falling way too heavily on those of us who aren’t criminals.
And as she says in her article today: “We need a brave leader who is willing to count the cost and invest in systems and facilities to curb crime”.