Are we a punitive society?

Ahead of the New Zealand General Election on 20 September, War Cry is publishing material from a Christchurch-based group of Christians suggesting a ‘Gospel Manifesto’. Experts will focus Christian voters on the teaching of Jesus and the local and global situation in which we live.

Priority 4: Are We a Punitive Society?

Prisons are but one measure of punitiveness, but the frequency with which we place people in them and the way we treat prisoners tells us a great deal about the nation’s attitude to power, authority, legitimacy, normalcy, morality, personhood and social relations. As Nelson Mandela said, ‘No one truly knows a nation until he has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but how it treats its lowest ones.’

New Zealand mostly presents as a just and peaceful nation. In the Global Peace Index, New Zealand ranks third in the world. In recent years, there has been a steady drop in the crime rate and modest decreases in reoff ending and reimprisonment rates. These are all hallmarks of a socially just, peaceful cohesive nation that cares for its citizens.

But one indicator suggests otherwise: the extent to which we punish. The prison population in New Zealand went from 91 per 100,000 general population to 200 per 100,000 in 2009. This is well above other western democracies, with the exception of the USA. We are currently sandwiched between two West African nations, Gabon and Namibia in the ‘locking up’ stakes. Historically, we have locked up people at a rate higher than our Western neighbours.

Market reforms of the 1980s triggered the start of a more recent trend toward increased punitiveness. Crime was no longer an indicator of deprivation and need; its primary function was to signal indiscipline and inadequate controls, which must be dealt with through incapacitation. These beliefs had the great political advantage of excluding any possibility that the off ender may be disadvantaged, poorly socialised, or marginalised. Instead, the solution lay in the imposition of more controls, and a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to off ending.

Increasingly, punishment has extended beyond the criminal justice system. The communities that most offenders come from have experienced a reduction in primary healthcare services, increased evictions from and ineligibility for social housing, decreased access to justice, increased levels of unemployment, a decline in the level of welfare support, the introduction of ‘workfare’, and increased pressure to ‘behave’ without any commensurate provision of support. In this scenario, the basic idea that all humans are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect gets lost. How have Christians responded to this cultural shift?

In my experience, those who are actively involved in caring for prisoners and off enders find that church leaders and fellows in Christ are unsupportive. As a result, many develop an ambivalent theological position between what they practice and what they believe.

There is often a gap between what we actually believe and what we think we should believe, between official and operative theologies. Official theology is the theology created by our particular orthodoxy, while operative theology consists of the beliefs that inform our day-to-day lives. In other words, Christians may feel compassion toward the least, lost and lonely, but publicly express views that are less aligned to the gospel and make them indistinguishable from non-Christians.

Our task as Christians is to recover an understanding of the social, collective nature of sin and salvation, both in terms of contemporary reality and biblical witness—a return to the social gospel of the early 20th century.

By Kim Workman

Kim Workman, QSO, is Senior Associate of the Institute of Policy Studies at Victoria University Wellington. He has served as Director of Prison Fellowship and Director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment.