@tamathapaul: A person who shoplifts an item over $1,000 could cost the taxpayer $1,410,360 to keep in prison for seven years. A person who shoplifts between $500-$1000 could cost the tax payer $201,480 to keep in prison for one year. A person who shoplifts something less than $500, which will be the most common charge under these new shoplifting laws, could be $49,680 for three months in prison. This is the economic insanity of the corrections system. This is why we spend more per person on new prison beds than on new classrooms or new hospital beds. Because there are vindictive people in our government and society who don’t care how much money wastes away going into the highly expensive (not just in dollar terms), INEFFECTIVE prison system but they won’t invest in things that are actually PROVEN to reduce crime like liveable incomes, food security, education and school lunches, and healthcare. This law change means the women’s prison population will surge by 63% over the next decade. Two thirds of those women in prison will be Māori. I am losing hope that we will ever have evidence-based law making when it comes to our criminal justice system. Nobody ever listens to the judges who tell us that longer, harsher sentences don’t work. Nobody listens to the evidence that shows prisons don’t rehabilitate people and that they just spit people out even angrier and worse off so they resort back to crime and they create future victims. I feel I have spent three years of my life yelling at the clouds about this and every expert agrees but not one member of the government can see what at least people before them like Bill English could see. Prisons are a moral and fiscal failure.

Tamatha Paul MP

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Region: NZ

Thursday 06 August 2026 22:20:57 GMT