Doing Porridge - Island Style

In lieu of the Graeme Burton and Jonathan Smallbon cases and indeed many other cases over the last 10 years, it has started to appear in the New Zealand conscience that the death penalty should be reintroduced. Indeed, at the time of writing this post, approximately 4200 people have voted online in a Stuff.co.nz poll in which the question was:

Should the death penalty be reintroduced in New Zealand? 52% have said "yes".


Now this is totally unscientific and David Farrar at Kiwiblog, who also runs Curia Market Research could probably drive a truck through the gaping credibility holes of this kind of poll. Nevertheless, it does provide some indication of proof of point. The New Zealand population has had enough, as evidenced by the growing support for agencies like the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

But would the reintroduction of the death penalty solve anything? Would it make for a better society? Many on the opposing side of the argument point to the USA, and in particular Texas, as an example of the failure of such a system of justice. Indeed, the stakes are high; one wrongful conviction and execution makes a murderer of the entire government. It seems there may be evidence of such cases in Texas.

So it is with some degree of trepidation that this writer steps away from the death penalty as a viable option. I have yet to be convinced that this is an acceptable method to control our more serious and dangerous criminals.

But the hardest, worst and most destructive criminals in New Zealand must be controlled and there must be some form of penance on their part, and loss of freedoms that come with that penance. What to do then?

The answer may lie in this: a "desert island" prison. How would this work? Well, it would not be easy and logistically it would take some co-ordination between the Department of Corrections and the Navy.

Basically it would work like this. The hardest, most recidivist and cruel stock of current prisoners would be put on an island, the location of which is not initially revealed to the general public. This island would have on it basic housing in the form of purpose built accommodation consisting of bunks and appropriate forms of heating. The prison population which could be handled by the island would need to be carefully discerned, but one would not envisage anything over 200 for a start. The prisoners would NOT be allowed to take any form of communications, including cell phones in order to reach the outside world. A phone would NOT be installed on the island, at least in the prison compound. A separate and well protected facility for guard staff would be built; this would be extremely secure, not in order to keep the guards in, but to keep the prisoners out. Prisoners would be dropped, probably by helicopter, food and water stores at daily intervals - it will be up to them to make it last for the following 24 hours. Staff would be rostered in shifts on and off the island on a weekly basis, either by boat or helicopter to the mainland. The island would be guarded by the Navy and corrections staff at all times.

Prisoners would be sent to the island for a minimum of 2 years. Two years of no outside world communications other than letters checked and delivered via the corrections staff. Two years of life next to the most hardest and mean people in New Zealand - in short; two years of your peers. The image in the mirror would be haunting and hopefully, off putting for some. Furthermore, it would protect the less hardened criminals in the current system from the ones on the island.

Now natural objections to this would arise and I am in no way suggesting it would be easy. Nor are the nuts and bolts of this idea completely presented here. And yes, it does sound very Lord of the Flies like. Finally, I would also suggest that only the most recidivist murderers, drug dealers and rapists be sent here for a start.

But is it time that the possibility was considered? Where would you have such an island? Would you have only one? What about the taking away of prisoners rights and freedoms? To this last question, I would answer: we have preserved their right to life, how they choose to live it is up to them; to date, they have chosen to live it for the purpose of causing misery and violence. And this is the consequence of such a life.

The Thin End of the Wedge?

It seems the anti-smacking bill that is being fronted by Sue Bradford may end up passing. She certainly seems to think she has the numbers. There are two drawbacks to this though:

1) The failed efforts by Labour to introduce it under urgency, and separately as a government bill, indicate a degree of worry by the ruling cabal. They KNOW it is burning them up. Problem is, it will linger until the budget, and more than likely beyond. What a shame........

2) This bill could potentially do more to undermine the pro-abortion movement than any other form of legislation. How so? First, if Sue Bradford's bill passes, it make all forms of violence and contact against children illegal. Now, in the courts, unborn children have been granted the same rights in law as born children. There has been legal precedent for an individual being prosecuted for deliberately harming an unborn child.

This situation exists because in 1981, in response to a complaint, the Courts declared that the unborn child had no legal statutory rights and it also ruled that the decisions of certifying consultants were immune from the law. Naturally, many thought this unsatisfactory and the issue went to Parliament where the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion bill, embracing nine separate acts, went to a third reading and passed by 40 votes to 26. It was the first legislation in the Western world to re-introduce legal protection for the unborn child. Thus, unborn children in NZ have rights enshrined in law.

If s59 is repealed, be ready for a lawsuit against a DHB or abortion provider, on the grounds of legal precedent and demonstrable violence towards an unborn child. Such court action may or may not succeed, but if it did, watch all hell break loose.

Sue will really be spitting then, because she will be responsible. Good on ya mate!

Madness Made Easy

We have gone mad as a legislative nation. The ruling factions in the current Parliament (ie. the ultra-liberal, anti-God, tree hugging, anti-family creatures known as the Labour and Green Parties) have, over the last 7 years, been quietly working us towards societal lunacy. People stood up and noticed the first signs of this when the drinking age was lowered to 18. Then, they altered the ERA (Employment Relations Act) such that not having the money to pay someone (as the education sector is finding out) is not necessarily justifiable grounds for dismissing them from work. Firing them for incompetence is right out of the question.

Next came the Prostitution Reform Act and the Civil Unions Bill. Now, the lunacy and bona fide madness of these factions has manifest itself with the repeal of Section 59 Bill. That this is the most obvious case of madness is the fact that Helen Clark let herself be shown so easily to be a liar. In the past, it was attempted to be hidden more carefully. Only a desperate lunatic lets themselves be shown out so easily.

In each and every one of these cases the approach of the factions pushing these barrows of societal change has been to: 1) open the issue up for debate, 2) lie about the real intentions of the legislation, 3) brand any opposing argument as hateful, bigoted or not trustworthy, 4) buy the votes of the younger generation (ie. less than 25) as they are more easily sucked in by the dollar and 5) turn votes of conscience into matters of political survival for MPs by whipping them into line. These are the traits of a dictatorship, driven by complete cynicism for the general population and lack of respect for due Parliamentary process.

But why would such people behave in this manner: what could possess them to be so malevolent towards society? The answer obviously is that they don't think they are being malevolent, rather they view their ideas as our salvation.

Now general society has had enough of these ideas, in fact, it always had no time for them right from the start. The general population has always known that the above changes in law were not right. They could not articulate it well, but they knew it was wrong. This is what Chesterton called the "sanity of the common mob". And in usual Chesterton style, he explained how it worked.

Right from the start, the lunatics and their ideas above suffer from a fatal flaw in their reasoning. The common man, and indeed the uncommon man who remembers who he still is (ie. has humility), looks around the real world (both physical and social) and notices that which binds it together. Just as physics tells us that gravity keeps us on Earth, natural law tells us that the family is the most important unit of society, and that the family functions best when Mum and Dad get married, stay faithful, have children and don't ruin lives with drugs, alcohol or moral/ethical abandonment. And over the centuries, this has remained true for the majority of people, as evidenced by the advances of the last 800 years.

But in the last 100 years, the lunatic liberal sees the minority failures of this law (ie. parents or individuals who let down themselves and those around them) and decide, because they can't bothered caring for their fellow man or because they cannot reconcile to themselves the notion of free will, that society is the problem and that it must change.

Thus, the prostitute who ruins herself/himself and those they engage with, for whatever reason, must not be told that what they are doing is detrimental and they have made a bad decision. The homosexual who genuinely struggles with their major difference in sexuality and comprises 2% of people becomes the yardstick for a nation's sexual compass. The child beaters who could care less about smacking and whether it is illegal or not become the rod with which to beat genuine good parents who know what is an unacceptable beating and what is genuine parental correction.

All of this starts from the lunatic liberal perceiving that the faults of society, even though they are the minor component, are the yardstick of reality and what law must conform to. And this is where it becomes dangerous. For law is derived from the Latin term ligare, meaning to bind. The law of the lunatic liberal does anything but bind us together; rather it frustrates and demoralises the majority, unbinding them from one another and creating chaos.

But at this point the liberal feels strangely comforted; for now society reflects the lunacy in their own head and they feel justified. And no-one wins; the lunatic is still a lunatic and society crumbles around them.