Don Brash's law and order launch last Sunday provided a political, rather than a practical, answer to crime. It ignored ways to reduce offending and instead focused on ways to keep more people in prison for longer. The Sensible Sentencing Trust audience ensured a rapturous reception, with no hard questions being asked about whether those two goals are actually the same.

Dr Brash acknowledged that prisons are a "university of crime", but then brushed that off with a comment that people can't harm the community while in prison. Even though he acknowledged that time in prison equips inmates with more sophisticated criminal skills and better contacts, he didn't ask; 'what will they be like when they get out?' It defies common sense to suggest that locking someone in a cage with violent people will teach them to be a better human being.

One rehabilitative tool is parole. There are currently real problems with parole, but proper monitoring of release conditions could address many of the shortcomings. The Corrections Department's recidivism index and international studies show that parole does work at reducing re-offending. Re-integrative programs that support family ties have also been shown to be effective and need to be better developed, as well as support for community agencies such as PARS and FreshStart.

Yes, prisons do have a place. I agree that the most violent and unredeemable criminals should be locked away for life. But since 2002 the law has provided for just that, so there is nothing left for Dr Brash to change in that regard.

However, overall justice policy should not be based on the small minority of truly sadistic criminals. The biggest challenge is to keep young people out of crime and stop them re-offending when they do stray in to it

During the passing of the Sentencing Act 2002 teachers and social workers told the Justice and Electoral Select Committee they could often identify, from the age of 5, the children likely to become serious violent offenders in adulthood.

Ex-prison manager Celia Lashlie invented a blond-haired blue-eyed young boy to reinforce the same point. It is crazy that we allow that child to become that criminal. Interventions are most effective when targeted at the very young. They may be less 'efficient', in that they also take in kids who might never have committed crime, but the resulting social benefits of breaking intergenerational cycles of disadvantage make it an effective trade-off.

Dr Brash mentioned early intervention and rehabilitation, but only as a throwaway line prefacing his call to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12. He fails to acknowledge that successful crime prevention addresses employment, poverty and marginalisation and is based on building true community. These propositions are not clear and simple sound bites, but real solutions rarely are.

The first steps would be to address funding levels and the short-term, insecure nature of contracts for the community support sector. Strategies must be aimed at the community, family and individual level. They must strengthen families and parenting skills, promote non-violence and effective communication skills and address truancy and school suspensions. They must also address housing transience and mental health services for children and young people.

Dr Brash also doesn't seem to recognise the inability of the current adversarial court system to hold offenders to account or to provide satisfaction for victims. It fails to do so because it is based on a philosophy that sees crime as an offense against the state (breaking the law) rather than against a person or people (doing harm to others). Courts are necessary for some cases, but far greater victim satisfaction and offender accountability result from the use of Restorative Justice, Marae Justice, Transformative Justice and the like.

Dr Brash did mention an example of these techniques, Family Group Conferences, but he failed to acknowledge their successes or the challenges they face, such as the shortage of trained facilitators and the regular failure to properly follow-up and enforce agreements.

Restorative justice can still include prison, but Dr Brash's blunt solution of putting more people behind bars for longer does not address why prisons usually fail. In 1989 a Ministerial Committee, The Roper Report, argued that prison is incompatible with rehabilitation. It advocated that all sentenced inmates go to prison for initial assessment. If unsuitable for rehabilitation they would be kept in prison, but if willing and responsive they would, after a time, be transferred to a Habilitation Centre.

Such facilities would provide structured, intensive and, at times, confrontational therapy. If inmates do not make satisfactory progress, they would go back to prison. The term 'habilitation' is used because a person cannot be rehabilitated if they were never habilitated in the first place.

The majority of inmates are not dangerous and society would benefit by keeping them out of prison and in programs that address the causes of offending and hold them accountable. Prisons themselves could then focus on their role as places of punishment and containment. Sentences might include periods of prison, for punishment, and periods of habilitation. This approach will lead to reduced re-offending and prison populations, unlike Dr Brash's simple vision.

There are no easy solutions to reducing crime, and politicians offering silver bullets are misleading the public. The answers lie in a complex package, of which sentencing policy is just a small part. The danger is that an over-emphasis on sentencing diverts scarce resources into building more and more prisons and away from more effective initiatives.

Dr Brash's proposals, combined with his threatened benefit reforms and privatisation of prisons, would create a dangerous 'Americanised' justice. High imprisonment rates, high levels of serious crime, high profits for prison companies and high levels of social alienation characterise US justice policy. New Zealand must reject that model. Ensuring justice for victims and holding offenders to account, combined with reducing unemployment and other forms of social and economic marginalisation, are our most powerful weapons against crime.

What do you think the purpose of prisons should be in our society?
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