Playstation-Wielding Prisoners: Are Pimped-Out Prisons Fair?

Talk about the prison system in New Zealand and two issues usually arise: the rising state of crime within our innocent clean-green islands, and the fact that prisoners are now allowed luxuries such as Playstations, X-Boxes, Nintendos, and Sky TV. The main question this article will discuss is not only, ‘Is this true?’ but also, “Is this fair?’ How come we have to abide by all the rules, watch over our backs for rapists and murderers and tell kids not to accept stranger’s candy when those very criminals might end up with flasher technology and nicer meals? And more importantly, who is funding all this paedophile pampering and murderer molly coddling?

A main point here I would like to add (although trying not to have a bias, as snaky journalists are apt to do), is that it is not only Playstations and cafeteria-cooked meals that prisoners have had over the past few years. If you are a minimum-medium security prisoner (e.g. not Clayton Weatherston), life is looking pretty sweet. Under-floor heating warms your slippers all day, until you receive money, gifts, and kissy-kissys from the wife, kids, and/or jailbait on Saturdays. You may also make calls to whomever you like from morning till night (think: possibly working from “home”), only working your ‘real job’ four and a half hours a day. A story has also just broken about David Bain wannabe Mark Lundy receiving medical treatment outside prison after murdering his family. It’s easy to see why people get angry. Would you want the person who stole your car, assaulted your grandmother (or worse in the case of Lundy), to have life so lavish? Surprisingly, the answers are often mixed.

It is probably time to get to the facts. Out of 19 nationwide prisons, the Department of Corrections owns assets of $1.7 billion and a budget of $748 million. Comparably with, say, Canada, we have good rehabilitation rates: only 14% of our adult rapists reoffend within nine years, in contrast to their 61%(!), and we have the same re-offending rate of paedophiles (21%). We have a breaking-out and positive drug-testing rate of 15%, which is relatively low. We also offer restrictions such as text blocking (no text-messaging allowed in some of our prisons), along with only a few other nations such as France, Sweden, Scotland and Mexico (although this is probably a money-saver when you have free in-cell calling). The UK, by contrast, is also worse than us on the Playstation front: they spent more than 221,000 pounds on prisoner entertainment and only admitted to 10,000. Bad public relations indeed. Are these statistics really bad enough for us to kick up such a fuss? Or is asking a statement like that simply begging the question?

The journalist Marc Alexander has echoed a debate that has been passed around in our national politics like a hot potato since who knows when: that we need to stop seeing criminals as misunderstood victims. Although this might be hard when research tells us at least 60% of our prisoners have at least one major personality disorder, it does ring true. New Zealand often has such high aspirations for equality because it is viewed as a first-world country. There are many beautiful things about our European ideas: we love to forgive, we have numerous charities, and we join in with the big guns when it comes to international politics.


But could these ideals be affecting the way we treat our most hardened criminals? Just like most of us don’t want to be the one at the head of the line or the one pushing in, we don’t want to be the ones who push for pensioner-punchers to be denied Halo 3 or for stabbers to have their heated rugs pulled from under them. Why? Because everybody is equal. The courts might preach that all are innocent until proven guilty, but what really happens to those who are proven in the wrong? As far back as 2002 a Sentencing Act was passed, reducing the amount of incarceration time before parole to a 1/3 less. The media might be the ones mitigating what we hear about these prisoners, but there nevertheless seem to be myriads of cases where special treatment is given, not to mention the lessening of sentences for the most disturbing of crimes.

David Cox

Let us explore the other side of the coin for a minute, supposing that we are being unreasonable. There have also been cases of ill neglect within the prison system, and not just a ‘watch-your-back’ mentality between imprisoned former gang members (or so they are stereotyped). One case is of a certain David Cox, an over-60’s minor offender who died of pneumonia after having repeatedly asked guards for extra clothing and blankets. Cox died seven days after having contracted the disease, reportedly having a blue pallor and shaking. Even in the low-risk prisons, then, not everything is coming up rainbows and lollipops.

Perhaps the problem with these kind of discussions is that we have heard the side of the real victims, the families or those directly attacked, so often and with so much emotion. We can relate to these people. Most of us have not been inside a prison. How many people are related to or still friends with a current inmate? We are nicely dressed, non-patched Aucklanders who know someone that a crime has happened to. We find it hard to sympathize with the high percentage of mentally ill convicts because we all know, thanks to John Kirwan, that 1 in 5 of us have it already. Why should we care about a sad inmate? They stole our car and hooked our cousin up on meths. Besides, the heated flooring and Playstation-parading that we’re funding really gets up our noses. We’re not happy with it and we’re having to pay for it, but we’re warm-hearted New Zealanders. We don’t want to get all Texas-Death-Row on you. We just want to write an article.