Editorial: How do we treat our most vulnerable?

OPINION: It’s easy to embrace lazy catchphrases like “tough on crime”. It’s far harder to take the humane approach: tough on the causes of crime. Today, lawyer Norman George announces plans to set up a local branch of the Sir Peter Williams QC Penal Reform League, to help address the poverty and abandonment driving people into crime. Acknowledging prisoners are not innately bad, but often just made bad choices under the influence of hunger or addiction, the League would provide support behind bars for their rehabilitation. This sits well alongside the leadership group being convened by the Cook Islands News to address the health challenges around meth and other addictive drugs. The prison lacks funding to feed all 47 inmates. Some have fallen ill drinking the water. Others suffered intimidation. READ MORE:* Norman George: Please pause, look at our young people* Prison work gangs ‘pay for jail food’* Second inmate complains of heavying It’s easy to write off prisoners as mad or bad and lock them away without thought, but this only plunges them further into the cesspit; it will not rehabilitate them to rejoin society as decent citizens. As Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck once said, “the test of a civilisation is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” There are some good people working in police and corrective services; they need the support of an engaged community to help those who might fall into crime, and those who have already. Not an archaic approach of lock ‘em up and throw away the key.

OPINION: It’s easy to embrace lazy catchphrases like “tough on crime”. It’s far harder to take the humane approach: tough on the causes of crime. Today, lawyer Norman George announces plans to set up a local branch of the Sir Peter Williams QC Penal Reform League, to help address the poverty and abandonment driving people into crime. Acknowledging prisoners are not innately bad, but often just made bad choices under the influence of hunger or addiction, the League would provide support behind bars for their rehabilitation. This sits well alongside the leadership group being convened by the Cook Islands News to address the health challenges around meth and other addictive drugs. The prison lacks funding to feed all 47 inmates. Some have fallen ill drinking the water. Others suffered intimidation. READ MORE:* Norman George: Please pause, look at our young people* Prison work gangs ‘pay for jail food’* Second inmate complains of heavying It’s easy to write off prisoners as mad or bad and lock them away without thought, but this only plunges them further into the cesspit; it will not rehabilitate them to rejoin society as decent citizens. As Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck once said, “the test of a civilisation is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” There are some good people working in police and corrective services; they need the support of an engaged community to help those who might fall into crime, and those who have already. Not an archaic approach of lock ‘em up and throw away the key.