New Zealand penal policy in the twenty-first century

Abstract

In 1961, President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the growth of the military-industrial complex to the health of US society. In the early twenty-first century, it has been the growth of the penal-industrial complex that now poses these dangers to the health of New Zealand and similar societies, by its expansion and the stripping away of resources from all other sectors of society. This chapter argues that, instead of “keeping New Zealanders safe”, as politicians and lobbyists usually justify stringent law and order policies, penal expansion has damaged New Zealand’s well-being.