I was asked yesterday whether I'll ever be happy with any policy announcement by any political party. 

And, wouldn’t you know it, just 24 hours later it’s actually happened. And it’s the ACT Party of all parties that’s managed to do it. 

Because it’s released details of its Justice Policy which I’m finding pretty hard to argue against. 

I’ll be honest with you. Even though I like the sound  of it, it’s not the type of approach that I would always have argued for. That’s because I get all the research and the evidence that says just locking people up doesn’t do society many favours in the long run. 

But I’m just going to have to go on gut instinct and say that, of all the parties so far, I think ACT is reading the room well because we have all had a gutsful of crime, haven’t we? Or, more to the point, we’ve had a gutsful of criminals not facing the full consequences for their actions.  

The gist of what ACT is saying, is that we need to have less criminals on Home Detention and more of them in prison. And even just on recent evidence, who could argue with that? 

A prime example is the guy in Auckland who was on Home D but allowed to work; had some sort of beef with the outfit he was working for; got himself a gun; turned up at the building site where he’d been working; and started shooting at people. 

Very clearly, he should not have been on Home D. But, when he was sentenced for the assault on his former partner, the judge started doing the old discount thing and when it got down to below two years, the home detention option became available. And he got it. 

Which never should have happened. So anything that might prevent stuff like that happening again gets the big tick from me. 

Now the way ACT would make it happen is by changing the Sentencing Act to force judges to think more about public safety and the rights of victims when it comes to sending someone to prison or letting them go home and hang out with an ankle bracelet on. 

So you wouldn’t have this nutbar situation where a crim turns up in court for sentencing; there’s a starting point but then the judge starts giving discounts for all sorts of things like guilty pleas, the person’s background, childhood, cultural alienation etc etc And then, once they get below two years, home D becomes an option. 

Under ACT’s policy, the judge would have to consider whether Home D is actually the safest option for the community. So even when they got below two years after all the discounts, the judge would have to think about how risky it would be not locking the person up.  

They’d also need to consider the victim in all of this - and how a non-custodial sentence might sit with them. 

A prime example, again, is the Auckland shooter. After he went AWOL three weeks ago today, the family of the woman he assaulted and ended up being on Home Detention for, came out and said he should never have been on Home D.  

So we can assume from that, can’t we, that when the judge didn’t send him to prison, the victim had been left feeling hard done by. And that’s what the ACT Party is pledging to do something about. 

And what is there to argue against that? 

Why shouldn’t our judges be made to think about the consequences of them dishing out Home D sentences? 

Why shouldn’t they have to think about whether or not it’s safe not having a crim behind bars. Especially when you consider the news today that home detention breaches are up by a third. That could have something to do with more people being on Home D these days. But it’s still an increase. 

That’s the kind of change ACT wants and I like it. Another thing it wants to do is to get rid of the cultural reports that people use to justify sentence discounts. This is the industry that the likes of Harry Tam has got himself involved in.  

ACT leader David Seymour says no crime can be justified because someone is alienated from their culture.  

So some big changes proposed by ACT. And I like them. 

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