New Zealand typically looks to Scandinavia for inspiration on improving our justice and corrections systems. But a prison expert says it’s actually Texas that can show us the best way to bring down our jail population. Ben Brooks spoke to Alex Braae about his research.

If you ever have to conjure up what justice looks like in the US state of Texas, it probably involves a lot of brutally long sentences, and sheriffs shooting to kill.

But a quiet revolution has been going on in the Lone Star State for the last decade, and it is starting to show real progress in reducing the prison muster. Since 2006 Texas has managed to reduce its prison population by nearly 15,000, and its imprisonment rate by over 23%. They’ve done that through much greater reliance on specialised and drug courts, a youth justice focus, and simply making the decision that fewer people would be sent to prison.

What is remarkable about the Texas experiment is that not only have crime rates continued to fall, there is bipartisan political support for the reforms, with both sides finding something to like about them. The agreement around prison numbers needing to fall has been a remarkable success story of consensus politics, even if neither side had much time for the arguments their opponents were putting forward.

It is into this environment that prison expert and JustSpeak advisor Ben Brooks has been travelling. A former employee of the Department of Corrections, his 15 year career has taken him on a tour through various public sector systems.

Now with crime and punishment set to be a major theme of the upcoming election, Ben Brooks is back in New Zealand to speak about the Texas experiment, and why some of the same social and political tools could be used here. He spoke to The Spinoff about what we could learn.

The Spinoff: What originally attracted you to looking at Texas, of all places? 

Ben Brooks: A bit of context – one of my previous roles has been with the Department of Corrections in New Zealand. From that work, it became clear – and I think many of my colleagues felt the same way – that we had a system that was pretty broken. So then the question became what do we have to do to fix it?

Lots of people go to the Scandinavian countries, and they come back with all this great stuff about the Norwegian corrections system, and how we need to be more like them. But then if you look at the trajectory of our prison population over time, to the degree that the goal was to try and change that, it hasn’t been successful. And so my thinking was that there was a couple of reasons why that work hasn’t had the impact people wanted it to.

Politically and culturally do we perhaps have more in common with Texas than we do with Norway? 

One factor is that New Zealand and Norway are just too different, so to take what they do and apply it to New Zealand is just too hard. And there are plenty of similarities with Texas, in some important ways. There’s a large minority population, a rapidly growing population generally, Texas has been very tough on crime – and in fact some of the tough on crime stuff we’ve done has been directly imported from Texas, so it’s easy to translate.

The other potential theory around why following the Norwegian model doesn’t work here – they tell you the goal to aim for, they don’t tell you what the first step to take to get things moving is. So looking around the world, Texas does help with that.

The third reason is about getting buy in. If you’re on the left, the Scandinavian countries are great, and everyone loves them. And then on the right, people tend to roll their eyes, which isn’t useful if you’re trying to get a political coalition together. Texas helps with all of that.

So the reductions in the Texas prison population – is that more about just halting the explosive growth in the prison populations that occurred in the 1990s? 

There’s a bit more to it. If you look around 2007, they had their major reforms. One of the things that helped them with those reforms is that they’d had advice that if they didn’t make any changes, they’d need to build 17,000 beds in the next five years. What they’ve managed to do is change the course they were on, to go into a period of slow but steady decline in the imprisonment rate. Their population growth has also been very rapid – for a period of time they were the fastest growing state in America – so their imprisonment rate decline has come despite that.

Were tough on crime sentencing positions to come back, would you expect to see imprisonment rates jump again regardless of how they corresponded with the crime rate?

In New Zealand the crime rate has been dropping slowly but pretty steadily since the early 1990s, while the imprisonment rate has been going up sharply. So the link between those two rates is pretty weak. They just don’t seem to be very connected.

When it comes to specific hard line policies – minimum sentencing, or the three strikes rule for example – people often argue that longer sentences are needed as a deterrent for certain crimes. Is that true?

This project is very much around trying to reduce our imprisonment population. But it’s not about getting everyone out of prison. I still think there are people who have committed very serious crimes, who will need to be in prison. Labour has a target of about a 30% reduction, which I think is kind of conservative but is reasonable. So something along those lines, which mean we’d still have a prison population of around 7000.

There’s a lot of work that has been done with people with serious drug or alcohol problems, and people in those situations don’t tend to sit there and rationally weigh up the pros and cons of committing a crime. That was a theory that was in place for a while, not many places around the world buy into that. Maybe with financial crimes, and a chief executive pondering whether to defraud their company. For the vast majority of people in prison, we know lots of them have drug or alcohol, problems, a history of trauma, from overseas evidence lots are likely to have had some sort of head injury or cognitive problems in the past. The likelihood that they’re sitting they’re and thinking about how recently parliament passed some tougher sentencing laws is pretty weak.

Is there a significant private prison industry in Texas?

Yes, that’s a reasonable part of their system.

So with that business model, private prisons are basically reliant on more people being locked up. How did that impact the changes there?

Certainly for the Republicans, part of this has been driven by their key stakeholders. And private prisons were one of them, but they sort of got outweighed by the others. So when they had their 2007 reforms, that was going to cost $2 billion. In their constitution, there’s a balanced budget rule, so they can’t borrow. They’d either have had to cut programmes, or raise taxes. Obviously the prison industry might have been opposed, but all their other donors were much bigger and more strongly opposed to raising taxes, and cutting $2 billion worth of projects would have been too difficult and controversial.

It’s not exactly an edifying process is it?

Yeah, I think part of this is showing Republicans and Democrats reaching the same conclusions for very different reasons. You can like or dislike the reasons they used, but they’re focused on the agreement they reached.

Ben Brooks will be speaking at the Owen G Glenn Building, Auckland University, on Tuesday November 5 at 6.30pm. He received funding from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to travel to Texas.

The prime minister is in Thailand for the East Asia Summit. RNZ’s political editor Jane Patterson sets the scene.

The last-minute cancellation of Apec in Chile has left the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Thailand as the new main game in town. The two summits are usually held close together; Apec is viewed as the heavy-hitting event, with high-level representation from global superpowers.

Many of those countries, including the United States, China and Russia, will also have a presence at the East Asia Summit, but the big names like Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, will not be there in person.

However, the EAS remains a significant gathering for New Zealand, as it has a specific focus on vital trading and security challenges, right on our own doorstep.

It is comprised of the Association of East Asian Nations countries, as well as influential dialogue partners. Topics expected in the discussions include the de-nuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea dispute and the gnarly RCEP multilateral trade deal, to name but a few.

Jacinda Ardern expects the “intensity” in Bangkok to be increased after the cancellation of Apec, as there will now be just the one opportunity for member countries to engage. Ardern is only on the ground in Bangkok for about 36 hours.

Who’s there?

For some countries it’s a matter of who’s not there, rather than who is turning up. The Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is attending, but not President Xi Jinping. Representing the United States will be National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, who is not a member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, along with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, prompting commentary in some media this was could be seen as a “snub” to the region.

That’s not a view taken by Ardern, who says New Zealand does not “interpret things in that way”.

“We continue, though, to encourage good engagement from the US and others within the region; we are the focal point for a number of significant issues that have the potential to impact globally”.

But ultimately representation at summits like the EAS was a “matter for each individual country”, she says.

It was expected that President Trump and President Xi had intended to seal some kind of agreement towards resolving their trade war on the sidelines of Apec.

The dispute has had a negative global impact, says Ardern, and there has been a missed opportunity for dialogue.

Former Trade Minister Todd McClay has described the cancellation as a “very big setback” for New Zealand, as access to ministers and heads of states at these events is important.

It means Ardern will not have the opportunity for another sit down with President Trump, he says.

“My advice to Jacinda Ardern would be ‘get on a plane and get to Washington’ and have a frank one-on-one with the President of America in the White House. He’s indicated he’s keen on a trade deal, we should be doing everything we possibly can to move forward”.

NZ keen participant in RCEP talks

RCEP is made up of the 10 ASEAN nations, plus six other countries including New Zealand, China and India. The nations cover 3.5 billion people, with a combined national output of US $27 trillion, and accounting for 32% of global trade. But after years of talks, there is little optimism a deal will be struck any time soon.

New Zealand already has established trade relationships with the countries involved, but any kind of free trade deal with India – either through RCEP or a bilateral agreement – remains elusive.

There is “no clear sense” of whether RCEP will be concluded this year, says Ardern, but New Zealand remains a “very, very active participant” in negotiations.

McClay says RCEP needs to “fix problems” that remain with countries like China and India, otherwise there is no point.

During his time New Zealand was the one pushing back, as it was not willing to settle for a poor quality deal, he says.

“Ironically India was in the other area wanting to sort of pull everyone lower. New Zealand has to be promoting high quality deals because actually few countries will any more.”

Stephen Jacobi from the New Zealand International Business Forum says the outlook for RCEP is not “particularly positive” despite our political determination.

There is no point if each country is unwilling to liberalise trade and allow new business to occur, he says.

“All countries need to make concessions to open up their markets, it seems that India is most reluctant to do this … India is going to have to make some concessions to the whole group so that this negotiation can move forward”.

He expects an announcement about the text of the RCEP agreement could be made during the Bangkok meeting, with further work to be done around market access.

But the times are not “terribly favourable” for deals between multiple countries, he says.

“Protectionism is growing around the world, governments are rethinking their position on these things. From a business perspective we find it deeply dismaying, and making progress is incredibly difficult.”

However, there are some examples where multi-lateral deals have been advantageous to New Zealand, says Ardern, like the CPTPP which has delivered better access to markets like Japan, where that had not been possible at a bilateral level.

“RCEP poses a really good opportunity for access to India, but that hasn’t been without its challenges so it’s a little early to say what the final agreement will look like”, she says.

Meanwhile, it’s understood China and New Zealand have come to an agreement on the upgrade of their free trade deal, but it’s unclear when an official announcement would be made.

South China Sea on agenda again

This South China Sea dispute has been raised at each EAS Ardern has attended, and she expects this year will be no different.

Competing territorial claims in the sea, involving China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia have led to a conflict that’s remained unresolved for decades.

China has been building small islands and military facilities there for years, prompting criticism from countries like the US, and consternation from countries with competing claims.

The South China Sea is a major trading route, with about a third of global shipping passing through it.

New Zealand traditionally has not taken sides in the dispute, but takes the position that international conventions around the “law of the sea” and freedom of navigation are important and need to be upheld.

It has supported work being done to establish a Code of Conduct, says Ardern, “to try to bring all parties to agreement”.

That agreement provides a “focal point” as a mechanism to find some sort of resolution, she says. And she views it as playing an important role “but obviously there are tensions there”.

Push for denuclearisation on Korean Peninsula

Ardern also expects an “ongoing focus” on the Korean Peninsula, where even in recent days there have been reports of further missile testing.

Reuters reported on Thursday that North Korea fired “two suspected missiles” into the sea between the Peninsula and Japan, the first since talks in Sweden between the US and North Korea on 5 October.

New Zealand continues to maintain its position on “the ongoing, verifiable need for denuclearisation” on the Peninsula, says Ardern, and has been playing an active role by monitoring the sanctions put in place by the United Nations.

“We’ve deployed our people to help… because it is in New Zealand’s best interests to try to see that denuclearisation occur.”

The international community would want to see pressure “continue to be applied”, she says, so there have been some tangible results from the discussions that have already taken place with the likes of the United States and North Korea.