ACT Justice Spokesman Stephen Franks today warned people planning future uses of Mt Eden prison not to count chickens before they hatch.

“The prison won’t close in the foreseeable future because there is nowhere to put the prisoners. Mr Robson has not managed to start any of the prisons planned when he came to power.

“Overcrowding will get serious this winter. Long forecast increases in the prison population have made it inevitable.

“Mr Robson came to power promising not to build new prisons because he doesn’t believe in them. His own Department advised him that more than 2,000 new cell spaces were needed, even without any change in policy to reflect the 92% referendum asking for tougher punishment.

“Pseudo-punishments like home detention have not caught on as much as was hoped. Judges know they will not seem to victims to be a fair punishment.

“So Mr Robson will use the plan to close Mt Eden as justification to start building replacement prisons, as a way out of his naive promise. But the need for space by the time they are built will be so critical there is no way Mt Eden will close," Stephen Franks said.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>