Hon. Tony Ryall MP
National Law and Order spokesman

1 August 2005

Labour's dying gasps on prisoners

National's Law and Order spokesman, Tony Ryall, says Labour's prison reintegration policy is cant hypocrisy.

"Like Rip Van Winkle, it has taken Corrections Minister Paul Swain more than a year to wake up to the need for more work for prisoners. Dr Brash outlined National's plans in July last year.

"Labour has actually cut the amount of work prisoners do. The average prisoner is now doing less than two hours work a day. And they do less than 40 minutes a week on education and training. No wonder there's no rehabilitation.

"Labour has cut the budget for prison work this year by $5 million to $30.5 million. Three years ago inmates were doing about 5.8 million hours of work, last year it was only 4.3 million hours. During that time farm and manufacturing work was cut by almost 37%!

"Labour has had six years to do something about this but they have done nothing.

"A few ideas in the dying gasps of this Government won't make much difference," Mr Ryall says.

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