Monday, December 07, 2015

A Corrections history substantially increases benefit dependency

Interesting fact:

Of all people with some form of Corrections history post-1960 that are still under the age of 65 (390,581 people), 28% (or 108,462 people) were receiving a main benefit at 30 June 2013. This compares with approximately 11% of the NZ working-age population as a whole.
Actually, I find this level of benefit dependency surprisingly low.

What it does show is people with criminal convictions have a good chance of becoming self-sustaining.  I expect though that if the data was further analysed, those who serve prison-time (as opposed to community sentences) would have a higher incidence of benefit receipt.

It looks like MSD will do further work in this area, so my expectation will be confirmed in time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well for a start we don't know what percentage are back inside. Neither do we know what that "Corrections History" is" Home D? Periodic D? Community Service? Thats' all corrections.

The fact remains that Corrections is just another big welfare scheme like Health and Education and Super -- and of course, actual welfare. Criminals or failing that their families - or bleeding-heart liberal charities or churches - should cover the cost of their incarceration, not to mention trial, prosecution, investigation, and a large share of prophylactic policing.

Criminals who can't pay - or better still - cannot lodge a sufficiently large bond on arrest should just be summarily executed - thus saving the taxpayer further expense.