ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on incarceration as a response to crime, New Zealand also has a number of community-based interventions to deal with less serious types of offending. In 1961 the Crimes Act 1908 was completely rewritten and in it penalty for murder was hotly debated. No hangings had taken place since 1957 because the Labour administration had automatically commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment. In order to understand the New Zealand prison system as operates today, it is useful to have an appreciation of origins and development In 1989 Kim Workman, a former policeman and a liberal Christian with strong reformist views, became assistant secretary penal institutions, that is, the chief executive of prison system. New Zealand has been experimenting with various forms of systematic crime control since Hume centralised the prison system in 1880. His approach was primarily deterrent, but reformative treatment for criminals has been in place since 1910, the year after Hume retired.
