I’m liking what Sir Ron Young is saying about prison sentences today.

He’s really challenging us, saying that we need to re-think what we do with people given sentences of two-to-three years.

He’s talking about not sending them to conventional prisons and giving them conjugal rights.

This is how they deal with things in Scandinavian countries. He thinks we should do the same here. And I reckon we should too.

He’s the outgoing head of the Parole Board and he’s saying that short prison sentences aren’t working and we need to have a re-think.

He’s saying that offenders who are sent to prison for this amount of time are more likely to re-offend, compared to people who go inside for longer. For say, eight years.

And there are stats to back it up. Sir Ron says the re-offending rate for people locked up on shorter prison sentences is 40 percent. And for those who do longer sentences, the reoffending rate is about 10 percent.

So you can’t argue with that.

What we can argue about, though, is whether Sir Ron’s ideas have any merit. And I think they do.

He reckons a much better thing to do with people who commit crimes that get them a two or three year sentence, would be not to send them to the jails we have now - and, instead, house them within communities in facilities that are less like prisons, where they’d be allowed to vote, and also entitled to conjugal visits from their partners.

Which is the approach they take in Scandinavian countries.

Sir Ron’s coming at this from the aspect of re-offending. But, in particular, rehabilitating someone who commits a crime.

And he says that with the offenders who only have two or three years inside, they have way less opportunities to get rehabilitated and end-up spending a lot of their time hanging out with serious crims.

He describes IT as “a university of crime”. And he thinks it would be way better if these offenders went somewhere else, where it felt less like a prison and more like normal life.

He admits, though, that it could be hard thing for some people to swallow.

Especially, given the political and public interest in tougher prison sentences.

But, as a society, what’s more important? Punishing offenders or trying to make sure they don’t offend again?

As Sir Ron says, once a crime has been committed - you can’t change that. But the thing you can try to do, is to try and stop them offending again.

And, if this alternative way being suggested by Sir Ron today could do a better job of preventing crimes from happening, then why not give it a go?

If most of the offenders doing these short sentences spend most of their time inside learning how to become a better criminal, then why would we stick with the way we’re doing things?

Sir Ron is saying today that these people on two-or-three year sentences are being “educated in the way of crime”.

So, of course, they should be in different environments. And, of course, they should be prepared as much as possible for life beyond prison.

I was reading about the “open prisons” in some Scandinavian countries - where Sir Ron is drawing his inspiration for doing things differently here in New Zealand.

One of them, in Sweden, lets inmates hold down jobs. They head out for the day to work and come back at night. There’s even a car park for them and, if they work late, a meal is left out for them.

Essentially, what it comes down to, is these Scandinavian countries don’t shut prisoners out of society completely. Which is what Sir Ron thinks we should do here in New Zealand offenders sentenced for two-to-three years. If it would mean less re-offending, it's worth trying, isn't it?