Over $300K spent on slushy syrup and maintaining machines for prison staff

Corrections has spent over $305,000 on slushy syrup and maintaining frozen ice machines in the past six years.

The news comes as proposed job cuts ravage the public service with 3460 jobs set for the chopping block, as part of the cost savings drive.

The slushy machines caused controversy in 2019 when it was revealed Corrections had spent over $1 million of taxpayer money on 193 slushy machines.

The then-National leader Simon Bridges called it “irresponsible and wasteful spending” at the time but then-Corrections minister Kelvin Davis said was about health and safety.

Since then the slushy fund has continued with 160 of the 193 original machines still in use and $305,906 spent on syrup, maintaining them.

BalpeenHammer,

So what? Am I supposed to freak out about this? Why shouldn’t the prisoners have slushies?

AnarchistArtificer,

It’s not the prisoners that are getting the slushies, it’s the staff

BalpeenHammer,

Even less of a reason to get upset.

deadbeef79000,

This is a dog-whistle.

It’s a rounding error amount of the corrections budget, and cost-effective.

Buried in here is criticism of how much is spent on corrections and that we should be spending less (i.e. have poorer quality prisons for inmates and staff).

Remember every tax dollar spent was stolen from businesses and the bourgeoisie.

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

I find this a weird thing to worry about. $300k across 6 years is $50k per year. They have over 10k staff so that’s $5 per staff member per year. It sounds like incredible value!

I say let them have their slushy fund!

FinishingDutch,
@FinishingDutch@lemmy.world avatar

Heck, I’d certainly PAY $5 a year to have a slushy machine at my job. Especially during those hot summer days. That’d certainly improve MY job satisfaction.

Mandarbmax,

Ya, expecially compared to $5000+ per slushie machine.

rimu,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

It would have been helpful if the rnz article provided some context, like the fact that we spend $2.4 billion per year on the Corrections Department.

$50k / $2.4 bn = 0.002% of the corrections department total spending goes on slushies. It's a drop in a bucket.

The real scandal here is we spend $2.4 bn on prisons.

TagMeInSkipIGotThis,

Yeah but these articles are almost always planted by the Taxpayer’s Onion so they don’t care about the proportion of the spend, or how it might make working in such a place slightly more tolerable, its all just a BS shitpost to make people think the public service wastes lots of money.

I can promise anybody that corporates throw way more money around on stuff way stupider than $50k per year on some icey beverages.

Hell, some corporates provide financial backing to the morons at the TU so, yeah.

Xcf456,

100% my first thought too. Cultivate the vibes of enormous public sector waste that doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny, in terms of substance or scale.

Then people get shocked Pikachu face when the so called waste getting cut is actually school lunches, hospitals, customs officers and so on because this stuff is miniscule compared to the targets the govt has set, and the amount they want to give away in tax cuts.

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

We have about 8,000 prisoners. That’s 300k per year per prisoner?

Figures I’ve heard previously were more like $150k so I guess Corrections spends a lot outside of prisons?

rimu,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

I don't know an intra-departmental breakdown. That might take some digging.

In the interest.co.nz article I linked to earlier it has a figure of $1.7bn for the year 2017. Big increases in 2018 and 2020. Labour invested heavily in prisons!

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Weird because there were also huge drops in prison population under Labour! Was down from something like 10k to 7k off the top of my head.

But also that’s operational costs not capital investment, so probably not so much investing in prisons and more just an increase in costs.

That’s an increase of about 6% per year assuming 1.7 in 2017 and 2.4 in 2023. High but not crazy considering what’s happened in that time.

deadbeef79000,

Parole checks and home detention and community detention for example.

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Yes that makes sense. I also wonder if that budget includes funding for rehabilitation programmes.

deadbeef79000,

I assume so, hence “corrections” rather than “incarceration” being the department name ;-)

I_am_10_squirrels,

In the US, we privatize the prisons so a corporation is incentivised against rehabilitation. Then when someone is granted parole, their family has to pay for monitoring. Isn’t it great? I’ll go cry in the corner.

deadbeef79000,

Unfortunately, that’s something half our ruling elite want to try because it’s an opportunity for a few to make a ton of money.

Fortunately, IIRC, we closed the trial private prison.

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

There seems to be one that is operated by a private company: serco.com/…/auckland-south-corrections-facility

Kohuora, Auckland South Corrections Facility opened in May 2015 and holds up to 960 sentenced male prisoners. Kohuora is operated by Serco under a 25 year agreement with the Department of Corrections.

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