Our Minister of Justice Hon Andrew Little has laid out a vision for criminal justice reform saying: “New Zealand needs to completely change the way criminal justice works. We know the majority of those in prisons have issues other than they are nasty people. If we spent a bit of time on those things we can stop the offending.”
I wonder if the Hon Mr Little has put nutrition on the top of the list when it comes to spending time on the many health-related issues that are almost certainly related to criminal offending?
Our prison system is known as the ‘Department of Corrections’ yet I struggle to believe how it might be possible to correct the behaviour of our prison population by locking them up and feeding them crap. If there is any truth in the saying ‘’we are what we eat’’, surely the penny should have dropped by now and we should be investing heavily in what it takes to address anti-social behaviour with appropriate nutritional interventions.
Many studies have confirmed what ancient spiritual wisdom has taught us for millennia: Food affects your mood, emotions, thoughts and behaviour. Dr Stephen Schoenthaler, Associate Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Criminal Justice Studies Programme at California State University, conducted studies over eight years, which involved thousands of juvenile and adult prisoners. The results clearly show the relationship to diet and criminal behaviour, with a 61% drop in violence and anti-social behaviour when the ‘junk’ that is passed off as food was replaced with complex carbohydrates and fresh fruits and vegetables. I think it would be true to say that our entire prison population in New Zealand is severely malnourished and this goes back to way before they were incarcerated.
Back in the 1970s Dr Bill Walsh, an American scientist, studied mineral levels in the hair of 24 pairs of brothers. In each case, one brother was ‘good’ and the other a ‘boy from hell’. The results stunned him. The ‘good’ boys had normal mineral levels, but the delinquents had two distinctive patterns. One group had very high copper and very low zinc, sodium and potassium and the other group had very low zinc and copper and very high sodium and potassium. Interestingly the troublemakers had high lead and cadmium levels, which were three times higher than their well-behaved brothers. Walsh extended his research to include adults, half of which were incarcerated criminals and half law-abiding citizens. He discovered behavioural traits that matched each mineral pattern. People with very high copper and low zinc would have violent tendencies but later feel remorse. The people with the low copper, low zinc and high sodium and potassium were mean and cruel and they had no remorse.
It turned out that the violent kids were born with a metal metabolism disorder and, as a result, they had an inability to process minerals. An analysis of 207 patients with behavioural disorders treated at Dr Walsh’s clinic in Illinois showed that 92% who followed the prescribed diet improved significantly and 58% completely eliminated this type of behaviour.
Instead of having our prison population ‘sewing mail bags’ wouldn’t it be a really good idea to involve them in learning about nutrition and growing the foods that could provide the ‘ticket’ out of prison, where they could perhaps look forward to a better life as responsible citizens.
If our Department of Corrections wants to live up to its name, our Minister of Justice could act on his words and ‘’completely change the way criminal justice works.” If we really want to reduce the prison population and avoid spending billions to build more prisons, now would be a really good time to invest in key issues that are linked to offending.
As to how this could happen, type ‘’Gangsta Gardener’’ into Google and watch this heart-warming story of how one citizen has embraced the need for change.
John Appleton 09 489 9362
www.johnappleton.co.nz john@johnappleton.co.nz
