In December, Bret Bestic, regional manager of Auckland...

In December, Bret Bestic, regional manager of Auckland Prison at Paremoremo for the last 16 months, said: "There are people who are exceptionally violent and show little or no remorse and there is a strong case for capital punishment for those people." He said that since he joined the Prison Service he had had the chance of seeing close up the consequences of society's decision to do away with executions. "About every decade or generation we decide the previous generation must have got things wrong, and we take things away. We took away capital punishment, we took away corporal punishment, we took away hard labor, we're missing out on shipping them to Tasmania. So we have a grown-up version of 'go to your room, get out of my sight,'" he said. Father Jim Consedine, the national coordinator of the Restorative Justice Network, said the comments by Bret Bestic, were "horrific." Father Consedine said he thought New Zealand as a nation had outgrown that type of response. "I would be horrified to think that a person in an important position within Corrections would think that way," he said.