Return To Justice Principles

ACT Justice Spokesman Stephen Franks today criticised processes forcing a rape victim to apply to police to see a photograph of her attacker - whom she has discovered is on the streets and living nearby.

"For victims to have to do this adds to the humiliation, and is all wrong. The message for criminals is that society respects them. The message to victims is that you have to beg and whine for something that should be an absolute right." Mr Franks said.

"The inevitable Government reaction to this event will be to blame administrative slip-ups and inadequate officials. A return to first principles would restore transparent justice. It would mean that innocent, ordinary law-abiding New Zealanders would know who the rapists are in their midst. This would, of course, ensure victims could know.

"Anyone would be able to find out who has been convicted of serious crime. They could also know when the person is released, because the sentence given would be the sentence served. This information would be available, as of right, to any citizen.

"Our justice system is upside down. Most law-abiding people can be found by looking in a phone book. But criminals who ought to be ashamed are hidden by the system that should, instead, be ensuring that the whole community could keep them up to a mark.

"No amount of idle promising from Labour politicians - who don't believe in transparent justice - will make a difference. They don't want anything as simple as transparent justice because, then, people would not tolerate what's going on if they could easily know," said Mr Franks.

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