Thumbs-Up for proposal to put criminal history on-line

Justice Minister Judith Collins proposal to ‘open up’ the Court system by putting decisions on line has been given the thumbs up from the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

“This is a public safety issue and many innocent lives will be saved,” said Trust Spokesman Garth McVicar.

“For far too long now our Criminal Justice System has been hi-jacked by a criminal friendly mentality that has been putting the so called ‘human rights’ of offenders before the rights of the public to know the criminal history of those living amongst us and protect ourselves from them.”

The Sensible Sentencing Trust already operates a very comprehensive on-line offender data base but the sheer enormity of the job and difficulty in accessing information plus the voluntary nature of maintaining it means it is not as ‘all-inclusive’ as the Trust would like.

“Public safety is of paramount importance and we believe our on-line data bases combined with the three-strike legislation [another SST initiative] have jointly contributed to the significant reduction in crime.”

“This announcement will help the Government achieve its goal of reducing crime by 25%, which will be a massive savings in tax-payer $ right through from Health, Police and Corrections. Add to that the ‘human aspect’ of reducing harm and trauma to victims and we believe the Minister has a winner that 99% of the public will support.”

McVicar said the Ministers proposal was simply a return to common sense.

“Holding law breakers accountable for their actions is we believe the best way to rehabilitate them and protect the public from those who choose to continue to commit crime and hurt people.”

“This is another significant step towards Sensible Sentencing long term goal of ‘Human Responsibilities’ coming before so called human rights of criminals.”

“I am sure many lives will be saved as a result of this proposal by the Minister but even If we can save just one child from being abused or one person from being mugged or murdered it will be worth it.”

ENDS

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