Lawyer Insiders Part Of The Problem – watchdog

The Sensible Sentencing Trust says the self-anointed elite responsible for our failed justice policies hate the thought that going back 40 years to the wisdom of a previous generation will reduce crime and get better results.

Trust Spokesman, Garth McVicar says New Zealand was the safest country in the western-world until the anti-prison and liberal justice groups started focusing on the ‘needs’ of offenders rather than punishment.

McVicar says several countries have adopted a back-to-basics approach with dramatic results and it is time New Zealand looked at history to decide the best way forward.

“The best known is the USA where the prison population is high but the crime rate way down. Youth crime is down by more than 30% right across the nation, following Clinton's radical 1996 reforms, and many state level initiatives. In some states crime rates are back below 1960s levels. Because the crime rate of tomorrow, (and the prison population of tomorrow) is determined by today's youth crime rate. It is youth recruitment now that decides how full the prisons will be in ten years' time. Sadly, once a youthful crime pattern is set, it rarely goes until middle age, and the offender only stops hurting innocent people while locked away.”

The Sensible Sentencing Trust will be promoting a series of affordable justice reform proposals – these include:

Getting rid of the silly rules that have nothing to do with protecting the innocent from false conviction and everything to do with historical notions of justice as a game for the lawyer insiders, including a) the so-called right to silence, that prevents a judge or jury drawing adverse conclusions from an accused failure to allow himself to be cross examined on his alibi, or his fanciful explanation of suspicious facts

b) the rules that allow the court to toss out evidence because of police failure to follow prescribed procedure, unless it has genuinely made the evidence likely to be false, and replace them with penalties on the people concerned for breaching the rules. At present it is the victims who pay the penalty for Police mistakes, not the Police c) allow the Police to accept a "guilty" admission and issue an infringement notice for minor offences, so that the whole prosecution machinery is not wasted on cases where there is no question of innocence.

ENDS

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