Govt must restore faith in sentencing - Neighbourhood Support Auckland agrees

Press Release: Neighbourhood Support Auckland

Kevin Hicks, Chairperson of Neighbourhood Support Auckland, backs up calls for the government to restore faith in the sentencing system. He also believes, as Kim Workman says, that there should be a multiparty accord on criminal justice, although perhaps not in the way Mr Workman meant.

“In Neighbourhood Support our members and the police work very hard together to try to stop serious victimisation of our neighbours, only to find that the perpetrators are immediately bailed or paroled back to the same dysfunctional houses and families that produced them”. Mr Hicks knows of several ongoing cases right now where his members have been crying out for action, and although the police have responded superbly the victimisation is still going on.

“Often this victimisation is against recent immigrants or the most at risk people, who are sometimes very reluctant to call the police. It is enough to make you embarrassed to be a New Zealander, and makes you wonder what our new friends from overseas think of us” says Mr Hicks. “But this is where neighbours come in – our members will rally around with the police and make sure something gets done. At least that restores my faith that New Zealanders are very kind neighbourly people and always ready to help, even though they are often thwarted by other parts of the Justice system.”

Kevin is all in favour of rehabilitative measures mentioned by Kim Workman but these should only be done with the safety of the community being the paramount consideration. “Hence community sentencing should be used very cautiously for violent and repeat offenders.” Much of the research that Mr Workman and the Tertiary Education Union likes to quote is seriously flawed say Mr Hicks, a researcher himself. Firstly the costs of home detention and other community sentences never include the costs to the victims and taxpayer when the criminals repeatedly offend while serving those sentences. In addition comparisons of re-offending between community sentences (including home detention) and prison never include the time that the offender spent in prison when they committed no crimes at all. In addition they often have “corrections” applied to weight them in favour of the more lenient options.

For example says Kevin, one compelling piece of evidence against overusing community sentencing is that between 1950 and 1985 the rate of imprisonment dropped from 3 per 100 crimes to about 0.5 per 100 crimes while the crime rate skyrocketed. The latest government plan to rehabilitate offenders has recently been declared a failure (1) and in the same article Mr Newbold describes how as early as 1981 the government was presented with evidence that as far as reducing repeat offending is concerned “nothing works” but still chose to continue with non-custodial options for dangerous and repeat offenders.

Crime is something that this country desperately needs to deal with and I hope a non-political solution can be achieved. One thing that definitely does work is neighbours supporting each other and Mr Hicks hopes that many more people will form neighbourhood support groups and play an active role in reducing crime and intimidation. Kevin says the government must recognise more than ever the important role that Neighbourhood Support groups play.

(1) G. Newbold. Another One Bites the Dust: Recent Initiatives in Correctional Reform in New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 41 (3):384-401, 2008.

ENDS

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