Darroch Ball
Sensible Sentencing Trust
Sensible Sentencing Trust has been working hard over the past few months on an important piece of work that will be released within the next couple of months. We are working on a law-and-order manifesto where we not only have the policy stances for real change in our system, but we will have the most important policies written as legislation ready to be adopted by the next government – whoever that may be.
We are aiming to have 10 policies in our manifesto that we will publicly release and will publicly hold to account every political party running in the next election. We will use it to challenge political parties to make real change in the justice system and measure their own policies against what the trust believes needs to change.
We are not only here as an organisation to point out what is going wrong. We will be presenting these tangible solutions to those problems and fighting hard to ensure they are introduced into law.
Our manifesto will cover the main issues such as gangs, youth crime, sentencing, law enforcement, parole and corrections.
As you know, the reason we need these solutions is because it has become clear to most New Zealanders that the problems within the justice system have become demonstrably worse over the past couple of years. There is no denying that the system has always had issues and that there needed to be change in many areas; however, the level of lawlessness that we are now seeing on our streets far exceeds any level that we have seen in the past.
There are multiple failings across a number of areas – the problem being those failings have been pointed out and predicted by many. The inevitability of the increase in violent crimes, gang numbers, shootings and youth crime, is a direct result of a poor legislation, weak laws and an even weaker political narrative.
It has come to a serious point that if things don’t change soon the country we once knew will be lost forever. We are seeing these changes occurring right now on our streets. There are many main streets in our cities people now feel unsafe walking down even during the day. We see the beginnings of a large and sustained youth crime wave. We see gang intimidation and violence within our communities every day. We see shootings and AOS call outs at record high numbers. Thefts, ram raids, robberies, violence – the list goes on.
The real frustration comes from the fact that all of these things are happening, but we are seeing political inaction from those in power. The only things we have seen is the hugging and funding of gangs, reduction in corrections officers, the pausing of the police training, and the unbelievable repealing of the ‘three strikes’ legislation – which is purely designed to keep the worst of the worst violent repeat offenders in prison. The continued denial that the ‘soft on crime’ political direction is the cause of these issues is palpable.
The sustained and inexplicable policy of emptying our prisons of criminals seems to be the illogical measurement of success.
The answer to youth crime is bollards, and to just do more of the same ‘community well-being boards’ as a consequence for the violent robberies and ram raids.
The answer for violent crimes is to try their hardest to keep them out of prison by awarding home detention, bail or parole and failing to put victims and safety of the community as a priority in sentencing.
We have not seen one major change to the approach to any of the law-and-order issues we are experiencing on our streets over the past two years. We need drastic change to key pieces of legislation – and we need it now.
That is why we are determined to have a manifesto of real policies made for real change that are ready to go. Watch this space.
