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Sensible Sentencing Trust: Common Sense?

This was sent out for publication on the 22nd November 2003

Wow another year gone! The Sensible Sentencing Team would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, we hope it has been a very positive year for all and that next year will be even better.

With 2003 drawing to a close it is an appropriate time to reflect on the last twelve months, for those of us involved in the sensible sentencing battle to reduce violent crime in our communities it has been a very constructive year. Early in the year a number of our members including Kelly Piggot appeared before a parliamentary select committee to push for changes to the DNA legislation giving police greater powers to take samples from convicted and suspected criminals.

It is very hard for politicians to ignore a common sense submission from a person like Kelly, having lost her beautiful 6-year-old daughter, to a brutal senseless violent murder. Kelly was able to convince politicians that drastic changes to our DNA laws would help ensure that criminals like Mikus would be held accountable a lot earlier in their criminal career.

As we have always said, it is not rocket science, simply common sense, this time common sense prevailed!

October 22nd saw the introduction of comprehensive new DNA legislation.

The fact that the public is speaking out a lot more on these issues now is motivating changes in other areas as well, the first stage of new legislation controlling sex offenders was introduced on 11th November, and hopefully a "sex offenders" registry will be introduced next year.

Individual accountability and responsibility is not a difficult concept to grasp. While we are grateful for the changes that are taking place I am astounded as to why we have had to fight so hard to see a little accountability and responsibility re-introduced into our laws.

I visited the Hawkes Bay prison the other day and I have nothing but admiration for the staff and management who have the responsibility of the day-to-day running of a prison with 600 odd criminals. The futility and waste of potentially promising lives by those in jail was a reality check for me.

The by-product of this 30-year "politically correct" experiment, escalating violent crime and more prisons is something none of us can be proud of.

Some overseas countries are having amazing success in reducing offending by the introduction of "Hard Labour" in prison and zero tolerance in all other areas of criminal activity. Is it time New Zealand looked at something similar?