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Congratulations to the Sensible Sentencing Team

This was sent out for publication on 29th March 2004

Longer sentences for the worst criminals are now a reality with the government committing an enormous amount of money to ensure that the community will be protected from the repeat violent offender.

As those of us involved in the Sensible Sentencing Trust know this was just the first part of our strategy, the focus on longer sentences was always intended as the first rung of the ladder. While our critics have been many, none have offered an alternative solution for the criminal who has continued to spurn every attempt at rehabilitation. Of course we realise that building more prisons is not a long-term answer, but as Mr Goff said, it is a short-term solution. We always said the current Minister of Justice inherited the situation, he did not create it, but he has had the courage to signal an end to the crazy Criminal Justice revolving door policies of the past.

We thank Phil Goff for that.

The real solution is now up to every one of us, crime in the community is a community problem, Mr Goff may have made a good start, but it is up to every one of us to ensure the momentum continues.

There are many in the community who will now need to have a look in the mirror and see just what part they played in the escalation of violence that has resulted in the need for more prisons. Let's hope that many of the defence lawyers who defend "P-pushers" or use a technicality to free a violent criminal will accept some ownership for the dramatic increase in the prison population.

I imagine the warm fuzzy feel good brigade will be crying foul and citing breaches of human rights and civil liberties as New Zealand locks away more violent criminals. But the policies these civil libertarians promoted have failed; they must now also shoulder a fair amount of the responsibility for the increased prison population. As New Zealand's violent crime rate began to skyrocket in the 1970's any sensible person would have realised something drastic was going wrong, and many did, but nobody did anything to stop it.

There was never any future in continuing with an education system that had such a huge failure rate or allowed our children to leave school not understanding the English language; many of these kids are now represented in our prison statistics. Trevor Mallard stated last week that "P C looniness" in schools must end and that hiding behind cultural correctness or sensitivity needs to be looked at".

Fantastic, another step in the right direction!!

Helen Clark has stated that she is listening to the people, and any race based polices promoting separatism will be rooted out and that Labour will get back to policies based on need, not race.

We thank Don Brash for that.

Politicians from all sides of the spectrum are now talking about the need for "Victims being the focus of Justice" or "Victim's Right's outweighing the rights of the criminal". As one M.P. said recently, "the criminal had a choice, the victim had none". Wonder where that came from?

The interesting thing in all this is that if New Zealand had binding referenda the Sensible Sentencing Trust would not exist. The 92% who supported justice reform at the 1999 general election would have been listened to.