We asked high-profile young New Zealanders about their reflections of 2013, and their hopes and resolutions for the New Year.
Heath Hutton, co-chair of criminal justice organisation JustSpeak.
The area of criminal justice is an area that evokes strong emotions for many. Many people do harm to others, many people suffer harm, and often many people believe that New Zealand is becoming more dangerous than it once was. Only 57 per cent of the population says they feel safe, which is comparable to rates in Iran and Bulgaria. This is despite a small percentage of New Zealanders (5 per cent) being victims of major crime. New Zealand is also ranked third out of 162 countries in the world peace index on corruption, violence and crime.
Within this perception there is a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation, sensationalism, and adversarial polarised conversations. Throughout 2013 this has been something that I have continually experienced and seen in my work as a youth worker and part of JustSpeak – a non-partisan group of young people who are working towards positive change in the criminal justice system.
The statistics do tell a sad story, but often a misunderstood story. Many people see crime as something that is done by awful people who make awful choices. This is partly true – many people make awful choices and commit terrible acts. The damage, pain, and hurt caused by these cannot be minimised nor trivialised. But often the people that do these acts have been part of a system that has failed to respond to them.
I hope that our media can be more responsible and informed in their reporting of crime, and resist from pandering to punitive attitude.
This is also true of victims needs. Many offenders were once victims themselves. 73 per cent of young people in the Youth Court have come to the attention of Child, Youth and Family because of being victims of abuse or neglect. Many other victims are overlooked in the process, and their needs are not met by underresourced and indequate services. Restorative justice approaches are under-used and under-funded.
Our prison statistics are atrocious. 68 per cent of prisoners are reconvicted within 48 months, 74 per cent for Maori prisoners. 37 per cent are reimprisoned within 2 years, 49 per cent within 4 years. The rate of incarceration in New Zealand rose 86 per cent between 1995 and 2010 to now having the second highest incarceration rate in the OECD – 203 per 100,000.
The disproportionate treatment of Maori in our system is starkly painted by the fact that our incarceration rate for Maori is 704 per 100,000. Maori are 15 per cent of NZ’s population but make up over 50 per cent of New Zealand's prison population.
I hope that in 2014 we can move away from the mistakes of our past. I hope that the political parties can restrain from entering into a "tough on crime" approach in the election in order to win votes. I hope that our media can be more responsible and informed in their reporting of crime, and resist from pandering to punitive attitude. I hope that the Government will hear the voices of many experts in the area and look at making many changes including reducing the jurisdiction of the youth court to include 17-year-olds.
This will provide earlier and better intervention to help prevent the continuance of the shocking statistics of our criminal justice system. I hope that our communities, businesses, and government will tackle related and contributing factors like unemployment which is up to 18.4 per cent for 15-24-year-olds in the 2013 census (up from 13.3 per cent in 2006). I hope that every individual within this country will examine their attitude and treatment of those who have committed wrong – will our attitudes and approach be informed, respectful, understanding, and hopeful? Will we seek a better understanding of those we label criminals?