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Newsletter September/October 2001

Dear Members,

This is our first newsletter to all financial members of Sensible Sentencing Trust.
As you will be aware the trust was started in March of this year after the very successful Court House rallies on 16th February. It was obvious to us that people wanted change not only to the Justice System and the sentencing laws but also to the wider issues facing our modern day society.

We decided to focus on one issue at a time, and to start with the tip of the iceberg, the repeat violent offender.
Our intention was and still is to build a credible organisation that could directly affect legislation through being a non-political pressure group.
In the five months we have been in existence we have been able to have significant input into some specific areas.

• The Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill that is open for Public consultation at present.
  I met with Hon Phil Goff twice over that Bill as well as various correspondence. What we have at this stage is a bill that goes someway towards achieving our goals but is still a very liberal document. We will be trying to have maximum input at the Select Committee stage and 'beef' the Bill up as much as possible.
• The Victims Rights Bill
  Katrina Harding and I presented our submissions to the select committee in Parliament on June 6th. We received a good hearing but I am not holding my breath on the final outcome. The concept of Victims of violent crime being treated with respect and dignity and having rights exceeding those of the offender is not something Parliament and our legal system will accept without a fight. Until victims of crime are included in the rehabilitation or restorative process I do not see how we can move much beyond where we are. The vested interest groups who are riding the offender based gravy train at present have too much to lose. In our opinion our adversarial legal system does not allow the truth to have anything to do with the outcome of a trial. It would seem trickery and money are the main ingredients in an innocent or guilty verdict.

But don't despair, the growing swell of public opinion will slowly turn this around, we are already aware of some Judges who have recently changed their public comments, now saying they must consider what the public is demanding. Maybe these people are human after all.
Keep the pressure up at all opportunities.
The new system of Parole Boards to be established next year will have the protection of the Public as its paramount concern. If this happens this will be a huge step in the right direction.

Our members who do not live in Hawkes Bay will not be aware Louise has recently been given permission to run a Dale Carnegie Human Development Youth programme. The focus will be on trying to turn around the direction of some of our at risk young people. Good luck Louise.

Also thanks to Peter Jenkins, our Website man. Peter has done a magnificent job designing and maintaining the Web Page. Peter is doing this all at no cost to us!! The 0900 number and Website are on all our letterheads. Encourage your friends to use both.

We have had numerous public meetings around the Country now with a pretty busy schedule booked up. Beside the public meetings we are being invited to address quite a few Rotary, Lions, and Grey Power meetings. These are always well attended and gives us a great opportunity to spread the message and gather new members. If any of you are involved with an organization that would like to hear what we are trying to do, we would be only too pleased to come and speak. Just give me a call. Ian Walker in Auckland is also happy to share this workload, as is Katrina Harding in Hamilton.
Anne and I will be in the South Island last week of September and first week of October, so any Mainlanders that want to get involved please get in touch. We love a busy schedule and ideally we would like every night booked up.

We have had an exciting proposition put to us by TVNZ, Katrina is working with the Advertising Agents. I have included this in a separate letter, enclosed with this one, please give this some consideration and let us know your thoughts.

On our travels Anne and I have met far too many victims who are suffering badly, this makes us totally committed to the positive changes needed in Law and Order and Justice in New Zealand. We believe this proposal from TVNZ will definitely speed up progress towards our goals. If we can pull this off we will get our message to approximately 2,232,000 people - 30 times. It has got to be good for us!!

Part of our strategy has been to work on all political parties and try to get them to include SST goals in their party Manifesto at the next election. We have so far met with ACT, New Zealand First, Labour, United, National, Alliance, and our Hamilton co-ordinator Katrina Harding has met with the Greens.

Stephen Franks (ACT) Stephen is a most genuine and honest person. Stephen and his secretary Sue Ryder have been a big help to us without ever trying to compromise our non-political stand. The ACT party have agreed to incorporate our goals within their Law and Order policy, except for the retrospective aspect.

Ron Marks ( NZ First) Again Ron Marks is a genuine person, he personally supports our goals. He needs to place them before the NZ First policy committee before he can commit fully to our goals being included in their Law and Order policy. I haven't heard back yet.

Peter Dunne( United) Very supportive of what we are trying to achieve. Our communication will be ongoing and I do not see many problems here. I am hoping to go to their policy discussion meeting.

Wayne Mapp (National) National at present do not have a Law and Order Policy, we will hopefully have some input into that so let us hope we can get some constructive policy. Waiting to hear back from them.

Phil Goff (Labour) I have had two meetings with Mr Goff, the Sentencing and Parole Bill reflects some of what we are wanting, we will have to work very hard at the Select Committee stage to try and beef it up...... Labour will also be developing a Law and Order Policy before the next election so this will give us another opportunity. Mr Goff has his heart in the right place, but has a very liberal cabinet to contend with.

Matt Robson (Alliance) A very liberal man, I do not think I made any headway with this Minister, I look forward to their Law and Order Policy!!.....

Nandor Tanczos (Greens) Although I haven't met Nandor yet, Katrina has, and has passed on that he is supportive of SST and the changes we want to make. Once again we wait to see their Law and Order Policy.

The idea of the meetings is to let our members know leading up to the elections which party we believe will have policies most in line with our goals. We will do this through the media, e-mail and mail before the next election.

We are trialing what we call "Adopt an MP", where one of our members is allocated an MP and it is their job to meet , email, or mail that person and encourage them to take a stand on Law and Order. From that we will build a profile on every MP, and these will be placed on our Website before the next election. Our initial trialing is being done in Hawkes Bay and Hamilton. We hope to move on to other centres within the month.

An Australian organization called Homicide Victims' Support Group share similar goals to SST, they started five years ago with only nine members, they now have 900 and have been successful in introducing Retrospective law changes for violent offenders in New South Wales, amongst other Law changes.. The Co-ordinator was recently in New Zealand at a V.O.I.C.E. conference, 11 of our members attended this as well as Phil Goff, Waynne Mapp and Stephen Franks. It was a very inspirational meeting for us - we can and will win this battle.

Any other ideas for promoting our cause will be gratefully received.

Finally on behalf of the Sensible Sentencing Trustees and working committees, Anne and I would like to thank everyone for their efforts to date. As you know everyone works voluntarily for SST. We very much appreciate whatever effort various people have contributed. If anyone wants to be further involved please let us know, we do have co-ordinators in most regions, but some are stretched and could do with help.

We have enclosed a membership form, please feel free to photocopy it, and ask a friend to join, membership is always wanted. Communication is difficult and expensive, the Website and email are two very worthwhile options. Anne is developing an email data base so if you wish to be kept in touch please make sure we have your details.

SST now has a very large, geographically diverse membership, we will be attempting to develop regional structures to better involve our members. Please let us know if you wish to be involved in this.

Regards,
Garth McVicar.
For the Sensible Sentencing Trust.