Crown Law is led by Una Jagose KC — Solicitor-General and chief executive — who is second law officer of New Zealand.
The Solicitor-General is the Government’s chief legal adviser and advocate in the courts and subject only to the Attorney-General.
Judith Collins is the Attorney-General — the first law officer of New Zealand.
Willie Jackson is a Labour MP.
OPINION
The backlash generated by ACT, National, NZ First, Hobson’s Pledge and other right-wing bad faith actors towards Solicitor-General Una Jagose’s prosecution guidelines, has been nothing short of a race-based moral panic to fan the flames of racism rather than challenge them.
Jagose’s prosecution guidelines were not new! These guidelines had been in place to ensure that when a judge passes sentence, they have the flexibility and independence to pass judgments that ensure mercy and rehabilitation are at the heart of our justice system.
This is so justice is fair.
Solicitor General Una Jagose KC. Photo / Supplied
As Jack Tame pointed out in his interview with outgoing Police Commissioner Andrew Coster on TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday, our crime rates have been steadily dropping, even if fear of crime (thanks to media crime clickbait) is expanding.
The fear of crime is generating angrier and harsher tough-on-crime rhetoric.
It is essential for the value of justice that our judges have the independence to pass sentences that see the full picture and context of a person rather than merely rubber-stamping ever-increasing lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key political rhetoric.
These were never race-based sentences. The prosecution guidelines list all those who should have a fuller context looked at before a judge passes sentence.
We have prosecution guidelines for young people because we understand decisions made in the heat of the moment with young brains do not define a person for the entirety of their life.
They are used for those with disabilities because the lives of the disabled are egregiously underfunded and under-supported and mercy should be our first desire before punishment.
Paremoremo. Photo / Doug Sherring
These guidelines are extended to those who have survived abuse in state care because in their example, the state is the one that has caused that damage.
The recent Royal Inquiry into Abuse in State Care found 80% of gang members had been kids abused in state care.
Māori are included in these lists because they have been disproportionately impacted by colonialism, poverty and historic abuse.
This is not a race-based law, this is a judiciary actively attempting to be just and taking those factors into account before we punish.
The way this has been spun as proof positive of an apartheid system favouring Māori for being Māori is not disinformation, misinformation or any other new phrase to describe manipulation, it’s just more boring garden-variety racism.
Screaming ‘colour blind’ and using that to justify erasing Māori is not progress, it is a terrible step backwards.
University of Aucklandacademics have recently argued in the latest NZ Medical Journal that ethnicity is an evidence-based marker of need, and that removing race out of decision-making is a case of removing data from the calculations.
Labour MP Willie Jackson.
Not only do Māori have to suffer under an unfair system, that suffering must be hidden so the system can claim it is colour blind?
Who exactly is being helped here by stopping these prosecution guidelines — those suffering or those who don’t want to be reminded of that suffering?
