Editorial: A leg up is a loan, not a handout

Carl Drewett. Photo / APN

You can't fault the initiative of Carl Drewett, who wants taxpayers to pay $2500 to remove a huge tattoo of the word "skinhead" across his forehead.

He takes the view that "everyone makes mistakes" and that if he is trying to change "the more help I can get the better".

It's hard to disagree with that - or with the bald economics of the proposition. It costs many tens of thousands to keep someone in jail for a year, so $2500 is money well spent if it contributes to keeping him out of jail and making him a productive member of society.

But Drewett seems not to understand that most of us would regard that as a pretty big "if". He says the tattoo, applied five years ago when he was in prison, was a "mistake" because "I didn't really take into consideration how the community was going to look at me when I got out."

But he is notably vague about his attitude to the vicious racist beliefs of the crowd he used to run with, saying only that "it's a road to nowhere ... a culture of violence and drinking".

Those are the comments of a man still seized by the idea that it's all about him. A specific renunciation of the toxic ideas he once espoused would not go amiss as the first piece of evidence that he is genuinely interested in turning over a new leaf. His conviction, just last week, on charges of intentional injury and drink-driving causing injury do not, on the face of it, suggest a sinner-turned-saint.

New Zealanders believe in giving someone a fair go and Drewett's proposal should not be rejected out of hand, particularly since it seems to have support in the Department of Corrections.

But $2500 is a lot of money. Drewett can discover that if we make him pay back all - or at least a good part - of it at $10 a week over a few years out of his pay packet. He needs to show some evidence of his good intention beyond just holding his hand out.