More than 140,000 people have signed a petition to Parliament calling for a sentence more harsh than home detention to be imposed on a 19-year-old learner driver, Rouxle Le Roux, for causing the death of a 15-year-old cyclist, Nathan Kraatskow, at an Albany intersection. While Parliament, fortunately, is not the arbiter of justice in particular cases, and the Crown Law office will decide whether to appeal against the sentence, this is not a case the Government can duck.
Justice Minister Andrew Little has made it well known the Government wants to reduce New Zealand's very high rate of imprisonment and has shelved plans by the previous Government to build more and larger prisons. It is a good policy, not just because prisons are expensive to build and operate. Too many young prisoners emerge more hardened and with more criminal connections than they had when they went in.
But while it is easy to criticise imprisonment and promote alternatives in principle, it is much harder to apply that policy in particular cases. It is easy for politicians to pass laws requiring judges to use alternative sentences wherever possible, not so easy for the same politicians to support judges when they do. Yet that is what they should be doing in this case.
While acknowledging that the decision whether to appeal will be made independently by the Solicitor General on purely legal grounds, there would be no harm in the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister pointing out in response to questions that Rouxle Le Roux has not been let off lightly. She has been sentenced to 11 months' home detention, 250 hours' community work and disqualified from driving for two-and-a-half years.
It is no more than she deserves for what she did, hitting and killing the young cyclist while driving a friend's Mercedes. Worse, she did not stop. She had been drinking wine and smoking cannabis that day in May and her actions since that day suggest she was taking it rather lightly. At Halloween she posted on Instagram a photo of herself in a prison jumpsuit and skeleton make-up with the caption, "hide your children". The post was foolish and heartless since it was likely to be seen by the Kraatskow family. It looks like the act of a young person in need of the most salutary lesson available in law and her choice of Halloween attire suggests Le Roux thought she was going to prison. But Judge Nicola Mathers took into account her youth, early admission of guilt and expression of remorse.
