James Duncan: A just society must mean justice for all

New Zealanders like to pride themselves on being fair-minded, generous to people in difficulties; ready to use our skills to help others, as we've shown often by our response to world disasters.

But does our charity begin at home? Do we really believe that everyone is entitled to a fair shake, even the less fortunate?

Plainly, no. We love the idea but the reality is not so comforting.

We are about to consider making a law that deprives victims of money they have been awarded by the courts. Worse, they are victims of the Government and its servants.

And leading this new process of victimisation is Minister of Justice Phil Goff, whose title sits oddly with what he is proposing.

And scarcely a voice is raised in protest. Notably missing are those voices usually pleading for fair treatment of victims of crime. Surely there's a double standard operating here among "fair-minded New Zealanders"?

The proposed legislation runs counter to the presumption that we all enjoy equal human and civil rights.

Mr Goff swerves light-footed round this issue and takes refuge in blaming the victims, which these days is supposed to be an outrageous position.

The difference is that these victims are prisoners. Being a prisoner is, apparently, sufficient justification for "fair-minded" New Zealanders, including, it seems, every MP, to disqualify you from human-rights protection. A brand new class of victim indeed.

Parliament has before it the Prisoners and Victims Compensation Bill, a Goff-led proposal that would not allow prisoners to receive compensation for unlawful treatment by prison staff - that is, while they are in the hands and, therefore, under the protection of the state.

Instead, such money would go to the prisoners' victims. Of course, it's designed to deter prisoners from seeking compensation, but it will also lessen deterrence against further unlawful treatment of prisoners. Can a Minister of Justice really condone that?

It's a version of double jeopardy. You not only receive punishment for your own crimes but also for the crimes committed against you by prison staff.

This bizarre situation follows the award last year of $130,000 to five prisoners found to have been subject to inhumane (and, therefore, unlawful under our Bill of Rights) treatment by prison officers.

Mr Goff, in a television interview, responded with a vitriolic attack on prisoners, not confining himself to those five but lashing out in general terms.

He of all people should know that prisoners are not all the same or have committed equally serious offences.

Is that fair-minded? Should we regard a petty burglar or drunk-driver as we would a murderer, a rapist or a child molester? Mr Goff would have it so.

It's a common view that prisoners don't deserve the protection of the law because "it's their own fault they are in prison".

In fact, loss of freedom is the punishment that prison imposes, not any subsequent form of ill-treatment.

Former Corrections Minister Matt Robson upheld this principle when, in vivid contrast to Mr Goff's later, inflamed view, he said the award was "a lesson to ensure Crown staff acted professionally and upheld the law. Being imprisoned was the punishment, not being beaten by the people employed and paid to uphold the law".
Where is Mr Robson's voice now when a new, extra punishment is to be imposed on prisoners who prove they were abused by officers supposed to "uphold the law"?

One might have thought that a Minister of Justice would be concerned that justice be done, but Mr Goff appeared not merely to be part of the mob of public prejudice but to be leading it. Isn't it remarkable how the rustle of voting papers can drown out moral questions shouting to be heard?

We nearly all thought that American ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners was inexcusable, irrespective of the prisoners' guilt. The United States itself agreed. So what are we - fair-minded liberals abroad, vengeful reactionaries at home?

Opposition parties are quick to attack governments and their servants for not taking responsibility for their actions but on this issue they seem uniformly silent, consenting, unable to see the hypocrisy of it all.

How odd, when former psychiatric patients, many unwilling guests of the state, have received not only community support but also money for the abuse they suffered at the hands of those in charge of them.

How odd, too, that the state will pay out to people who prove they have been assaulted by police, but not, according to this proposed law, to those assaulted or otherwise harmed by prison officers.

Financial punishment is a powerful incentive to make governments and their servants behave. This Goff proposal diminishes the incentive.

The state can here be accused of trying to suppress complaints of abuse. This is ugly stuff, for abuse of inmates is endemic in our prisons - indeed the nature of prisons pretty well guarantees it, as reports on our prison system have regularly revealed.

Some of those reports' authors have been horrified by what goes on inside.

Is it okay that common-law rights should be suppressed because we just don't like the kind of person they protect? The justice system is there to prevent us from imposing our individual ideas of justice - it's a guard against lynch law and other kinds of vengeance we see in societies where racial and religious prejudice, tribalism, autocracy and patriarchy take the place of law.

We may cast people into prison but we cannot justify casting prisoners out of our common justice system. The way we run our jails is not about prisoners' standards of behaviour but about ours.

Of course, it doesn't matter if we are not, after all, a fair-minded nation.

* James Duncan is a freelance writer.