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The Corrections Department and Parole Board are likely to be sued by the family of Karl Kuchenbecker, who are still smarting after reports last week saying the parole of killer Graeme Burton had been well managed overall.
The Sensible Sentencing Trust has been working with the family since soon after the convicted murderer and prison escaper gunned down and stabbed Mr Kuchenbecker in the hills above Lower Hutt. Burton committed a string of crimes after breaching his parole, culminating in the January 6 murder.
The trust has previously supported Tai Hobson - whose wife, Mary, was one of three people murdered by William Bell in December 2001 at the Panmure RSA - in taking legal action to try to gain compensation from the Government. Bell had been paroled after being jailed for aggravated robbery.
Trust spokesman Garth McVicar said lessons learned from that case gave him hope that legal action on behalf of the Kuchenbeckers could succeed. The trust will meet its lawyers and the family tomorrow to discuss the grounds for any suit against Corrections and the board.
Paul Kuchenbecker, the victim's father, did not want to comment until after the meeting, but said the Corrections and board reports into the Burton case had not impressed the family.
"It came out like nothing was really done about anything, and it just fires you up really, doesn't it?"
Last week, Corrections released details of two internal investigations into Burton's parole. They found that Corrections policies and processes were followed, and although some things could have been done faster, that would probably not have had any impact on the final outcome.
A board-commissioned independent report, also released last week, found the board had all the information it required before it decided to grant Burton parole.
"We hoped, and so did the Kuchenbecker family, that someone would step out and say that the system is unworkable and we will change it," Mr McVicar said.
"If we had had those offers, if the Corrections Department and the Parole Board had said, 'We believe that there were serious mistakes made and we accept responsibility and we're going to actually make the changes', then nobody would be talking about suing.
"None of the people we are acting on behalf of want the money, they just want to try and change the law."
Meanwhile, National has released new figures which showed that as of June 30 last year, 27,039 victims of crime were still owed reparations. Of those, 2325 were owed reparations dating back more than 10 years.
The party's justice spokesman, Simon Power, estimated that criminals owed their victims around $28 million.
"It's been a bad week for victims. They now know that Corrections won't take any responsibility for things that go wrong in their area, and if you are lucky enough to have reparation awarded to you, the chances are that if it's not paid within a short period of time it's not going to be paid, by the look of these figures."
