Editorial: Ecstasy-case newsman must be jailed

Darren McDonald must be not be allowed home detention. So flawed is Justice Marion Frater's stated reason for entertaining an application, so malignant is this country's drug culture and so errant is the former TV3 newsreader's demeanour that he must be imprisoned.

McDonald's eight-month jail sentence on drug charges is reasonable enough, given the extent of his criminal behaviour; he was found guilty of one charge of offering to supply Ecstasy, and one charge of conspiring to supply methamphetamine. But there is no reason his application to serve his sentence at home should be granted. And there are compelling arguments why it should be denied.

Justice Frater gave McDonald leave to apply for home detention on the grounds that his fame would make him a target for drug dealers in prison. His sentence should be deferred, she said, because of his high profile and "the acknowledged availability" of drugs in prison. In effect, McDonald's status has garnered him preferential treatment. That can never be right. Indeed, it would take a particularly cogent argument even to start to justify it.

Justice Frater's reasons come nowhere near that. If drugs are available in prison - about one in five inmates tests positive in random testing - they are, quite obviously, no less accessible outside. McDonald's profile will make him a magnet for drug dealers wherever he is, and he could be tempted wherever he lives. There is, however, a greater likelihood that his behaviour can be monitored, and his rehabilitation tackled effectively, in prison.

Further, Justice Frater's leniency pays no heed to the increasing damage being wrought by methamphetamines such as P. The drug, which can be relatively easily manufactured locally, makes users paranoid, aggressive and uncaring of the circumstances and consequences of their behaviour. Already it has been implicated in several prominent court cases, including that of William Bell, who smoked P before murdering three people at the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA Club. So alarmed have police become about dealing with irrational criminals using P that they have asked for lightweight, covert body armour to protect themselves.

The police must have the backing of the judiciary in their efforts to combat this scourge. Sentencing has to reflect the severity of the problem. That makes it especially important that McDonald, whose job as a television newsreader made him a role model, should receive no special treatment. As Justice Frater noted, high-profile, intelligent and successful people like him give the impression that drug use is okay. In other words, their behaviour carries more significance than that of John and Janet Citizen, especially in terms of its influence on young people. How, then, can that same profile justify a degree of lenience that is unlikely to be granted others?

McDonald has also demonstrated himself unworthy of such treatment. He smiled as he walked on bail from the High Court on Friday. He smirked for much of the time during his appearance on TVNZ's Sunday programme. His attitude was one of defiance. There is little evidence of the remorse, contrition and acknowledgment of guilt that are the staple accompaniments of judicial compassion. McDonald seems not even to conceive that his addiction, arrest and conviction have left his career in tatters. He appears more intent on telling how getting high and reading the news to thousands of viewers was "fun".

That attitude can only be described as uncaring, given the emergence of methamphetamines as a significant, and traumatic, problem. It should also be counterproductive. Those who glory in the drugs culture can expect no leniency, no matter how low-level the scale of offending. Quite simply, McDonald does not deserve a jail break.