Editorial: Wreaking havoc with justice

They may both be law-breakers, but their offences could not be further apart.

Paul Dally tortured, raped and murdered 13-year-old Karla Cardno 20 years ago. This week, he will plead with the Parole Board to be released from prison.

Mikey Havoc ran up $20,000-plus in parking fines, many incurred around Auckland University while the popular DJ hosted bFM student radio's morning show.

Yet what the two men's cases have in common are the questions they raise about how we punish people who break the law.

New Zealand's justice system is bi-polar. Its mood swings violently between hot-blooded vengeance and gentle rehabilitation.

And, at both extremes, it is letting us down.

Havoc is the beneficiary of a law that allows judges to convert accumulated fines into community work. The argument for this - and it is mostly a good argument - is that wealthy offenders blithely incur and pay off fines without feeling any pain. But those who have less money, and their families, may suffer hardship in trying to pay fines, especially as the late payment penalties mount.

For those who struggle to pay off their debt to society in cold, hard cash, it makes sense to allow them to pay through work that benefits the community.

Where this falls down is when someone like Havoc is allowed to play the system like he plays his records.

Havoc's fines have been wiped, on the condition that he does community work - specifically, entertaining students by playing music in the Auckland University quad.

This is a man who makes his living at bFM playing music to students - and by the sound of things, enjoys his job. So his punishment scarcely qualifies as hard labour.

Some will perceive this as an abuse of community service, and of society's good intentions. Others, wrongly, will see it as an indictment of the entire system of community service, as evidence that the justice system is too soft on law-breakers.

Every time an isolated case like this brings the sentencing system into disrepute, the cries for tougher penalties grow louder.

This week, a high-profile musician who admitted an indecent act on a 16-year-old girl was discharged without conviction, and granted permanent name suppression.

Louise Nicholas, who had previously testified about sexual abuse allegedly committed by three policemen, criticised "the system" that protected the identity of an assailant.

"Once again, it's who you are," she said in yesterday's NZ Herald.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust, which purports to represent victims like Nicholas, gains more and more support.

Garth McVicar founded it in support of Karla Cardno's stepfather, Mark Middleton, who was prosecuted for threatening to tie Dally upside down to a tree, "cut off his balls and shove them down his throat", and kill him over three days.

McVicar claims the Trust now has 150,000 members.

The lobbying of politicians, especially during election campaigns, becomes ever more effective. McVicar boasts of numerous Trust policies that have been passed into law in the past year.

The pressure grows on Parole Board members to keep offenders behind bars, which may indeed be better for the criminals than releasing them to the tender mercies of Mark Middleton.

Nobody has any sympathy for killers like Dally, but neither is it in anyone's interest for justice to be driven by emotion, rather than reason. By all means keep Dally behind bars but don't consign young, low-level offenders to years in his company.

It is better that politicians draft the law coolly, and that judges administer that law consistently, than that they join a noose-waving lynch mob led by Garth McVicar.

According to the Chief Justice, Dame Sian Elias, the scales of justice risk tipping back from cool impartiality to "hot vengeance".

Yet more than 20 years of punitive penal policy have not made communities any safer, she said this year. The prison muster quadrupled between 1986 and 2005. Research shows that the longer criminals are locked up, the more likely they are to reoffend.

It is right that victims play a central role in our justice system - but not that their revenge takes precedence over building a safer community. And that means that rehabilitation must also play a central role.

For this to happen, "the system" must retain the trust of the public. Special treatment for celebrities like Havoc does not help.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY