Jay Kuten: The fog is lifting a little late, Chester

Jay Kuten

AS A BOY in the States, one of my favourite radio adventure programmes was The Shadow. The hero, Lamont Cranston, fighter for truth and justice, had the ability, "learned in the far East, to cloud men's minds". This gave him invisibility, something children occasionally endure by default. It's the clouding of minds that is of interest. And the unclouding. A miasmal mist probably wafts through the Beehive as our MP, Chester Borrows, newly freed from its influence, is able now to speak forthrightly as the man of conscience he is at root. The freedom of imminent retirement has sparked a new engagement on his part, providing a demonstrable independence and clarity of thought.

I had planned to write in praise of his outspoken recognition of the inequities in sentencing, indeed in every aspect of the criminal justice system, due to institutional racism, where a white rich kid got a wrist slap for assaulting a police officer, a crime that would net a brown poor kid jail time. That's a demonstration of Chester's courage to face difficult and unpleasant facts.

Who is in a better position than Mr Borrows, a former cop, a lawyer, and a Minister of Courts, to make such an assessment? His recent essay questions the justice of the criminal justice system, pointing to the reality that putting a man in prison often imprisons his family as well, a form of collective punishment, an activity our activists roundly condemn when it's done by other countries.

The present system is broken. It costs $92,000 per annum for each prisoner. For money equivalent to half what we spend on medication to treat our sick, we get a recidivism rate of 80 per cent. That's a success rate of 20 per cent. No student gets a pass with that score, and neither should our prisons. Violent offenders need to be locked up but for the non-violent, our failing system needs serious reconsideration.

He knows: The Shadow, here voiced by Orson Welles for the original radio show, was not alone in his ability "to cloud men's minds".Photo/Public Domain

While Mr Borrows' current thought-provoking efforts are welcome, they're overdue. It's too bad he didn't choose to speak out during his years in Parliament or act accordingly. I think it must be that partisan loyalties act like The Shadow, and cloud men's minds. Women's too.

That clouding, sadly is not exclusive to politicians. We in the press are sometimes unable to get it right. On April 18, this paper published an editorial that seemed to decry the forcible removal of an airlines passenger from what it called a "double-booked" seat. The editorial continued to discuss the infamous assault on Dr David Dao as a result of "overbooking". While criticising forcible removal, it described the cause as a process which the editorial writer rationalised as seemingly necessary for the airlines' successful business practice.

I would take issue with that conclusion, but even more with the "facts" on which it is based. Flight 3411 was not overbooked, although United misled the media for two days until correcting itself. An overbooked and thereby overloaded flight can and must be handled before passengers board. Once boarded full, the flight is "sold out" and a seated, ticketed, paid-up passenger cannot be removed except for cause. Not to board a delayed crew.

The actions of United may fall into the area of criminal assault. The incident bears on all passengers and their rights.

Here in Whanganui, Air New Zealand, in another arbitrary exercise of power, abandoned the city with potentially devastating results. While Air Chathams is a far better substitute, our council needs to demand an inquiry into the decision-making of an airline owned by our country.

While they're at it, they might tell us why, after their days doing the people's business are over, parliamentarians continue to fly free, in effect displacing ordinary paying passengers from their seats by virtue of that subsidy.

Perhaps that's another question for our liberated MP. Because, it's not all right,

Helen Keller, blind and deaf American activist, said: "The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision."

Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.