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Andrew Dickens: Justice summit a nasty display of self interest

Publish Date
Thu, 23 Aug 2018, 12:18PM

Andrew Dickens: Justice summit a nasty display of self interest

Publish Date
Thu, 23 Aug 2018, 12:18PM

The Criminal Justice Summit has come to an end, and honestly, I think we’re in a worse place than when we started.

When Andrew Little said his intention was to overhaul the system during his tenure as Justice Minister, I think we all cautiously agreed because there’s no way you can say the current system is a success.

Of course, people had differing opinions.  Some want a more punitive regime, others a more rehabilitative regime and others still want a society where less people resort to crime in the first place.  Some of us want all of the above.

So Andrew Little appointed a working group of 10 to look at the nuts and bolts.  Meanwhile, he decided to have an open slather Criminal Justice Summit to let the people have their say.  It’s fair to say that many rolled their eyes and sighed fearing a waffly talkfest that would go nowhere.

Well, that’s exactly what we got, but it was worse than that.  It was far nastier and corrosive that we had hoped for.

It has been the most remarkable display of self-interest that I can only describe as some sort of Victim Idol competition. Submission after submission from people with justifiable concerns but believing their concerns were greater than any others.

And then it got nasty and racist. First, it was victims saying offenders can’t also be victims. Even though common sense will tell you that before they become offenders they’ve suffered, either through abuse, or neglect or mental illness or a raft of other factors that push people into criminality. 

Then a Māori woman said Europeans could not know what it was like to be victims of crime. Which prompted European victims to angrily denounce that idea and claim they’d be victimised again.

Everyone in the room seemed to be saying “Shut up.  I’m more victimised than you.  So there!”

So this morning Andrew Little had to come out and say the summit missed the point and maybe we should do it all over again. Honestly, who didn’t see this mess coming?

We live in a selfish age.  We live in a time of victimhood. A time of offence taking and in turn offence giving. On all sides of the political spectrum and it’s splitting us apart and neutering any efforts to make things better.

This victimhood mindset is getting so bad we’ve even got rich old white men in a cocoon of privilege complaining that they’re the new lepers of the world.   Oh diddums.

I’ve often thought that with the rise of the #metoo movement that we need another movement to run beside it.  With #metoo we also need a #youtoo movement.  One where some empathy for other points of view exists.  A world where reality and common sense finally comes to bear. A world where we don’t wear our victimhood as some badge of honour.

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