The two cases presented for our consideration here are in a remarkable way made more complex by the fact that they seem to have been “tragedies in the making” for quite some time. When people offend and the justice system fails to keep us safe from the offender we seem to be fools waiting for the next chapter in what has often already been a long history of crime, violence and little regard for the common good. At the same time I am never sure exactly how behaviour can be predicted and exactly how we know that x or y or z should be locked up with the key thrown away.  Certainly recidivist drink drivers should be banned from driving after serving their sentence – but can they realistically be held in jail for the rest of their lives?

Past behaviour is certainly the best predictor or future action.  But sometimes a person can change, sometimes a person can see the error of their ways, sometimes repent and reform.  Are we that cynical that we can no longer trust in the possible innate goodness of others? Without doubt the security of all is a constant concern of the police and the judicial system.  Judges, prosecutors and the Parole Board are all the time weighing the common good against the good of the individual.  We will of course at times err with our presumption of innocence before guilt is proven.  That being the case – and without resorting to a police state where everyone is locked up at every opportunity mistakes are going to happen. And sadly tragedies result.

Today however we seem to be unable to cope with a mistake made by anyone without wanting recourse, retribution and accountability that include someone “falling on their sword”.  It’s my opinion that if we want the beauties of the democratic and judicial system e have then we have to at times accept that mistakes will have tragic consequences. That does not reduce my sympathy for what others have to suffer.

This Weeks Reflections

• Victims’ families want to prosecute (News item)
• You can’t always predict future behaviour
• We always want to blame
• Restorative is more effective

The process of deciding just who needs to be locked away and for how long is never going to be an easy or simple. Those that carry out this unenviable ask on our behalf will from time to time make mistakes and those mistakes some of which will have severe consequences. In the worst cases innocent people are killed and their loved ones are burdened with a life time of sadness and pain. I am sure that the people who carry this responsibility are all too aware of their own fallibility and of the consequences of any mistakes that they may make. Anyone who carries out a public office needs to be held accountable for his or her actions. Each of them must take responsibility for any negligence or incompetency. They must not however be punished for making well considered judgments based on all the facts they have at their disposal.

This Weeks Reflections

• Victims’ families want to prosecute (News item)
• You can’t always predict future behaviour
• We always want to blame
• Restorative is more effective

New Zealand leads the world in the field of restorative justice for young offenders where progress is being made in returning potentially well rounded citizens to society. Restorative justice methods are being used to some extent also with adult offenders. A better way to proceed would be for the bereaved families to, in their grief, call on the government to institute more restorative justice and rehabilitation programmes in prisons so that those sentenced to custody have a chance to realise their humanity. This may well be the powerful message the government needs to arrest the slashing and burning of such potentially rehabilitative programmes as the community education schemes and the long-standing Prisoner Aid and Rehabilitation Society which, for many prisoners, has been the only source of compassionate accompaniment in their incarceration.

This Weeks Reflections

• Victims’ families want to prosecute (News item)
• You can’t always predict future behaviour
• We always want to blame
• Restorative is more effective

Graeme Burton: Convicted double-murderer

Two families who had relatives killed by criminals have asked a judge to let them prosecute police and the Corrections Department for failing to keep them safe. Karl Kuchenbecker was murdered by Graeme Burton in 2007 when he was on parole for an earlier murder. Debbie Ashton was killed in a head-on collision with disqualified driver Jonathan Allan Barclay, who was in the police witness protection programme. Barclay had previously been charged with driving offences, but under two different names. Burton later got preventive detention and Barclay was convicted of manslaughter and received 5 1/2 years’ jail.

Debbie’s mother Judy Ashton and Garth McVicar, of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, on behalf of the Kuchenbecker family, want to lay private prosecutions under the Health and Safety in Employment Act. They say police and Corrections staff, through their actions or inactions, allowed serious harm to come to others. Debbie’s mother Judy Ashton and Garth McVicar, of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, on behalf of the Kuchenbecker family, want to lay private prosecutions under the Health and Safety in Employment Act. They say police and Corrections staff, through their actions or inactions, allowed serious harm to come to others. The attempted prosecutions are out of time and require an extension by a judge.

Lawyer Nikki Pender told Wellington District Court judge Ian Mill yesterday that the prosecutions could not have been laid within time as a coroner’s report into Mr Kuchenbecker’s death and an independent police report were not available. The charges would allege systematic failures that led to Burton being at large when he killed Mr Kuchenbecker and injured four others, and Barclay being able to drive, leading to the collision that killed Miss Ashton.”High-risk parolees are still not supervised right,” she told the court.

Miss Pender said the Labour Department had already made it clear it was not going to prosecute, or even investigate, and the private prosecutions should now go ahead. Though the Crown cannot face the $250,000 fine liable if the prosecution was to succeed, it can pay reparation or compensation. Miss Pender said it would be unreasonable to penalise the applicants because they had not realised earlier that a Health and Safety prosecution could be taken. The judge had to decide if it was reasonable that the prosecutions could not have been laid earlier. Judge Mill will hear the Crown’s submissions next week.

Outside court, Judy Ashton said if her husband or an employee had issued a warrant of fitness for a faulty car which had then crashed, killing someone, they would be prosecuted and this case was no different. Mr Kuchenbecker’s father, Paul, said the public service had to be held accountable. “I feel that there’s two rules, one for us and one for them, and they’re not accountable for their . . . lack of action.”

Source: Dominion Post

This Weeks Reflections

• Victims’ families want to prosecute (News item)
• You can’t always predict future behaviour
• We always want to blame
• Restorative is more effective

And a similar picture extends across the board – to schooling, nutrition, accommodation, transport, leisure, domestic violence, policing etc.  And families on a benefit are acutely aware of this. They face it in their daily grind of struggling to survive.

Prices for basics continue to rise beyond the amount of their benefit. So it becomes a question of what is next to cut out –  power, accommodation, telephone, car, doctor visits, dental care, technology, appliances, holiday breaks, sports, school activities, birthday gifts, fruit, milk, babysitting etc – the list goes on. Such decisions are not neglect, they are decisions necessary to make ends meet.

Opportunities for extra-income have “recessed”. Work and Income exercise tight emergency benefit rules. In the main, relief from Church charities is limited to a few hand-outs.  (Scrutiny of their public appeal and op-shop incomes against the amounts actually distributed is surely warranted.)

Then there is the despair from low self esteem. Not for society’s poor are the paid counselling services, self improvement courses, advocacy training, artistic development, public entertainment, travel, holidays or shopping therapy.  The services that reach out to them are aimed at ensnaring – loan sharks, gambling parlours, fast food and liquor/drug outlets.

Then there is the pain from being labelled bludgers and cheats – outcasts who should be punished. Similarly accused politicians, financers, professional abusers, legal-aid lawyers and public heroes “spin” out of scandals to remain socially acceptable. Their families and colleagues stand by them.

The signs of hope may not be so clear. There are some, but many more are needed.

When public leaders proclaim their humble origins, poor mothers (and most parents are solo mothers) glimpse hope that their talented children, given the chance, might also reach their full potential.

The rise of the Maori party gives hope that at last there may be an effective organisation that empowers and represents the concerns of the poor – Maori and non-Maori alike.

Service providers such as Mental Health pursue empowerment for the lives of their members.  Their consumers now have full participation on the very Boards that govern their lives.

Community workers are gaining the respect of the disadvantaged and marginalised.  Poverty diminishes spiritual health. Genuine caring and support raises up the spirits and hope of the poor.

The AA organisations existing to overcome dependencies (eg alcohol, drugs, gambling, over-eating, debts etc) evidence that recovery is possible. But that requires will and motivation – a decision to recover and human support.

A community based course in New York links up “have” and a “have not” in partnerships forged through overcoming joint challenges.  They then commit to an ongoing mentoring relationship.

The poor will not accept either punishment or pulpit.  No, but they welcome caring people who will stand alongside and then commit to walking together.  Is that a true Christmas present opportunity?

At the same time a TVNZ Closeup documentary highlighted the fact that children’s healthcare is free only 9am to 5pm. After hours, children are charged the same as everyone else. Some interviewed for the programme said they would often wait until the child was sick enough to take to the hospital where treatment is free. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) says we are seeing growing levels of preventable child illness not being seen these days in many other OECD countries.

CPAG’s Anne Else said those levels of illness are ‘clearly linked to poverty and to the wide disparity in incomes and standards of living.

‘It is not just a question of sick kids. The damage done in childhood stays with the children right through their lives, impeding their earning capacity and wellbeing.’

She says the major group of people in poverty are children themselves.

A 2008 Ministry of Social Development report shows that prices of core family items have risen faster than both inflation and average wages. These include housing, energy and transport. Yet the housing supplement has not risen since 2005.

A Dominion Post article quotes the MSD’s 2009 Household incomes Report: ‘child poverty rates rose from 2007 to 2008 after falls from 2001 to 2007 … because housing costs rose sharply from 2007 to 2008, especially for low-income households’ (Nov 27, 09). So children were worse off even before the recession.

Says Anne Else, ‘It’s such a short-sighted, stupid thing for the country to do in terms of its future. We are going to need all those children as workers to be doing the best they can to support, for example, an ageing population so this is a really serious issue that successive governments have not done nearly enough to deal with.’

She says the Working for Families supplement did lift a lot of working families out of poverty but it didn’t help the children of beneficiaries. It combined a form of child benefit that’s paid to the caregiver with a work incentive. ‘Now when families lose their job they lose their 60percent tax credit so they’re poorer than ever.’

CPAG is calling for a return to the universal family benefit, or at least, a separation between the benefit and work incentives.

Someone has cynically suggested that children do not rate in this country because they are not old enough to vote. This puts into perspective Jesus’ shocking suggestion in Mark 10 that the Kingdom of God belongs to children. It would be great if this country were to treat its children as they deserve to be treated so that they could indeed experience the Kingdom of God.

In the past decade there have been several assessments of the state of children’s health on an international scale and in all of them New Zealand children are now among those who are at the greatest risk among children from developed countries.   Do we need more assessments or is it more organised, consistent, well-funded action that is required?  The needs are exploding!!

The Director of the Child Epidemiology Service contends a number of health conditions among children will deteriorate after the recession and tracking them will be critical so that, the relevant authorities will be alerted quickly. The Report presented at the Paediatric Society conference drew the link between rising unemployment, poverty and short and longer-term health outcomes which include higher hospital admissions and mortality in the short term.  In the longer term there is poorer cardiovascular and oral health, and an increased chance of becoming dependent  on alcohol.  We also have excessively high rates of youth depression and suicide and deaths of children from accidents, maltreatment and violence.

To raise investment in our children makes good economic sense let alone being a moral obligation.  If we are to advance anywhere as a people we need to attend to the needs of the most vulnerable ones in our population.  How often are children mentioned in the Budget and their needs discussed in Parliament? The money we spend on our children now will be saved long term on fewer beds in jails, hospitals and psychiatric units.

But my concern goes deeper than mere economic terms and lies in our social and spiritual priorities.  Do we value children as our most valued resource and as a precious gift entrusted to us?    Their care and nurture is the responsibility of the whole community. Every child is made in the image and likeness of God and therefore has an innate dignity which demands our commitment to support everything that will promote the best interests of children,especially the most vulnerable.

They have set up an annual checklist to monitor the situation. The Social Health Monitor, to be launched at the Paediatric Society annual conference in Hamilton today, will track the effects of the economic downturn on child health and poverty.

It shows the number of children reliant on a benefit recipient has fallen since 2000 but is likely to rise in the near future and says the benefit set-up will be unable to protect many children from severe or significant hardship – including more hospital admissions and deaths. It also points to long-term effects such as leaving school without qualifications.

New Zealand Child and Youth Epidemiology Service director Elizabeth Craig, a public health physician in Dunedin, said it was expected a range of health conditions among children would deteriorate after the recession. “Tracking them would be critical to quickly alert relevant authorities,” she said. “If we find that child health outcomes are deteriorating, this will be brought to the attention of policymakers so that appropriate responses can be implemented.”

Wellington Hospital paediatrician Brendon Bowkett said child health was “a basketcase well before the recession”. While supportive of moves to tackle the problem, he said easy access to free medical assessments for sick kids in poorer areas was vital. “It’s not just the cost, it’s the perception of cost. Even if something is free, it’s the perception that it may cost,” he said. “When poverty is fixed then you can charge poor children to be assessed.”

He cited a case where a child in Porirua developed a sore throat on a Friday, but was not seen by a doctor till Monday – in which time the child developed rheumatic fever.

In July, Dr Bowkett said hospital admissions for children cost an average of $4000 to $6000 each and forced hospitals to postpone or cancel non-urgent paediatric operations for grommets, tonsils and hernias. About a dozen people a day are being treated for skin infections at a Porirua clinic – a “cataclysmic” rate.

Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett said living on welfare was difficult for many families and the global economic downturn this year had seen more people reliant on the state for financial assistance. New Zealand had a generous welfare system compared to many other countries.

The three-day conference, themed “Starving in the Age of Recession”, will feature presentations on the affordability of nutritious food, Maori health, and international health strategies.

Healthcare is a Luxury
Single mum Deb Kilkelly says she has frequently resisted taking her 14-month-old daughter Natalie to the doctor because the money to pay “just wasn’t there”.

The 23-year-old from Paraparaumu, whose main income is the domestic purposes benefit, said medical care for children aged under five was meant to be free but doctors could charge an “administration fee”.

At her local GP that fee is $11, which she said “isn’t much” but after bills she was only left with about $10 of spending money each week.

The base rate for the DBP is $272.70 a week after tax.

“It’s really not fun, kids under five are supposed to be free.”

When Natalie contracted chickenpox on a Saturday, Miss Kilkelly had to pay $37 to see the health centre at the weekend.

“My dad paid for a lot of stuff, not everyone has that luxury. My friend has an $80 doctor bill that she can’t pay. The money’s just not there.

“I’ve had weeks I’ve just eaten toast.”

Miss Kilkelly said free healthcare for under fives would change how she would decide about trips to the doctor.

“I would stop hesitating to take her [Natalie] to the doctor when something’s wrong.”

Miss Kilkelly, who used to work in IT in Wellington, said she had to pay for a landline because places like IRD and Work and Income would not take calls from mobiles.

Her internet connection was her “one vice” and after spending $70 a week on food and nappies, she had about $10 left for clothing or extra food. “Things always crop up.”

State of Kiwi Children

• One in five children is already reliant on benefit recipients. The impact of further unemployment, which is likely to keep rising in the short to medium term, will therefore start from a “high baseline”.
• A study of children born in 1993 and followed through to 2000 (when unemployment rates were similar to those predicted for the next 18 months) found 54 per cent were reliant, at some point, on a benefit.
• The 2004 NZ Living Standards Survey suggested 58 per cent of families with children who relied on benefits were living in severe or significant hardship, compared with 12 per cent of families receiving market income. Severe or significant hardship was associated with children not having suitable wet weather gear or shoes, and postponing visits to the doctor.
• New Zealand children have a lot of hospital admissions. Asthma, bronchiolitis and gastroenteritis are the main medical reasons.
• Longitudinal studies suggest that 4-10 per cent of children are physically abused and 11-20 per cent sexually abused.
• In the past five years, hospital admissions for injuries arising from assault, neglect or maltreatment were significantly higher for boys living in the most deprived areas. Source: New Zealand Children’s Social Health Monitor 2009

Source: Greer McDonald – The Dominion Post

What I have to do is to remind myself, that these are real people with real feelings. Nathan Thorose Connolly, 31 and his victim probably have children, fathers and mother, brothers and sisters who love them. And they have all been turned into a commodity. While the media maybe responsible for using people’s misfortune as a means of generating ratings or circulation I have to take responsibility for the fact that it is the likes of me who boost those ratings and sales. I am not an evil person – I reckon I am really quite compassionate, but like so many other ordinary people I am allowing myself to become inured to the human misery that is paraded before me. I have decided that I will no longer read or watch this stuff. The constant trafficking in human misery makes us all less human. Maybe I am just spitting on the ocean – but at least I

Some may argue that the publication and shaming of the individuals here has a public interest incentive to stop such acts of corruption.  While there may be some truth in this, I cannot help but think the telling of this story is more about pointing the finger towards the ‘bad’ and ‘shameful’ individuals and away from ourselves. It denies the truth that the abuse of power often channelled sexually is endemic in our society even in the so called ‘ clean, green paradise ‘ of New Zealand.  And while it effects all, it cannot be denied it is also a deeply gendered story.  The female character, vulnerable at the outset made more vulnerable.  And how?  By the use of sex.  An old, old story

I am left then with a question.  How to respond?  And I am not sure I know.  The issues here are many and complex and at times competing.  I do know that shame and shaming never brings life – not for the giver or the receiver.  I wonder what Compassion would say?  Or Mercy?  or Truth?  I wonder what the ‘woman caught in adultery’ would say, had she been the lead reporter of this story? Certainly, that I will never know, but it does make me think.