The High Price of Being a "First World" Nation

Cleaning Up the Home Paddock

The issue of bail has been forefront again, with the revelation that a young man was murdered last year by a career criminal who was out on bail awaiting court hearings for other violent offences.

Haiden Mark Davis, 20, had amassed a dozen criminal convictions and was on bail for aggravated assault and theft the night he stabbed Augustine to death.

A New Zealand Law Society spokesman was yesterday defending the bail system. We were intrigued by some of his argumentation. He pointed out that we were a "First World" country, that was a party to international covenants, agreements and treaties which (effectively) bound us into the present bail system.

It begs the question, What does it mean to be "First World"? It became conventional in the last century to speak of three worlds. "First World" nations were those opposed to the communist bloc and which were democratic and had a Western legal tradition. They also tended to be the most wealthy nations. "Second World" was a term hardly used, but it was more implied. It referred to the international communist bloc and its aligned satellites. Then the term "Third World" was widely used to refer to those nations, non-aligned to either the "First" or "Second" world, mostly southern hemisphere, and mostly very poor. "Third World" became synonymous with backwardness and poverty.

It is a relief to know that New Zealand is a "First World" nation. Actually, the nomenclature is archaic, condescending and worthless. What the representative from the Law Society was trying to convey is that "leading nations" have signed up to basic western legal traditions, such as the presumed innocence of the accused. (Therefore, his argument ran, bail for accused people awaiting trial is a necessary and required institutional presumption of innocence, consistent with our treaties and obligations as a "First World" country.)

But there are many who are now thinking that the burden of being a "First World" country is becoming too heavy to bear. Hubris has dense mass.

We would rather New Zealand ditched all its UN international covenants and agreements and treaties--and, like the Swiss--concentrated upon getting things right at home. It is both arrogant and hypocritical to presume to tell other nations what to do. All UN international covenants are hoist on the petard of self-righteous hectoring. Most are worse than useless--they are actually quite dangerous--since it is only the so-called "First World" countries that care a fig about them.

We would rather that we actually worked at returning to the Western legal tradition in truth, rather than through the filter of hypocritical international covenants.

A speedy trial would be a good start. Justice delayed is justice denied. Our criminal court and justice system is notoriously slow--which, of course, increases the pressure for allowing bail for accused persons. Holding them in prison for lengthy periods awaiting trial does indeed presume against the innocent to a degree.

It is now routine for people to be arrested for crimes, while the police take months to complete their investigations, followed by additional months and months of delay waiting for a court date. This is clearly wrong. The rule should be no bail for those arrested--at least those with prior form, and charged with violent offences--with the principle of habeus corpus requiring a speedy trial. If there are insufficient criminal courts and justices, fund more. (Crime is a growth industry. The Government wants to stimulate the economy. Spend more on the justice system. Help unemployment, dear boy.) The present system allows for a lazy dilatory application of justice--who cares how long it takes. Years in some cases. No harm is being done. The accused is out on bail. There are plenty of other things to keep the criminal justice system busy.

The rule of no bail for accused needs to be supported by another principle: if a case does not come to trial within a certain delimited and defined period, the accused should be released and all charges dropped. That would put appropriate pressure on the police and the justice system to work quickly and more justly. It would also highlight the need to fund adequately the courts and criminal justice system. It would also help force a cut through of the bureaucratic pettifogging which presently bedevils the criminal court system and the Ministry of Justice, where delays are virtually universally acceptable to the courts, and prosecution and defence counsel. What is a few more days, months, and years amongst friends?

Appeals to "First World" status are nauseating. The New Zealand justice system needs to stop pirouetting as a prima donna on the world stage and focus upon our own "Third World" criminal justice system. We need to go back to first principles and conduct a root and branch reform. Forget the window dressing of UN covenants.