Crime and Punishment--NZ Style
New Zealand has lost any meaningful framework in which to discuss how criminals should be appropriately sentenced. In fact, we now live and move in such a confused contradictory morass that some sections of society will criticize any and every judicial sentence. The respective criticisms will come from widely divergent philosophical and religious bases, so that whatever the circumstances, whatever the offending, sentencing will be controversial. It will never satisfy the community as a whole.
Here is a short list of some of the polar opposite positions on the punishment of crime.
There are those who believe that all human begins are born intrinsically good. Any evil they commit is a result of external factors, such as their family circumstances. Therefore, all criminals are ultimately victims of society.
There are those who fervently believe that the State is ultimately responsible for all crime, since if the socio-economic environment (which is the responsibility of the State) were better, people would not commit crimes. Therefore, it is fundamentally unjust for the State to punish crime. All sentencing should be restorative and rehabilitative in nature. The sentencing should be underpinned by an attitude of abject apology to the criminal by the State and society.
There are those who believe in the existence of evil, such that while it may be exacerbated by bad circumstances, some people are just evil by nature. They were born such and criminal offending is inevitable. But this is not true of most people, who are nice (decent) folks.
There are those who believe that all evil and crime is a result of
relative deprivation and socio-economic inequality. Redistribution of
wealth and property into a more equal egalitarian society will reduce,
if not remove entirely, criminal offending.
There are those who believe that all men are evil, born in sin (as King David confesses with reference to himself) and that every human being is therefore capable of criminal acts. The person who tells a lie or at times becomes selfishly angry (that is, the entirety of the human race) is capable of theft, fraud, assault, murder and so on. Given the "right" circumstances the criminal within will emerge. This leads to an attitude of "there but for the grace of God go I" when it comes to penology and how criminals should be sentenced. (This is the Christian construct).
In our secular, atheistic and materialistic world all of the options above, except the last, fail to take crime seriously because evil is relative. At root it is a social construct. For the strict evolutionist, the atheist, and the materialist "evil" has no ultimate meaning. Just as the spider eating the fly cannot be considered evil, but part of the natural order, so the criminal and his acts are intrinsic and natural to existence. In a similar vein, what is done to the criminal (if anything) it neither good nor bad. It too is just part of the natural order which is a struggle of tooth and claw. There is no such thing as justice--not in any absolute sense. Therefore, there is no such thing as crime in an absolute sense. These are mere social constructs--more often than not--little more than tricks the powerful play upon the weak.
When it comes to the punishment of crime over this mess of competing views and mutual contradictions falls into the shadow of three fundamental but equally contradictory objectives.
There are those who believe sentencing should be primarily driven by the objective of restoring the offender to society, hopefully so that he will offend no longer.
There are those who believe that sentencing should be predominantly retributive and that an offender should be made to pay for his crimes so that the suffering he perpetrated upon others should be inflicted (mutatis mutandis) upon him.
Then there are those who believe that sentencing should be driven by the objective of protecting society by removing the perpetrator from society--whether by execution or permanent incarceration. Sentiments such as "lock him up and throw away the key" spring to mind.
Notice that these three objectives are mutually contradictory, at worst, or mutually neutralising at best. Policies to restore the offender to society will almost certainly put society at risk to one extent or another. Retributive punishment risks brutalising the recipient and making them worse criminals. And so forth.
Whatever sentence is handing down it will not satisfy the mutually exclusive demands for restoration, retribution, and prevention. Every judicial act will be criticised from one or more perspectives. Every sentence will be implicitly controversial and if it does not work out, then criticism will rapidly become vocal and strident.
Given this mess of competing ideologies and objectives and philosophies the genuinely astounding thing is that the New Zealand judicial system works as well as it does. Despite all the contradictions and confusions, things appear much better here than what can be found in other jurisdictions. We suspect it has got something to do with being such a small country that virtually everyone knows someone who has served time or been arrested or convicted of a crime. Everyone knows first, second, or third hand a police officer. Virtually everyone has had criminal acts of one kind or another perpetrated upon them. This helps maintain a certain pragmatic reality to our justice system.
We muddle through. And that's probably about the best outcome possible, given the ideological morass described above.
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