Perverse Soteriology

Soft-Touch Judiciary

Every so often in New Zealand a case comes before a judge who ends up ruling without proper regard to the safety of citizens.  Instead, the focus falls rather upon "doing kindness" to repeat offenders. 

Stuff provides the following account:

A judge has admitted he is taking a risk in not sending a man with a history of reckless driving and driving at police back to jail for the same offence.  “It’s a huge risk, and I have to acknowledge that,” Judge Tony Greig said as he spared Dillan Mclellan in the New Plymouth District Court on Wednesday.

Mclellan was being sentenced for a reckless driving incident involving a police pursuit. It took place after his release from jail for the same offending committed in 2018.  “Somebody could have died in Mr Mclellan’s last set of offending, somebody could have died in this set of offending, and if he offends again somebody could die next time.”

However, Judge Greig said it was time to take a chance on the 22-year-old.  Mclellan’s court appearance stemmed from his late night drive on January 10, two months after he had been disqualified from getting behind the wheel for a period six months.

Police spotted him on an Opunake road and attempted to pull him over.  However, Mclellan ignored the order, accelerated and hit State Highway 45 (SH45).  He crossed the centre line, causing two cars to stop, and switched off his headlights while reaching speeds of up 146kmh.  He then slammed on his breaks, completed a U-turn, crossed the centre line and drove in the opposite lane towards the pursing patrol car.  Police had to take immediate action to avoid a collision.

In court, prosecutor Georgia Milne accepted the recommended sentence for Mclellan’s latest offending was intensive supervision but said imprisonment remained the Crown’s position.  Defence lawyer Rajan Rai said his client had been in custody since January which had provided time for Mclellan to “dry out” and adjust his attitude.  He was determined to sort his life out, which included engaging with his Māori culture, Rai said.

Judge Greig said Mclellan’s latest lot of offending was almost the exact repetition of his last.  In March 2018, police had used road spikes in an attempt to stop Mclellan, who had a warrant for his arrest, south of Omata on SH45.  He had driven his van at an officer, who dived for cover, before an unsuccessful attempt to flee on foot ended in arrest.

At Wednesday's hearing, Judge Greig said a “compelling” cultural report advised Mclellan wanted to change and to lead a “solid life”.  “And so if that’s what you want to do, that’s what I want to help you with.”  He sentenced Mclellan to 18 months’ intensive supervision coupled with judicial monitoring.
 
“If you stuff up I’ll probably be the judge who re-sentences you. Good luck, Mr Mclellan.”

The fundamental error with this kind of approach to sentencing is this: innocent members of the community have to bear the risk of the offender breaching his promises of "reformed behaviour".  It is not the judge who bears the risks.  It is his neighbours and fellow citizens.  Did they have a say?  Were their concerns taken into account? Not on your nellie.   

We applaud the fact that the offender promises to reform.  It is appropriate that he engage in the variety of programmes available in prison to help remove potentially murderous behaviour. But not at the expense of the innocent public. 

We suggest that such merciful judges be allowed to apply such accommodating sentences, if they felt so inclined.  But, the priviso would need to be that the sentencing judge be made culpable for the subsequent behaviour of the repeat offender.  Such a judge would need himself to be imprisoned if the offender subsequently failed to meet all his release obligations. 

We wonder if that would change Judge Greig's particular outlook on the administration of justice?

Male Convicts Transferring to Female Prisons

Institutional Idiocy

As a nation New Zealand is rapidly turning into a sandwich well short of a picnic.  How deformed, dumb, and brain-washed might we become?  The signs indicate that stupidity and folly are militantly on the march. 

If a man is arrested and convicted of a crime, he has a choice as to which prison he will be incarcerated within.  He can be locked up in an all-male prison, or, if fancy take him, he can be locked up into a woman's prison.  It's all a matter of personal choice.  Around 40 such men have "identified" as female.  Six are serving time in three female prisons. 

About 30 to 40 of the 10,000-odd current New Zealand prisoners identify as transgender, Corrections said. Or those, six are serving time in the country's three women's prisons: Christchurch Women's Prison, Arohata Prison and Auckland Region Women's Corrections Facility, she said. [Stuff]

The transgender mob allege that if a male "self-identifying" as a female and he subsequently gets locked up in a male prison, a breach of human rights has occurred.

The Impotence of Humanism

One Man's Treasure Is Another Man's Trash

Well, well, well.  Who would have thought it.  The so-called Pride Parade has been torn apart.  That came out of left field.  The pretext for the Grand Dissolution has been the planned presence of the NZ police (in uniform) marching along with the grand Parade.  How did that Grand Dissolution happen to an event supposed to celebrate inclusiveness and tolerance by all to all?

It turns out there is an ostensibly "radical" group whose ideology calls for the complete dissolution of the Police.  Why?  Because in the view of this radical group's world-view violence begets violence.  Since the Police and the prison system use violence they must be declared VERBOTEN when it comes to their associating with the Pride Parade.

Here is a brief summary of the beliefs and ideology of  People Against Prisons Aotearoa ("PAPA"):

Steps in the Right Direction

Amending "Once Damned-Always Damned"

Getting the "punishment" part of "crime and punishment" right is a challenge.  When offenders break the law they must receive appropriate punishment.  But recidivist offenders often end up living out their natural lives in prisons, when their initial wrong doing was relatively minor.

The penal system must be geared to prevent, if at all possible, the emergence of career criminals.  These are not easy matters to address, particularly when there are plenty of examples of soft-on-crime judicial figures, on the one hand, and "lock-em-up-forever" law enforcement advocates pushing their respective barrows. 

Consequently, we are cheered to read the following report in National Review.

Trump to Back Major Sentencing-Reform Bill

By Jack Crowe
National Review Online
President Trump plans to support a major rewrite of federal sentencing law, the Associated Press reported Wednesday morning.

Trump is expected to announce his support for the legislation, which was finalized this week, during a Wednesday afternoon press conference.

The bill, which Trump hopes to pass during the lame-duck session of Congress, would give judges more autonomy in sentencing non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses, and provide greater resources for prisoner rehabilitation.

The First Step Act, which has already passed the house, was spearheaded by White House adviser Jared Kushner. It expands the so-called “drug safety valve,” exempting non-violent drug offenders from receiving mandatory minimum sentences. It also eliminates “stacking” provisions, which mandate multiple consecutive sentences for offenses committed with firearms.

The legislation initially faced pushback from law-enforcement groups but was amended in the last two weeks to maintain mandatory minimum sentences for certain fentanyl-related offenses in order to appease the groups.

“This legislation is a bipartisan effort to address front-end sentencing reform and back-end prison reform, and our association is appreciative of your efforts to partner with the Nation’s prosecutors on this important matter,” National District Attorneys Association president Jonathan Blodgett wrote in a letter to President Trump obtained by CNN.

Reverting to Widespread Public Criminality

The Great Jail Con 

About to Explode In Our Face Any Day Now


Peter Hitchens
Mail On Sunday

There will be blood, and smoke rising in columns over the centre of a major city, and helicopters, too, perhaps even soldiers.   A terrible tragedy is coming to at least one of our major prisons, and only a complete reversal in our crazy liberal social experiment can prevent it.

As I have been arguing fruitlessly against that liberal experiment for more than 20 years, I see little chance that it will be avoided. 



A shocking report has revealed staff have lost control of prisoners in one of Britain's biggest prisons in Birmingham. Pictured: Prisoners gleefully pose with guard's helmets during a prison riot in 2016

Common sense has been banished from our country, but nobody connects this with its results.

The liberals themselves drivel that prisons are full because we send too many people to them. I will come to that in a moment.  Others claim that the squalor, drugs and violence of the verminous Birmingham Prison, revealed last week, are the result of privatisation.

Well, I oppose private prisons because I do not think the punishment of wrongdoers is a business. It is the moral duty of the state.  But it is not the issue here. It is easy to find state-run prisons that are just as bad as Birmingham. 

The truth is astonishingly simple.

Rolling Back Obamian Idiocy

Ending Obama’s Mixed-Sex Prison Policy

Neil Munro
BreitbartNews

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ deputies are ending President Barack Obama’s last-minute decision to impose the transgender ideology in federal prisons.  Obama’s January 2017 transgender policy directed prison officials to allow men to move into women’s prisons if the men claim a female “gender identity.”

Sessions’ revised policy says officials “will use biological sex as the initial determination” when assigning people to either male or female prisons, according to the policy document published May 11 by Buzzfeed.

Critics said Obama’s transgender policy would have created huge risks of rape because few people who say they are transgender have undergone genital cosmetic surgery, and few can pass as members of the opposite sex. For example, Obama’s policy would allow male criminals into women’s prisons and pressure women-who-say-they-are-men to live in men’s prisons.

Sessions’ new policy marks another step in reasserting the normal biology-based legal distinctions between female and male. Those distinctions were being scrubbed from the law by Obama’s pro-transgender policies. Trump has already begun reversing Obama’s pro-transgender policies in K-12 schools, in health care, and the military which now says it classifies soldiers’ sex by using the “bright line based on biological sex.”

Oh How Clever We Are . . .

Crime and Punishment

The present NZ Government appears all at sea over crime and criminality.  In a nutshell, its naive and simplistic view is that crime is caused by social problems.  Fix society's problems within the sectors of Health, Education, and Welfare, and crime would drop away to nothing.  As is always the case, the Left runs this reductionist absurdity with a high octane dose of self-righteousness.

The Left sees itself as compassionate and nuanced on the matter.  It is deeply aware of the social causes of crime and criminality which have captured people, turning them into criminals.  It's love for such disadvantaged folk who have ended up in the prison system quickly morphs into self-righteousness.  It characterizes its ideological opponents as cruel, simplistic, narrow, and bigoted.  This implies that the Left is compassionate, nuanced, sophisticated, and broad-minded.

• The Left presents itself as intelligent, advanced, and sophisticated.  It refuses to address criminality in a superficial manner.  It relishes the complexity of the social causes of crime because to pontificate and meditate upon such things creates a self-image of Leftist sophistication and intelligence.  Those who oppose Leftist sophistication are easily and readily characterised as red-necks.
  
• The Left relishes the prospect of the State being cast as the Saviour and Redeemer of society.  Prisons are essentially negative in the "solutions" they offer to crime.  They punish by their very nature.  But the Left sees  that as both negative and cruel.  On the other hand, to use the power, resources, and functions of the State to redeem people from criminal lifestyles, is a high and holy calling.

At this point, the Left is feeling really good about itself.  Oozing moral superiority it stands forth as the Great Solution to NZ crime and criminality. Cue Andrew Little, the present Minister of Justice.

Expected Demise of the Government

"If You Treat Us Nicely We Will Stop"

That did not take long.  The brand new Labour led New Zealand government has unsheathed a kukri knife and commenced the slow death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts.  Sometimes governments and elites risk become so enmeshed in their self-spun ideology that they depart from reality to another world.  And so, within a matter of months, it has come to pass in New Zealand.

The Minister of Justice is a fine fellow.  He has declared that the prison roll in New Zealand must be reduced.  This is to come about by a profoundly clever strategy.  He will shorten prison sentences, let more criminals out on bail, treat criminals nicely, and voila, crime will drop.  To naive, stupid Andrew Little, Minister of Justice the solution to overcrowded prisons is simple: treat people "kindly" and overnight they will become model citizens, who offend no more.  He has been encouraged to think along these lines by an (ostensible) chorus of elite academics who have assured him that his strategy will be a winner.

Hard Baked Human Depravity

No Hope In This World

There is a growing "class" of people in New Zealand who give every indication they are beyond redemption.  The clay has been in the oven far too long.  It has baked into hard, intractable lines.  

The people found in the "baked clay" class have sometimes been referred to as the Underclass.  These are people who are locked into an endless cycle of destructive behaviour, including self-destruction.  In recent days a case was profiled in the media which illustrates what goes on in the thoroughly baked underclass.

He was the best boyfriend she ever had.  Kind-hearted, helpful and selfless, she said.  But seven weeks on, she was thinking differently – and irrationally. He was a snake, a snitch and spreading rumours.  Over four hours in a friend's kitchen, she tied his hands behind his back, stripped him and assaulted him with punches and kicks.   She then marched him out of the flat and took him to the desolate state house where she lived with her pregnant sister. There she wrapped a computer cord around his neck and strangled him. Police found his body the next day wrapped in a red faux mink blanket under a double bed.  [Stuff]

Zariah Jae Samson, 25, at her sentencing for manslaughter last year.

The events are horrific.  The crime deserved a severe sanction.  Yet there is a back story to Samson that goes a long way to explain (not justify) who she is and what she has become.

There Is a New Redeemer in Town

Guilt and Pity: The Marxist "Horse and Carriage"

When Dostoevsky penned his famous novel, Crime And Punishment, it seemed to all reasonable folk that, like the horse and carriage which always went together, crime and punishment were but two sides of the one coin.

But Marxism and its step-children have long since departed from this rather obvious position.  Instead, Marxism and its derivatives have created an alternative universe.  In this universe man is fundamentally righteous: sin and evil is not intrinsic to the human condition.  Rather, evil exists only because there is a handful of exploiters at the top of the socio-economic pile.  These "capitalists"--to use the old term--have controlled and rigged the system to exploit the downtrodden, the worker, the powerless.

One by-product of such suffering and exploitation is that the exploited can end up in anti-social behaviour.  The exploited comes to hate the system which is rigged against him.

A Self-Made Saint

Doing Good On a Grand Scale

It seems as if the NZ Labour Party is going to go soft on crime.  It's understandable and makes sense if you happen to be one of those folk who believe that all evil is environmental.  It has long been part of the West's "Enlightenment" to believe and teach that all human beings are born innocent, and without sin.  Evil is resident within society.  When evil acts are done by individuals it is due to "society" poisoning the pure hearts of sinless, immaculate people.

Kelvin Davis, possibly New Zealand's next Deputy Prime Minister, is just such a guy.  Whatever the problem, it's society's fault.  If you sit on the Opposition benches of Parliament, when society is at fault, it really is code for placing the blame on the "gummint".  In the world-view of Davis, if the gummint were to sprinkle some more pixie-dust around the place--money extracted from citizens--crime would pretty much cease to exist.

Letter From the UK (About Prisons)

Fifty Years of 'Enlightened' Jails

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail Australia

Modern politicians don’t like taking responsibility for anything difficult. They hate the idea that you sometimes have to punish people. That’s understandable. Locking people up and making them work hard and do as they’re told isn’t very nice.

But if you can’t bear the burden, then don’t seek paid public office. These nasty tasks are the most basic duty of the State. If it won’t protect us from the wicked, then we might as well wind it up.
We have disarmed in the face of danger. Until about 50 years ago, the stated aim of prisons was ‘the due punishment of responsible persons’. Under a clear criminal code, most crooks and most louts were scared of prison and tried not to go there. It wasn’t some savage place of torture and beatings.

By world standards our prisons were very civilised. But they were austere, disciplined and under the control of the authorities.

Celebrating the Prison Ministry of Crossroads Bible Institute

A Prisoner For Every Church

Chris Hoke

I was telling a room full of retired volunteers about mystical experiences that my friend Neaners had when he was in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. I told how he and I—a Mexican gang member and a dorky white church guy of about the same age—had exchanged weekly handwritten letters for nearly seven years, and how it had changed both of us.

It turned me into a jail chaplain, and gang pastor.

In that isolation cell my friend Neaners had his own visions of becoming a pastor and ministering to other gang members and lost youth in our hometown when he got out. He wrote raw, tender descriptions of a mysterious love that would sometimes wash through his veins. It led him to nights of sweet and unstoppable tears as he lay alone in the bathroom-sized cell, where he existed 23 hours a day with no natural light.

I told the small audience how dozens of my friends and family members began exchanging letters with Neaners, and how those letters changed him, ignited his faith, and prepared him for life on the outside. And of how the exchange affected my friends and family. They confessed things to Neaners that he says he’ll take to the grave.

Standing in front of this gathering, I suggested that prayerful, personal letters sent to inmates like Neaners can be a subversive act, moving deep inside the human disposal system that is the prison system.

Rehabilitation of Criminals

Wanted: A Change of Heart

Can criminals be rehabilitated?  Of course they can.  But--and here is a big offensive "but" to the secular mind: rehabilitation cannot be wrapped up in a programme that produces guaranteed results.  Human beings are not Pavlovian dogs.  They are way above and beyond the controls of behaviourist "therapies".

In New Zealand there are a group of academics and researchers who have reached the conclusion that when it comes to prisoner rehabilitation, "nothing works".  David Garrett, writing a guest post in Kiwiblog, described the "nothing works" school as follows:

Criminologists are roughly divided into the “nothing works” camp – of which (Greg) Newbold is for the most part a member, and others who promote and champion various different kinds of programs, most of which have been tried before in some jurisdiction or another. The results of those programs – like (Kim) Workman’s He Ara Hou in the early 90’s – become spectacular failures if left to run long enough, often with increased rather than decreased reoffending rates. The “nothing works” camp holds that rehabilitation is not program but offender dependent – in other words offenders who want to be rehabilitated will be, and the rest won’t.

What a startling conclusion: if the offender has a change of heart and wants to be rehabilitated, he likely will be.  Really.

The Bureaucratic Hive At Work

Political Correctness Can Cost Lives

A New Zealand court case is proceeding which is likely to make the average citizen mad.  It concerns how parole is granted to imprisoned offenders.  In this instance a probation officer's critical report about a prisoner was removed from documentation by the Department of Corrections.  It is alleged that the Department at the time had a policy to get young offenders back out into the community as soon as possible.  One size fits all bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude.  How so?  Well, the prisoner in question was subsequently paroled and quickly went on to commit further violent offences.  

A probation officer suing his bosses for secretly removing safety warnings from a report to the Parole Board was proved right when the inmate attacked a man with a bottle just months after being released from prison.

The prisoner was jailed for attacking a man with a hammer in 2012, causing life-threatening injuries and previously stuck a knife in someone's ear. His probation officer Stan Gilmour assessed Rere Pumipi to be a high risk to the safety of the public but the paragraphs detailing the risk factors were removed from his probation report by his bosses.  These included references to alcohol and drug use, anger management and "deliberate steps to obtain weapons and use them". [NZ Herald]

In a rare move, the probation officer is taking his employer to court over the matter.

One Brick At a Time

Here a Little; There a Little

There is an old adage that says the only way to change society is to change one life at a time.  This is why the family is such a powerful socialising institution: it brings concentrated, focused help to individuals (children growing into adults) over a long period of time.  The opposite is also true.  When families are dysfunctional the bad outcomes are as devastating to society as their opposites.  A child growing up in such an environment is normally transformed into an habitually bad citizen.  

No state programme can compensate or replace the family--for good or bad.  Once a bad citizen has become an adult, it's far better to focus upon small interventions over long periods.  Here is an example:

Literacy changing lives at Tongariro Prison

A student at Tongariro Prison believes his life has changed since learning to read.  For six months the student, who is being referred to as Sam for privacy reasons, has been participating in the Howard League Literacy Programme delivered by volunteers.

About 70 per cent of prisoners have low levels of reading and writing.  Volunteer Sandra works with Sam once a week.  "Before I started learning with Sandra, I would not even attempt to try and read, I used to push books and papers away," Sam said.  "I did not enjoy learning [but] I can now read words and I have even written a letter to my mother."

Man's Inhumanity to Man, Part I

Blaming the Mongolian Race

In Emma Larkin's wonderful volume [Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: The Penguin Group, 2011)] she describes the long history of tyranny which has afflicted that nation for many centuries.  Sadly, the British--as colonial masters--were little better.  By the time Burma became a colony the doctrines of evolutionism were becoming more and more embedded in the colonial mind.  This led to a "natural" conclusion that primitive native people were not sub-human.

She cites a government report at the time:

In Burma we are dealing with a Mongolian race . . . and Mongolian races appear to have always found an element of cruelty in their punishments necessary.  [Op cit., p. 146.]

In other words, "we need to treat them in the only way these brutes understand".  George Orwell served as a policeman in Burma for a time.  During his time there in the early 1920's some 20,000 criminals were being locked up every year.  He describes the horror of British run jails in Burma in The Road to Wigan Pier:

The wretched prisoners squatting in the reeking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos, the women and children howling when their menfolk were led away--things like these are beyond bearing when you are in any way directly responsible for them. [Ibid., p.46]

This is not to say, of course, that the British were any worse than the authoritarian rulers that preceded them.  Rather, it is to say they were as bad.

Britain's Terms of Surrender Are Being Worked Out

He Who Stands For Nothing Will Bow Down to Anything

In New Zealand we face the unsavoury prospect of criminal gangs effectively running the lives of prisoners.  As many people know, when in a NZ prison you have to work out the "lay of the land" pretty quickly.  Where does the day-to-day power reside?  Whom can I associate with to get protection.  Who will watch my back?  And so on.

The gangs of the criminal underworld, because of their blood oaths and vows of mutual loyalty, become centres of influence and power in the prisons.  After all, so many of their members are "inside".  Intimidation, threats, and stand-over tactics are all employed to extend their powers and control.

In the UK, it appears as if this function, in the most notorious prisons, is being performed by new gangs.  Islamic prisoners are now running key aspects of prison life.

The UK Prisons' New Authorised Version of the Bible

A Front Cover, A Back Cover and One Blank Page

It now appears to be gross misconduct in UK prisons for a prison employee to read any portions of the Bible which are offensive to others.  The UK prisons are ultimately controlled by the Ministry of Justice.  The dominatrix of faux outrage appears to be, if not actually running the UK government on a daily basis, pretty much in charge throughout "when push comes to shove".

The latest case of the intolerance buzzsaw cutting through Christians has occurred in the UK prison system.

Race, Recidvism and Reform: The Centrality of the Family

We Can’t Reform Our Justice System Without Lifting Families

Racial injustice plays a role in the incarceration of so many black men, but so does the breakdown of the black family.

Ken Blackwell and Rob Schwarzwalder
The Federalist

Common-sense criminal sentencing reform is gaining momentum. Presidential candidate Jeb Bush and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins are among the signers of the Right on Crime Statement of Principles, which argues for applying “conservative principles to criminal justice policy” as “vital to achieving a cost-effective system that protects citizens, restores victims, and reforms wrongdoers.” Earlier this year, a collation of extraordinary political bedfellows—ranging from Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—published a book of essays titled, “Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice Reform.”

What’s going on? Perkins, a former police officer, knows firsthand what is at stake when sentences are arbitrary, harsh, and simply unjust. He explains why so many political and other leaders are coming together on this critical issue.  Writing in 2013 about how to deal with nonviolent criminals, Perkins said, “Violent and career criminals must be locked up to protect society, and we must also exclude offenders whose crimes endanger their own children … But for many nonviolent offenders, we should do all we can to keep families together while maintaining public safety.”