In 2019, New Zealand changed the laws on cannabis possession by giving Police the discretion to charge in the first place.
We want our Police to be able to exercise their own judgment and sense of a situation before pursuing a prosecution, charge or arrest. We want to trust our Police in our Communities to grant leniency because we want to build bridges between the Police and our Communities.
How has this experiment in trusting our Police gone?
Terribly!
New figures broadcast by NewsHub Nation over the weekend show that over the last year, over a thousand people were convicted for cannabis possession, a staggering 49 percent of them Māori!!!
When you consider Māori are only 17.4% of the population, to have a system built on discretion record 49% of possession charges for Māori (when Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the country) is nothing other than an intrinsically racist process! Incredulously while overall numbers of people prosecuted for cannabis possession has been dropping, the proportion of Māori prosecutions is going up!
This is a racist system punishing Māori in a way that everyone else isn’t!
The system has been so racist for such a long time that it infects everything, including the Police on the frontline!
We need to decriminalize cannabis possession and personal use so that the system doesn’t keep punishing Māori the way it always has!
The data doesn’t lie, our laws are racist.
First published on Waatea News.
- Sponsor Promotion -
The law itself apparently makes no distinction based on race. And I find it very hard to believe that the police are letting whites walk free and only arresting blacks.
This is really a class issue. Nearly all blacks live in slums or other poorer areas. Those areas have heavier policing. The blacks that live there are usually poorer than the others on average. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be hassled by the police (or be recruited into organised crime, or fall into petty crime, or end up on drugs out of despair).
This phenomenon was already in the process of being eradicated 90 years ago. Integrationist policies were desegregating housing. Ghettos could not exist, because there was widespread slum clearance and mass construction of state housing projects. The Full Employment Policy, universal trade union membership and mass industrialisation were reducing inequality of income.
The people have long wanted all of that back, which terrifies the oligarchs and the rest of the ruling elite. And so as the plebs get angrier, the establishment pushes racialist nationalism — literally blaming all social problems on alleged racial prejudice, and then preaching separatism — in an attempt to crush all those people who dare to follow Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.
Agree Kristoff. In any event, we cant conclude that the law is racist until we have more info. I suspect what you said is the truth and there could be a few other factors in there too.
Could it be possible an element of the stats is Māori use more or open themselves up with less discretion in doing so? Personally I think there is some bias in police but not this much stated. When stats are agenderized they can be inflated well. Can we compare to user ethnicity stats first to drawer a better conclusion?
So is imprisoning people for investment fraud racist because I am assuming is this is mostly committed by NZ Europeans?
Simple answer is if they do not do the crime white or black they will not have to do the time. There are legal ways of relaxing .
Hey, here’s an idea, maybe don’t break the law?
Better still, self identify as a Biden
I think you need to crawl back into your cage rat as your missing the point how the law is applied unfairly in NZ.
Here’s an idea. Change the stupid f’ing law.
Didn’t Labour & Andrew Little do that? Oh wait, another “success”.
Where’s that rat trap I have? If you can’t do better than smarmy useless comments don’t bother. Smartarse comments no good. It’s a problem – become chronic – have you any anecdotes where people from poor backgrounds who have some disability have been able to learn a new skill that makes them self-sufficient for long periods?
Maybe Labour could have changed the law, after all almost 50% of New Zealanders wanted it legalized, but Little said a definitive NO, because they never wanted change.
Martyn you write some great articles with many valid points. However maybe avoid using the term ‘racist’. It gets thrown into conversation and important debates too readily and usually that distracts and sidetracks from the key issue being raised to begin with. I’d use the term ‘discriminatory’ instead. Yes our drug laws are discriminatory against cannabis users alongside the urine based drug testing regime that meth users and people who overuse alcohol can more easily avoid detection with due to the body being able to metabolise those harder drugs faster. I’m hoping some sense with prevail and these antiquated, regressive, punitive and harmful policies are dumped forever.
In todays Press is an article about Portugal having another look at their drug laws .The situation there has been the decriminalization of drugs .zSo the situation is you cannot smoke outside a school you cannot sell sweets or ice cream but you can shot up .Go figure .Overdose rates have doubled
How many of these cannabis charges then convictions happened at the same time as other charges/convictions? That is, how many were in situations where the defendant was charged other (non-cannabis ) offences?
How many of these convictions resulted from a cannabis only court appearance? SFA?
Prejudice of the Maori people continues here in New Zealand on a raft of issues like possession of cannabis and traffic violations. Unfairly punishing people because of their race is against the law. That is where discretion comes into play, quite often as the reason for this racial discrimination, and it really need not.
Some would argue we need more Maori on the Police Force. I would argue that an influx of Maori police officers would actually exacerbate the issue long term as they clashed with Pakeha officers.
To take away discretion from well trained officers is also unfair. Actually it undermines their ability to do their jobs. It has both long term and short term psychological effects on the officers and destroys morale.
I think the solution is to put increased boundaries in place. For example, reduce the amount of cannabis that one can have in one’s possession. Introduce a four-step licensing system with different curfews rather than our current three tiered system. That way, no-one can complain that they are being unfairly targeted. If they break these clearly defined laws, then they will have consequences regardless of their racial background.
Comments are closed.