ACT pledges to abolish ‘cultural background’ principle in sentencing
The ACT Party would abolish the consideration of cultural background as a principle of sentencing crimes.
It’s part of a new justice policy released by the party today.
ACT leader David Seymour said “being nice to criminals” hadn’t worked and the justice system needed to “start putting victims first”.
He said that meant ensuring appropriate sentences for offenders that would keep communities safe”.
“People are blown away by weak sentences for grotesque crimes. How does this happen? Is there a problem with the judges?”
He said judges were following the law, so the law – specifically the Sentencing Act – needed to be changed.
A section of that Act – Section 8 – laid out the “principles” of sentencing, none of which he believed dealt with public safety.
“These principles require judges, when sentencing offenders, to take into account the background of the offender, including their ‘cultural background’.
“Criminals can have reports prepared on their ‘cultural background’ and get reduced sentences if they’ve had a troubled upbringing.
“The principles also require judges to hand down the “least restrictive” sentence that is appropriate, which leads to shorter sentences (less than two years) being converted from imprisonment to home detention.
…the charmer in the photo is Tago Kepa Hemopo, he is on trial for being an accessory after the fact to murder and conspiracy with intent to injure.
His juvenile gang signalling when on trial for something as serious as this makes him an incredibly difficult individual to feel any compassion or sympathy for.
If anything, his gross man child performance alongside the serious criminal accusations make him far less likely to find any sympathy amongst any far minded law abiding citizen.
And that’s the ultimate obligation of us as citizens, that even when confronted with vile feral humans doing vile feral shit, we must force ourselves towards justice, not vengeance.
Look, if someone hurt my family our friends, I’d want 5 minutes alone with the person and a baseball bat, I get that terrible harm inflicted on innocent people drives a thirst for righteous revenge, and I acknowledge that, but we are talking about actual social policy here and because of the overwhelming power of the State over the individual in a prison environment, we must demand checks and balances and quantifiable outcomes over a thirst for vengeance.
Remember – the prisoner losing their liberty IS the punishment, making prisoners suffer additionally to that punishment is a recipe for social disaster and that’s why we see a 70% re-offense rate within 2 years of prison release!
We don’t want people in prison because the greatest determinate of whether or not a person will go to prison – IS BEING SENT TO PRISON!
We want our Judges to pass justice, not revenge, and giving them more background understanding of the person they are judging plus the flexibility to focus on attempting to find a way for the prisoner to be punished by losing their liberty AND attempting to rehabilitate them so that violent criminality isn’t an ongoing feature of their character.
Judges having the much maligned ‘Cultural Reports’ is exactly the kind of background understanding we want from Judges so that mercy is what the Court is focused on. You can’t get Justice without using mercy, look our underfunded, over crowded, violent and corrupt prison system only manufactures men more damaged than when they went in!
We don’t allow any rehabilitation to any prisoner unless they admit their guilt – seeing as many of those prisoners are on remand and haven’t had their trial yet, why would they admit guilt?
National placed that rule so as to smear dog shit in the prisoners faces before they could gain access to rehabilitation, it was a needless cruelty and ‘respect my authritah’ big dick virtue signalling by National that has created a massive counter productive backlash that sees prisoners serve their entire sentence never admitting their guilt and getting no rehab.
Look you stupid sleepy hobbits, how about this.
You can lock these men up for as long as your frightened little hearts desire, but just remove the bullshit smearing dog shit into the prisoners face by making them admit their guilt, and just give them access to counselling and rehab services immediately so that there is the thinnest chance that the counselling and rehab might actually have an impact so that when they are released they are far less likely to create more violence.
Why won’t you stupid sleepy hobbits just make that tiny, tiny, tiny change and actually try and heal these broken men in prison or does Tago Kepa Hemopo’s immaturity win and the worst angels of our nature rule the realms of our reason?
We want our Judges to have these culture reports because it gives more insight into the Prisoner and whether mercy is worth an attempt, ACT threatening. to blind the judges and force them to lock men up and throw away the key will not work, and you should all be honest enough to admit it.
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The judiciary have hardly painted themselves in glory over the past few years unfortunately. They are now firmly in the sites of politicians reflecting voters revulsion at the courts contribution to law and order collapse.
It is a pity therefore that “cultural reports” have become a growth industry of cut and paste, that cost thousands of dollars each, that may and do at times have no accuracy. And worse, they are largely not vetted this ensure the report is even remotely accurate. That quite simply leads to miscarriages of justice both for the victims, that our judiciary do not give a shit about, and the justice system that is damaging its credibility using these things!
And it’s like rubbing salt into the wound when the 20% culture report discount that may well have NO bearing on the crime is added to the 15% insincere remorse discount and the X, Y and Z discounts, and the criminal walks, and I quote from a recent report, “I cracked it” by a criminal whose sentence was virtually wiped by discounts!
Like all good intentions, no one thought of the consequences of the culture report card!
If people like this continue to get funding to breed, we are going to end up with a lot of gated communities.
I hate to think what one Hemopo costs the country per year, yet the left wonder why taxpayers aren’t resentful.
Yet the right want to implement a system that will create even more “Hemopo” and even act surprised when people who suffer start to react. As you say the left have their own problems so the crazy people must be those that think our current political system can actually solve our issues.
Which is sad I think. Because the more we become like amererica with their value system.
More cuddles? Poor dear…
Not just justice, the other critical race theory is that our health system is so racist that we now need to spend an absolute fortune on a 2nd health system instead of using the money to make an incredible 1st health system.
There may be some clues in the data about culture, that may explain higher hospital visits for ethnic groups unrated to the (sic) terrible racism of NZ medical system.
“The Ministry of Pacific Peoples spent the second most per FTE on catering of any Ministry in 2020/21, spending over $1400 per staff member.”
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2308/S00060/ministry-for-pacific-peoples-ineffective-at-everything-but-spending.htm
Adult obesity statistics
The New Zealand Health Survey 2020/21 found that:
around 1 in 3 adults (aged 15 years and over) were classified as obese* (34.3%), up from 31.2% in 2019/20
there was a significant increase from 2019/20 to 2020/21 for women (31.9% to 35.9%), but not for men
the prevalence of obesity among adults differed by ethnicity, with 71.3% of Pacific, 50.8% of Māori, 31.9% of European/Other and 18.5% of Asian adults obese.
NZ is becoming a pathetic, un scientific country full of woke subjectivity instead of facts. You need facts and reality to help people. No wonder our debt has ballooned to unprecedented levels while the wokies have not made any statistics for the supposed ethnic groups they advocate for, better.
The next question is, What ministry took out the biggest cost per FTE on catering?
Funny how cultural factors are so important in helping criminals get off jail sentences, but when cultural activity leads to obesity – cultural factors like constant feasting is discounted as a cultural factor to be counted.
Instead of cultural eating being a factor, critical race theory racism in the health system is the obvious (sarcasm) cause of why some ethnic groups have worst health. Leading the wokies to decide that 13.2 billion in health is to address inequities is the way to go, rather than spending the money on more doctors and nurses to get the hospital waiting list operations and more staff in ED to get the times down.
Budget 2022: Health gets $13.2b boost to address inequities, sector reforms
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/politics/budget-2022-health-gets-132-billion-for-health-nz-maori-health-authority-reforms-and-to-address-inequities/
Seymour’s wrong, insofar as a defence lawyer in a criminal case should be able to put forward any mitigating factors, of which there may be many. To exclude one specific defence, such as “ cultural “ is a massive over-reach, and contrary to the principles of justice. What next ? Genetics?
The “provocation” defence was tinkered with in the aftermath of the terrible murder of Sophie Elliott. The Christchurch Muslim murder tragedy triggered Ardern’s hate speech scenario which is now escalating into a wholesale attack on freedom of speech and the democratic process. Politicians’ kneejerk reactions are too flimsy a basis for legislative change.
All David Seymour manages to prove with his one size fits all message is how little he actually knows about how the world works with the obvious implication that those who support him might be better called bubble people since they have their own reality that is divorced from how things actually work.
More cuddles rat in a cage more like more rat’s, big fat dirty ones with two hands and feet. You really don’t know much about prisons and probably have never had to visit one. You need to get out of your cage more rat in a cage.
There are three potential reasons for incarceration and you have only mentioned two – vengence and rehabilitation. I would argue that a key element is protecting public safety, and in the recent gun homicides in Auckland the overriding sentiment was why are these people out on the street with access to guns when they clearly are a threat to everyone else – and when there was plenty of opportunity to put them away.
Exactly right Si: The main reason for prisons is to protect society against dangerous sociopaths.
Martyn makes the fatal logical error of thinking the prison breeds criminality, when in fact the research shows that most criminal behaviour is instilled in youth due to those terrible cultural circumstances: broken families and open-ended welfare.
I bet that Mr. Hemopo was committing crime as a teenager and has a bulging but sealed youth file of convictions. At this point there is little or no chance of rehabilitating him, so releasing him will just see him reoffend. What we need are modern, safe, humane prisons that allow us to take him out of circulation until he reaches old age. Such long sentences will reduce the load on the courts, the police and harm to society. It may also make some of his colleagues think again before they shoot someone else.
And so on it goes…
What does a cultural report add? Do cultural factors account for why someone commits crime? eg he killed his brother because in this culture that is how family disputes are solved?
Childhood factors of course are highly relevant to why someone commits crime. Often heartbreaking stories I know. But sentencing someone to a lesser sentence because of them isn’t the right way to go imo. It should be about public safety and sending a message to the public and the victims that this is how we regard such crimes
Or we could just hang people instead, like you are itching for.
I’d like to thank Mr Hemopo for agreeing to become the poster child for ACT’s election campaign.
Im sure he will be looking forward to the fresh meat that come into prison when NACT get in. A nice assortment of rape and shank material.
And still no one has come up with a solution to the actual cause of crime .Till someone grows some balls nothing will change .Nact think they are being tough but they are not they are weak as piss .They need to admit that decades of fucking the poor people has resulted in massive crime
shh… The truth has no place in this right wing echo chamber.
Ironically if he ran in the opposite direction to armed police and posed no immediate threat he’d probably have a terminal case of “lead poisoning” and we wouldn’t be stuck with him.
The justice system needs to not only be delivering justice it needs to be seen to be delivering justice.
At the moment neither is true.
That Fellow U call Charmer is probably making more money from the system than most. In fact hes probably got the case managers quite scared to he continues to get support no matter what. Makes me sick when people in this work hard to make a living and this guy works his magic to live off the state.
So he is Really Bad. And you do your best to be Really Good. But there are a lot like you, and not very many as bad as he is so don’t panic and paint everyone black because you feel a little bit white. And with a better run society we would reduce the number who are really black and all others would get better and those who decide that they are Good get to feel happier along with the pale people.
National and ACT want guys like this one pictured to be able to run rampant in prison, raping and shanking weaker inmates to ensure that the punishment aspect of prison is upheld.
He is an unwitting enforcer of the tough on crime rhetoric.
From my life experience when it happens to you even more so you know it is wrong as you are a victim. Therefore if you are not the one that breaks the chain then more so you are accountable as the offender – not less in my opinion because it happened to you.
As a Hobbit myself. I say victims of crime come first, second and third.
If u do the crime u do the Tim e and lots of time. Whilst in the nick u can choose to go down rehabilitation route. Or stay in prison.
I would be interested to learn more about the case involved, but it would appear to be a rather unique situation. Apparently, the alleged victim, Rangiwhero, who was murdered, had molested a child, and in an effort to divert attention from this, accused a relative of Mr. Hemopo’s missus of doing what he actually did.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/hospital-drop-off-homicide-trial-begins-for-jimel-burns-wong-tung-accused-of-murdering-rangiwhero-ngaronoa/2CY2TATOTFGHDALLDWV7GY2UXM/
It’s quite possible that Mr. Hemopo has learnt his lesson about how he would handle such situations from now on. I.e. make sure your old lady doesn’t have a 10″ chef’s knife before helping her work over a chomo. On the other hand, he may simply have contempt for a court sentencing him because he happened to be in a relationship with someone who did the work that the Sensible Sentencing Trust won’t.
Paragraphs 6 and 7 are terribly contradictory. Para 6: loss of liberty IS the punishment. Yes please, that’s what we’re asking for. But para 7 says we don’t won’t people in prison. So then, what exactly is the punishment?
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