Christine: “I thought the Police Commissioner referred to an unconscious racial bias – it would surprise me if the police culture were deliberately spiteful.”

Me too. They wouldn’t be human if there wasn’t a bit of that, but for the most part I think the police are doing their best, like everybody else.

An unconscious bias wouldn’t be surprising. Criminality does tend to manifest itself disproportionately in the poorest part of society, which is affected by the issues you adduce.

When I was young, the poorest people – and the criminals – were as likely to be Pakeha as Maori. Nowadays, poverty is increasingly concentrated among Maori and Pasifika; therefore it’s unsurprising that increasingly, criminals are Maori or Pasifika.

Garibaldi: “It is remarkable that Gluckman said nothing for the last 9 years under National…”

I also wondered at his silence; then it occurred to me that the previous government very likely made sure that his views didn’t see the light of day, unless said views chimed with its agenda. And this piece certainly wouldn’t have.

Yes JM. It is remarkable that Gluckman said nothing for the last 9 years under National (who appointed him).
I thought when he first came on the scene that he might be able to call National to account, but not on your nelly…. we got diddly squat out of him and now he miraculously comes out of the woodwork as soon as there is a change of govt. Go figure.

they are not hardened criminals and actually don’t really want to commit the crimes! In another county they would probably shoot the person they were robbing, in NZ, they wait to be served and then have second thoughts!

Sadly the more we go into this competitive heartless low wage high unemployment, high drug, kafka like 2 tier society in NZ from our government’s US and Asian led ideology, instead of the European social democratic model, the more we are going to have criminal behaviour – that will escalate in violence.

Our government’s ideology needs to change and not just the criminals, our own society from babies to the elderly!!! Look after everyone and your society will look after you!

I say again, this is the government’s doing, both the Rogernomics Labour government and then Natz brigade for a decade! Everyone else in this is just collateral damage to our governments increasingly bizarre world views.

In my view after Rogernomics, NZ was actually one of the most propaganda countries in the world about trickle down and firing workers and putting them on zero hour type individual contracts of time specified work. Now they wonder who our workers who were once considered top workers in the world are now described by our own government as hopeless and lazy.

This is further shown by NZ being one of the leading proponents of these free trade deals. Even though we don’t even benefit from them and have to use very dubious figures that count the money that we would have got anyway and miss out the costs.

Our government’s whole identity is tied into low wage economic trade in particular around agriculture, where it does not matter what nationality owns NZ assets or if they even pay taxes here. Their blind ideology is bankrupting our country and emptying it of jobs and opportunities for our own citizens who then find their way into the prison system which is in the process of being privatised!

P.S. Sir Peter Gluckman link is not working and I’m interested to hear his views. Good to see someone new giving a post about an important issue.

I also know that addressing issues which may contribute to unlawful behaviour, such as: mental health funding, homelessness, child poverty, abuse, baby killing and so on were not priorities under the previous govt. I also know that much of the work done at grass roots level to help those who need help has been done by NGO’s who want a decent society, not votes.

NZ have been totally useless in addressing and understanding criminality, I guess it comes from our Victorian upbringings and more recently our desire under National’s John Key and Judith Collins desire to follow the USA Prison Business Model ?

It was one of National’s key growth strategies for the country under Judith Collins.