Waatea News Column – What we need to understand about the Blessie Gotingco case

The terrible trauma suffered by the family and whanau of Blessie Gotingco is heart wrenching and awful. Their legitimate anger at the lack of supervision our underfunded corrections and parole system created is righteous and they have set up a fund to launch a campaign against the slack Government services whose inattention cost them a dear family member in violent circumstances.

Blessie Gotingco deserved better, her whanau deserved better and we as a society deserve better.

What went wrong and what can we learn?

I think we have some deep problems looming for us caused by knee jerk legislation in the early 2000s. Labour were in Government and keen to look tough on crime so abandoned parole early releases. Previous to this most prisoners had to behave well in the prison and if they did manage to control themselves, they were released after serving a third of their sentence. These were changed so that Prisoners had to have counselling before they got parole and to get counselling they had to admit their crimes.

The inadvertent consequence of these changes has been a tsunami of prisoners being released from prison after serving their full sentences with no counselling whatsoever. They are re-entering our communities more violent and more damaged than when they went in.

Our anger at crime and criminals has been manipulated by politicians into a tough on crime mentality that seeks punishment and suffering over rehabilitation.

If we want to avoid the next victim, we need to acknowledge the hard on crime mentality is part of the problem.

 

Waatea News Column