Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Joe Wylie,
So if we’re to congratulate ourselves on being above those kinds of delusions, we’re likely to be more tolerant of real crime because, hey. it’s declining, and each case is one less we have to worry about?
We (royally) are less likely to call for harsher sentences and more prisons if we're not living under the delusion that things are getting worse. If what's being done is working, we don't need to keep on tightening the screws as some kind of deterrent.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Joe Wylie,
has permanent name suppression (perhaps because of powerful people in the right places)
More likely because identifying him would lead to people "in the know" identifying his possible victims. The privacy of victims of sexual offending is paramount, especially where children (you speak of girls) are involved.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Richard Aston,
But if an offender refuses to participate in therapy, as this man has, what then?
That’s exactly my point. Offenders would also refuse to participate in prison, probation and home detention if they could but does that stop us making them participate.
A person who refuses to participate in probation ends up in prison. You don't have to "participate" in being in prison or on home D, you're either there or you're not. They can put you there and ignore you. Therapy, though, requires more than just talking at the offender in order to be useful, and in the case of someone like Wilson he's probably got very effective switch-off mechanisms that will let him tune out the annoying drone of the other participants in the session. Which means that even trying is wasting everyone's time and achieving nothing, hence requiring people to at least want to participate in therapy. It's not a passive activity, unlike being involved in some form of incarceration.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review - The Proposals, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
I'm sure they won't come to agree with us, but that doesn't mean their opinion on the number of MPs should hold a lot of sway. If they're not prepared to become experts on forms of democratic governance, which clearly they're not, they need to accept that they won't always get their way.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review - The Proposals, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
Well, last time people had a chance to vote on Parliments size I believe 81% thought a smaller Parliment was the way to go
I wonder how much of that is people who mistakenly believe that NZ has more elected representatives with legislative authority than other countries. We actually have considerably fewer since we don't have a federal model or a bicameral House, and our local authorities are effectively gutless outside the narrow areas of empowerment granted them by central government.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Sacha,
Wonder if a law change could make it restrospective for the rare ones like him. Are there others?
I doubt there are more than one or two others, which means it's a problem that is completely insufficient to justify violating the principle of no retroactive punishment.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Russell Brown,
Restricting someone’s freedom because they pose an unacceptable danger to people around them is not the same as killing them.
We can release those who are wrongly imprisoned. We cannot resurrect those who are wrongly executed. That's a pretty massive difference.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to James Littlewood*,
But – as a principle – why not give the judiciary some ability to extend supervision (or a harsher penalty) in cases where the accused of serious crimes was reasonably deemed to be a danger upon release?
The changes by Labour to when preventative detention could be imposed went a long way to addressing this problem. Wilson would have been sentenced to PD if he were convicted now, meaning he would probably never be released because he has refused all treatment or even to acknowledge his offending. That would keep him in prison for the rest of his life.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
If we cant accept that this man could get better with incarceration, why do we bother with imprisonment?
He has refused all treatment. He cannot be compelled to be treated for his issues, so all we can do is try to keep him out of society for as long as possible.
People who access rehabilitation benefit from prison. Those who don't, don't. Our sex-offender rehabilitation appears to be quite successful, based on recidivism statistics, but it can only ever work when the offender accepts that they need help. Wilson has refused to even acknowledge that he's done things that society finds reprehensible. Such a person cannot be rehabilitated, in any environment.If we shoot him, as the lynch mob wish, where do we stop? I have no terrible objection to killing people who are truly guilty, but the problem is that I have zero faith that it would only ever be guilty people. All the evidence says that the system is fallible, and that innocent people have been executed. Once that happens, the state has lost any moral high ground. Not stooping to the level of those who are being punished must always be a non-negotiable part of any correctional system. Otherwise we may as well just do away with prisons and release convicts to the tender mercies of Michael Lawhs, and Insensible Sentencing's acolytes.
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Hard News: Living with the psychopath, in reply to Gareth Ward,
how long does he have left on his sentence/under parole
Three years of his sentence (he's done 18 of 21) then, as Russell says, 10 years of extended supervision. I would imagine that a man who has consistently refused treatment and denied that he's got a problem will struggle to live entirely lawfully for 13 years.