Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to ,
I can safely say: Graham McCready, is a convicted blackmailer, on the internet. That is because he is. Hard to understand why that’s not relevant to the big media, when they report on our judicial systems being used as a toy.
It gets mentioned in most articles in the Herald whenever he fires up a new prosecution. He’s been done for tax fraud, too, which also mostly gets a mention. The media doesn’t give him a pass on his convictions.
ETA: TV3 thought it worthy of putting into the second sentence in their profile of the man.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Steve Parks,
The court has to be satisfied that they’d be likely to commit particular crimes.
And for them to be kept inside beyond the court-imposed non-parole period, the Parole Board must continue to be satisfied that the prisoner continues to be likely to commit those particular crimes. Preventative detention is not a set-and-forget sentence, it requires ongoing intervention by the state, and if it’s such an abhorrent idea that the state decides someone poses a continued risk to society, let’s just do away with the concept of parole entirely and require prisoners to complete the entire sentence before release.
The incidence of prisoners who are serving sentences of preventative detention is, from what was posted earlier, on the order of 1/320. It’s not something that the courts are throwing around wildly.
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Russell Brown,
Graham McCready has backed down on his plan to try and prosecute Len Brown’s wife.
And quite how he missed the section of the law that restricts prosecutions for corruption is anyone's guess.
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Russell Brown,
They slate Brown for hiding away (during the New Year break, to be fair) and then slate him when he makes a public appearance. It's confusing.
You want consistency? From the likes of the same Cameron Brewer who was ardently in favour of better public transport whilst the head of the Newmarket Business Association but, since being elected, has fought to neuter bus lanes along Remuera Road as well as arguing stridently against the Core Rail Link being any kind of priority?
You really are confused :) -
Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Moz,
If we had a system for rehabilititating people that would be an excellent thing to think about.
When it comes to sex offenders, who are the people who fit into both camps of "sterilisation" and "preventative detention" as ways to curtail their offending, NZ actually does try and do proper rehabilitation. It's just about the only category of offending where there's much of a fuck given about reducing the risk of recidivism.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Moz,
the many and various meanings given to “democratic” and which of them can usefully be applied to NZ. I mean, you have the “Democratic Republic of Congo” currently under military rule (or being invaded/occupied, depending on your viewpoint)
The rule of thumb for countries is that the more they pronounce their status as "democratic" or "of the people" in their name, the less they are "democratic" or "of the people" in practice. I give you, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Moz,
Even for a model prisoner who starts early and commits the absolute minimum offenses, I expect you’d be looking at have baby at 16, kill it, prosecution and sentence, serve 5 years, get out at 22, baby at 23, repeat, serve 5 years (let’s assume the parole board is convinced by a conversion to devout Christianity or something), released at 29, baby at 30, kill it, so at best that decision as to first release from PD will happen at about age 40.
You are awfully confused about preventative detention, it seems. It's not a sentencing option for murder (that's what a life sentence is for) and it's not a sentencing option for infanticide. So what you have laid out could never result in preventative detention under current law.
Indeed, what you have outlined would almost certainly result in a Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 committal to a forensic psychiatric facility. Such committal could potentially lead to actual indefinite detention (the words "shall have effect indefinitely" appear in the Act).If you're going to get all outraged about people being detained at the pleasure of the Parole Board, at least understand what they have to do in order to be so detained. People who would be facing sterilisation or preventative detention are sex offenders, not delinquent parents. And one could be facing preventative detention before the age of 20, assuming a conviction for some form of culpable homicide before the age of 17.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to WH,
the episode stands as an example of how not to bring about social and legislative change.
Sometimes it just has to be done, regardless of public opinion at the time. If public opinion was the gauge, we'd still have criminalised homosexuality, spousal rape would remain a legal impossibility, the death penalty would remain on the books, we'd still sentence people to hard labour, and all would be merry and shite.
The right thing to do is the right thing to do, no matter what talk-back and Family Fist have to say on the matter. There aren't too many social issues where the changes are clearly about protecting or upholding the rights of a minority (or non-voting, in the case of children) group. Waiting for public opinion to come around on those issues largely means it just won't happen, or certainly won't happen for far, far too long.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Moz,
It only became abuse when they used a metre-long length of thick-wall poly pipe
And even then it was only abuse if you got a particularly unfortunate draw with the jury. Was it "Timaru Lady" who not only got away with a riding crop but also with a length of bamboo? Someone got away with using a fence paling, too, and I'm pretty sure there was a metal vacuum cleaner pipe in the mix also.
What was there possibly to object to with such a sound law protecting our children?
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I suspect that it rapidly becomes unwieldy and unmanageable when applied to even a moderately-sized population.
And yet we manage it with cars.
We've been doing it for many decades, back to when the number of automobiles was minuscule. The infrastructure in support has grown as the vehicle population has grown, but it's effectively been an "always" proposition from a point in time when the local authorities knew personally everyone who owned an automobile.
Trying to retro-fit it to cars would be no more successful than trying to do so to tens-of-thousands of bicycles.