The First Rule Of Radicalism.

Radical As: Māori healers recall a time when “words had power”. The words that give substance to ideas, no matter how radical, still do. If our representatives rediscover the courage to speak them out loud.

THERE ARE RULES for radicalism. Or, at least, there are rules for the presentation of radical ideas intended to become a part of our daily lives. The most important of these rules requires radical ideas to be explained and justified. Failure to make clear why radical solutions should be embraced and implemented will only ensure their rejection by a decisive majority of the population. Radical ideas and policies are only ever adopted when that same majority has been convinced that refusing to adopt them will only make matters worse.

It is difficult to imagine a more radical idea than the abolition of prisons. And yet, along with a proposal to establish a Māori Education Authority, the abolition of the New Zealand prison system is one of the key recommendations of the iwi-based group charged by the Labour Government with responding to the controversial He Puapua Report on the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Asked by Q+A’s Jack Tame whether they supported the call for prisons to be abolished, the co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, both replied “absolutely”. The question now, having signalled their support for this radical policy, is whether Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer are prepared to explain and justify it to the voters of New Zealand.

On the answer to that last question will turn the broader electorate’s view of Te Pāti Māori. With the last three public opinion polls indicating that the party could well end up holding the balance of power after the 2023 general election, its ability to spell out clearly what it expects to receive in return for its support on confidence-and-supply motions – and why – has become a matter of acute political interest.

A serious response will likely generate increased support from angry and alienated tangata whenua – quite possibly at Labour’s expense. But a flippant, “we’re more radical than you are” response risks cementing in the voter’s mind an image of Te Pāti Māori as a collection of vainglorious political flakes, who should be kept as far away from power as possible.

Te Pāti Māori’s public support for the abolition of prisons cannot now avoid becoming part of the right-wing parties’ argument for giving the potential “Red-Green-Brown” coalition the widest of berths. With so many of National’s and Act’s supporters alarmed at what they see as a sharp rise in violent crime – due largely to the growth of gangs – the very idea that a party in Parliament is willing to countenance radical reforms that would see the Māori perpetrators of serious crimes escape incarceration, leaves the Right with no option but to go on the offensive against the entire He Puapua prescription.

This, in turn, will inspire all manner of fears and doubts within the ranks of Labour and the Greens. While neither party will be anxious to alienate Te Pāti Māori, the so-called “Centre-Left” will, nevertheless, be extremely loathe to endorse a policy as radical as the abolition of prisons. For most Labour and Green candidates the whole concept will appear so outlandish as to be dismissed out-of-hand as “nuts”. For Te Pāti Māori, however, such a reaction would only confirm the “colonialist” mindset of their putative partners – making the formation of a stable coalition even more problematic.

All of which makes clear why it is never enough to simply announce one’s support for a radical policy. Indeed, what the above considerations reveal is the huge potential for an electorally fatal backlash against such radical protestations.

That is not to say that radicalism should be avoided at all costs. As Simon Bridges told Parliament only last week in his valedictory address, there is little point in seeking a political career if the only forces driving you are focus groups and opinion polls. Members of Parliament should come to Wellington on the wings of ambition – not the plodding feet of caution. What the above considerations should reinforce, however, is the crucial importance of the rule about explaining and justifying radical change.

The template for successful radical reform is there for all to see in the unceasing explanations and justifications for the radical economic changes proposed by the “Free Marketeers” of the 1970s and 80s. When these latter “policy aggressors” first emerged on the scene, they, too, had to endure hearing their ideas dismissed as “extreme” and/or “nuts”.

Were they discouraged? Not a bit! As the 70s wore on, and the economic situation deteriorated across the Western World, “Free Market” explanations acquired an ever-expanding audience, and its justifications for a fundamental rearrangement of the way modern industrial economies are run began to sound increasingly reasonable.

The way forward for Te Pāti Māori is clear. It has to demonstrate that the regime of crime and punishment that has grown up in New Zealand over the past 180 years is no longer fit for purpose. The recidivism rate, alone, offers proof that the experience of incarceration is anything but rehabilitating. Similarly, the disproportionate number of Māori behind bars points to there being a great many more factors at work in our justice and corrections systems than straightforward criminality. All of the scientific evidence confirms the proposition that criminals are made not born.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer observed to Jack Tame that there were no prisons in pre-colonial Aotearoa. A cheap point, some might say, but one worth following up. Obviously, in the centuries prior to European settlement, Māori who offended against the customs and practices of their tribal and sub-tribal communities were required to atone and/or make recompense for their “crimes”. Explaining to Pakeha how that worked would be a good place for Te Pāti Māori to start in its quest to reform fundamentally this country’s treatment of offenders.

Those Pakeha convinced that Te Pāti Māori’s support for the abolition of prisons confirms it as being “soft on crime” might be very surprised to discover the fate of those who breached the norms of Māori society before the arrival of the Europeans. The concept of “utu” – the making of proper restitution for harms done – was manifested in many ways. “Soft” wasn’t one of them!

A more courageous Labour Party might also feel inspired by Te Pāti Māori’s advocacy for fundamental penal reform to interrogate its own history.

There was a time when Labour leaders were not unacquainted with the interiors of prison cells. When the working-class people whose votes they solicited did not universally condemn such familiarity. On the contrary, it made Labour’s claims to represent them all the more authentic. When Jack Lee wrote Children of the Poor, he was speaking from bitter personal experience.

There were times, too, when a Labour Shadow Attorney-General, all-too-well-acquainted with the bleak and soulless quality of Her majesty’s prisons argued that no jail should be escape-proof. The urge to be free, said Dr Martyn Finlay, was what made us human. To render that urge impossible of fulfilment was, accordingly, to make the state complicit in the crushing of the human spirit.

Māori healers recall a time when “words had power”. The words that give substance to ideas, no matter how radical, still do.

If our representatives rediscover the courage to speak them out loud.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 9 May 2022.

The Summit Of Folly: Why ‘Middle New Zealand” Will Have The Last Word On Crime And Punishment.

Little Proposes, Middle New Zealand Disposes: If nothing else, the Justice Summit has shown Andrew Little what he is up against. The anger and hurt of Maori. The anxious attempts of various state institutions to meet the often contradictory expectations of their political masters. And last – but by no means least – the inescapable reality of “Middle New Zealand’s” veto: it’s indisputable power and its implacable determination to have the final say.

ANDREW LITTLE must be wondering whether his Justice Summit was worth it. Encounters between practitioners of deliberative democracy and participants in direct democracy are seldom trouble free. How could they be? Deliberators are elected, while participants in direct democratic forums are often self-selected, or, even worse, the delegates of special interest groups. By the time the Justice Summit drew to a close it was very clear that the formal practices of deliberative democracy and direct democracy’s roiling currents of passion and conviction had only Little in common.

If nothing else, the experience will have shown Little what he is up against. The anger and hurt of Maori. The radical programmes with which the latter propose to empty the prisons of their disproportionate ethnic muster. The anxious attempts of the various state institutions tasked with managing crime and punishment to generate outcomes that meet the often contradictory expectations of their political masters. And last – but by no means least – the inescapable reality of “Middle New Zealand’s” veto: it’s indisputable power and its implacable determination to have the final say.

That power was on full display in the opening hours of the Summit when Jayne Crothall, whose three year old daughter, Brittany, was murdered as she slept in 1997, was reported as breaking down in tears when a Maori woman claimed Pakeha did not know what it was like to be victimised.

“This has been a horrendous summit for victims of crime”, Crothall told the 700 Summit participants “People have been told they don’t know what it is like to be a victim because they’re European. There have been a lot of racist comments made. I have never heard so much racism.”

Sadly, it is Jayne Crothall’s words that Middle New Zealand will take away from the Justice Summit. Her accusations of racism will be amplified across the country by the Sensible Sentencing Trust who are also likely to highlight the words of University of Canterbury criminologist, Greg Newbold, who boycotted the whole event as a waste of time and told RNZ National that if Little is serious about reducing the prison muster, then he should “build more prisons and end double-bunking”.

Middle New Zealand: overwhelmingly Pakeha; gainfully employed; living in their own homes; law-abiding and tax-paying; is temperamentally impatient (if not contemptuous) of sociological and historical explanations for Maori offending. To their ears, the arguments of academics and “experts” about poverty and colonisation come across as sounding suspiciously like excuses.

Which is why nearly all of the evidence of Maori suffering will have been, at best, half-heard by Middle New Zealand. At worst, it will be taken as proof of the “Maarees’” manifest deficiencies as citizens. By contrast, and simply because they chime so completely with their own deep-seated prejudices, Jayne Crothall’s words will not only be heard, but they will also be remembered and angrily repeated. Such is the power of Pakeha confirmation bias.

The thing to remember about all of the colonial societies in which the settlers have triumphed demographically, is that the over-representation of the colonised in the criminal justice and prison systems will be welcomed, consciously or unconsciously, by the settlers as proof that their culture is still on top. Were only 15-16 percent of prison inmates Maori (i.e. the muster matched the percentage of New Zealanders identifying as Maori) a number (probably a distressingly large number) of Pakeha would interpret the statistic as evidence that the Police and the Courts were not doing their jobs.

Of course, Andrew Little can’t say that: not if he wants his party to win the next election. What’s more, the Labour-NZF-Green Government cannot even be seen to be addressing the gross over-representation of Maori in New Zealand’s prison system to aggressively. Middle New Zealand’s tolerance threshold runs out at the notion of convicted criminals being rehabilitated outside prison walls. They will accept intensifying rehabilitation efforts behind bars, and many would accept the desirability of every prisoner having their own cell. What they will not accept is criminals being “set loose in the community” before they have demonstrated conclusively that it is safe to release them.

That’s why Greg Newbold advised Andrew Little to “build more prisons and end double-bunking”. Because he is shrewd enough (as both an ex-con and an academic expert) to know that his is the only formula which Middle New Zealand (the people who determine the outcome of general elections) is ready to accept.

That Little gets this was illustrated by his last-minute offer to hold a special summit for the victims of crime. It’s a terrible idea. Such a gathering will, almost certainly, morph into a no-holds-barred display of Middle New Zealand’s retributive instincts. Little will be ordered to keep on doing everything that his just-concluded Justice Summit begged him to stop doing. The racist arbiters of crime and punishment in New Zealand will jubilantly exercise their political veto – and, God forgive them, Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern will comply.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 24 August 2018.

Phillip Smith/Traynor: The Triumph Of Expert Foolishness Over Ordinary Wisdom.

Dangerous Knowledge: The tempting proposition that mere mortals can acquire mastery over Good and Evil is as old as the book of Genesis. But, what the experts and professionals of our supposedly meritocratic society appear to have forgotten, and what every ordinary person understands, is that the Devil lies. And, as Phillip Smith/Traynor discovered long ago, it is the person most determined to do good who is most easily deceived.

 

THE BUREAUCRATIC STUFF-UP that sped Phillip Smith/Traynor on his way to Chile, Brazil, and from there, thankfully, into the handcuffs of the Brazilian Federal Police, has exposed one of the most perilous fault lines in New Zealand society.

 

On one side of the fault line stand the experts and professionals. On the other, ordinary New Zealanders: the laity.

 

In the modern meritocracy New Zealand believes itself to be, expertise and professionalism are supposed to trump the layperson’s “instincts”, “gut feelings” and “common sense”.

 

Like the priests and the pastors they have largely superseded, experts and professionals lay claim to specialist knowledge of the world. Their mastery of the modern, “scientific”, method of explaining the universe means that, all other things being equal, the judgement of the expert and the professional is supposed take precedence over the traditional prejudices and ignorant superstitions of “ordinary people”.

 

But, Phillip Smith/Traynor’s scandalous escape from custody will, almost certainly, turn out to have been facilitated by the judgements of the experts and professionals employed by, or contracted to, the Department of Corrections. Indeed, it is already pretty clear that had the advice of those ordinary New Zealanders caught up in the multiple tragedies of Smith’s offending been heeded, he would never have escaped from custody.

 

Ordinary people recoil in horror and disgust from the criminal acts for which Phillip Smith/Traynor was convicted.

 

Their instinctive response is the same as that of any social animal confronted with a deadly threat to the survival of its young: kill it if you can, or, if that proves impossible, drive it from your midst.

 

The gut-feeling of non-expert, non-professional New Zealanders is that the likes of Peter Smith/Traynor are irretrievably evil. As killers, abusers, manipulators and deceivers they must never, ever, be believed or trusted.

 

The common sense of ordinary Kiwis tells them that, if the possibility of judicial error requires them to rule out the hangman’s noose, then murderers and paedophiles should simply be locked up forever.

 

What part of “predatory child abuser” and “vicious murderer” do the Department of Corrections' experts and professionals not understand?

 

From the perspective of the experts and professionals, however, the judgement of ordinary Kiwis is as flawed as it is unjust. Paedophilia is a pathological condition over which the paedophile exercises little, if any, control. The proper, scientific, response to child abuse and abusers is, therefore, therapeutic – not punitive.

 

Human behaviour is not immutable. It can be modified, reoriented and, with the right sort of interventions, re-programmed. It is simply not necessary to lock up serious offenders in a cage and throw away the key. To the psychologists, counsellors and therapists at Corrections, Phillip Smith/Traynor was a suitable case for treatment.

 

But, as Smith/Traynor’s extraordinarily successful deception of his psychologists, counsellors and therapists makes chillingly clear, it was the experts’ and professionals’ judgement that was flawed.

 

Yes, with enormous effort and the deployment of a host of (scarce) resources, it might just be possible to wrap a paedophile around with sufficient protective layers to make his release from custody a viable and safe option. And, in the best of all possible worlds, that’s what our Justice System would attempt to do.

 

But, this is very far from being the best of all possible worlds. The wraparound option does not exist in New Zealand. So why, in its absence, did Smith/Traynor’s expert and professional team keep behaving as if it did? Was it because Smith/Traynor, understanding to perfection their deep emotional investment in the possibility of his behavioural redemption, encouraged them to construe his “model prisoner” charade as proof that they had, already, redeemed him?

 

Phillip John Smith aka Phillip Traynor: Irretrievably evil?

 

If that is, indeed, what happened, then I’m afraid you’ll have to put me down with the traditionally prejudiced and the ignorantly superstitious. A person capable of pretending to be rehabilitated, while all the time embracing the perversity he’s claiming to have vanquished, is evil personified.

 

The besetting sin of the expert and professional is their hubristic belief that everything in nature can and should be brought under human control. Like Adam and Eve, tempted in Eden with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they have fallen for the Devil’s fatal pitch: “In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

 

All ordinary people know that the Devil lies.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 14 November 2014.