NZ Council for Civil Liberties

Round-up of civil liberty news from May 2013.

Criminal Justice

Government to look at law on revealing criminal backgrounds

Justice Minister Judith Collins and the Justice Ministry are considering a law change to allow police to flag criminal backgrounds to family members and others.

Ms Collins said she would like to ensure police can provide information to people who might be concerned about the behaviour of someone they're in a close relationship with.

Part of our Alternatives to Prison series by the Wellington Community Justice Project.

A key central theme in modern story telling is the idea of good and bad. In numerous crime dramas the hero will foil a criminal’s plot, with the ‘bad guy’ going to jail as a result.

Unfortunately reality is not always quite as black-and-white as this...

Part of our Alternatives to Prison series by the Wellington Community Justice Project.

New Zealand’s innovative approach to youth offending should be incorporated into the wider criminal justice system to reduce our ever-increasing prison population. While the prison muster for adult offenders has been rapidly increasing to fiscally unsustainable levels, New Zealand imprisons far fewer youth offenders than in the past. Despite this change, the rates of youth offending have not increased.

New Zealand desperately needs to re-evaluate current sentencing practices...

Part of our Alternatives to Prison series by the Wellington Community Justice Project.

Management courts are a special type of court which emphasise the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. The late prominent defence lawyer Greg King has advocated for the adoption of such courts in New Zealand, after seeing their operation in the United States. They are similar in principle to the drug courts recently established on a five-year pilot in New Zealand, in which offenders will be offered extensive rehabilitation and support alongside ongoing alcohol and drug testing....

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the Western world, while people are increasingly becoming aware that prison is often ineffective at limiting crime and rehabilitating offenders.

This report considers alternatives to imprisonment and makes a number of recommendations about how New Zealand can improve its justice and corrections systems in order to reduce crime, help offenders and save money.

The full report is attached to this post (PDF format).

Round-up of civil liberty news from April 2013.

Asylum

Amnesty International criticises New Zealand Government’s over refugees

Amnesty International has expressed its disappointment with the New Zealand Government’s decision to push forward with a Bill to introduce detention under a mass warrant for asylum seekers.

The IPCA have responded to our letter asking them to investigate the officers who deliberately hid their badge numbers while evicting the Occupy Auckland protesters in 2012.

They have refused our request, claiming that "the Authority has limited resources and can only direct its attention towards the most serious cases."