Post in Media complicit in crime reporting - Nigel Hampton
Noted penal reformer Nigel Hampton QC added a very useful 'different
perspective' to last weeks "Crime in Christchurch" Town Hall meeting hosted by
MP Nicky Wagner, accusing media 'of letting interest groups use them'.
It became obvious subsequently as media reports of the meeting itself omitted
to even mention the objective critique of key 'graphics' presented by Sensible
Sentencing Trust's Garth McVicar as so disengenuous to the truth of the matter
and significantly relevent to any understanding behind the growth in crime
(perceptions or otherwise) that one could understand Hampton's objection.
SST's 'timeline' graphics (see attachhed) attributed a number of social policy
initiatives introduced over the past fifty years. The slope of the graphic was
largely flat until 1975 and then it took a abrupt upturn more remiscent of Al
Gore's hockeystick. Projecting into the future, it infered that we are all
destined to be criminals at some time in the future. (patently untrue of
course, but hey, this all started out with Wagner and others reiterating the
old saw about lies, damned lies and statistics )
When yours truely pointed out that there was a grave ommision to the graphic,
namely the aggressive adoption of the USA trumpeted "War On Drugs" (MoD Act
1975) and that the failure to have the required conversation surrounding that
issue would impede any progress surround all the good intentions on 'crime
reduction' we have subsequently heard, primaraly from the PRESS, that District
Commander Dave Cliff's would be persuing 'cannabis' based on the tenuous
connections with gangs and money.
No media have cross checked this 'potted' policing policy initiative either
with the facts or those who speak to them.
No one has even questioned the efficacy implications of this (or of any of the
other suggestions like "tent prisons").
The cost to the public of each cannabis possesion offense is about $2500. The
fine plus costs is about $400. With NZ world record in consumption of cannabi
per capita and the highest arrest rate in the world, one would think such
vigourous enforcment would have all but eliminated cannabis from the Greenstone
Isle.
Some things begger description, "police drug intelligence' comes to mind.
Cannabis could not be more prevelent if it was made compulsory. However, such
enforcment as has been proposed is only likely to promulgate disproprtionate
'targeting' of the law on selected groups of people and accounts for racial and
class bias so readily feed back to us as "those people' who are the problem.
There is Hampton's media bias.
The media was not present at the UN NGO consultations on drug policy in
Wellington in February. Had they have been there they would have heard much the
same as Hampton's critique, but from a broader base of stakeholders none of
whom could be accused of financial self interest as SST have done so miserably
to Nigel "For Insulting Victims & Spinning The Stats" “Mr. Hampton has shown
that he’s not only deluded but he’s also self righteous and insensitive.”
“Nigel, we have had a gutsful of the PC environment you and a small, vocal,
deluded group helped create and continue to foster. The worst kind of
do-gooders. You claim to have worthy goals but they now appear to be important
sounding ideals thinly disguising access to the most lucrative of legal aid." -
[Watchdog Applauds Christchurch But Slams Lawyer/Scoop.co.nz 08.05.08].
Human Rights Watch, an international, independent nongovernmental organization,
found that Blacks are arrested and imprisoned for drug-related crimes at a much
higher rate than White offenders, even though Whites commit far more drug
offenses in the United States. In fact, the group says in its report, Targeting
Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States, a Black man is 12
times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than a White man, and
a Black woman is five times more likely to go to jail for a drug offense than a
White woman. (One in 15 Black men are locked up in the United States, compared
with one in 106 White men, the Pew Center research group found recently.)
Regretably, the data for New Zealand closely matches this disparity, Maori have
been found to be misrepresented in cannabis 'targeting' by a factor of seven
times. We know the prison data follows the same trend. )
Which makes the following paragraph highly relevent to the disturbing 'policy
on the fly' by Commander Cliff.
"The alarming increase in drug arrests since 1980, concentrated among
African-Americans, raises fundamental questions about fairness and justice,"
said Ryan King, policy analyst for The Sentencing Project and author of the
study, Disparity by Geography: The War on Drugs in America's Cities. "But even
more troubling is the fact that these trends come not as the result of higher
rates of drug use among African Americans, but, instead, the decisions by local
officials about where to pursue drug enforcement.”
Where the rules are the same, the shite is the same....
The following file was added to this topic:
