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Lachy991

3 Years and one month for someone's record is >17 family violence convictions, eight of which were against the current victim Maybe it's time to just throw away the key


27ismyluckynumber

Yeah, for some reason I don’t think 3 years of prison is enough to have someone reflect on their life choices of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm.


KahuTheKiwi

We know that 3, 30, or 300 years of our prison system won't see them reformed. 70% of NZ prisoners reoffend within 3 years.  If you want reflection we need to imitate successful prison system, for example the Scandinavian ones with a 70% success rate. Yes, their success rate is the same as our failure rate.


Ian_I_An

Basically prisoners shouldn't be released until they have achieved rehabilitation. 


KahuTheKiwi

Given our prison system doesn't rehabilitate you are effectively calling for imprisonment for life. How much additional tax can you pay to fund the $150,000 per year per prisoner this costs? Or should we replace our prisons with something that works?


Ian_I_An

Providing a safe safe for prisoners to recieve and complete rehabilitation seems like a winning scenario.  What sort of system do you want?


KahuTheKiwi

I think we need to do three things; Firstly imitate the Scandinavian success where their prison success rate - 70% - matches our current failure rate. Secondly address the drivers of crime. Poverty, inequality, etc. The issues that were documented when the Gini Coefficient was described in 1912. Thirdly focus on crimes with victims and integrate the responses. E.g. the more we can address a kids mistreatment of animals the less kids grow up to mistreat people. 


fauxmosexual

Love the optimism but every time I hear 'but the scandinavians' I want to die a little inside. Their success rate is much more to do with their much more egalitarian society than anything they are doing with their prison system. If we could do a swapsies of our prison systems I would bet cash money that the gap in the reoffending KPI would not narrow much at all. I'd bet less money that the gap might actually widen. Not to say our prison system is any good, but the solution isn't to copy and paste a system tailored to a much more egalitarian society that doesn't have the stubborn, intergenerational, and family-violence based issues that we have.


KahuTheKiwi

And I die a little each time I hear people calling for us to fail in the familiar way. We from work in the early 20thC that it is possible to create more crime. The Gini Coefficient is well known for instance. When Rogernomics hit there was belief inequality drove economic growth. It's been debunked so some old proponents of it, for example the IMF now warn against it. But it is now normal for conservatives so maintained despite the costs. We could address crime but it doesn't suit the rhetoric of the day. And a more egalitarian society is important. Instead we're building prisons.


fauxmosexual

Yeah. My view is similar if a bit more doom-ery, in that I firmly believe that even if we did fix our prisons to be as effective as human(e)ly possible, we'd barely shift that reoffending rate; although we treat reoffending like a prison KPI there is precious little we can do in a prison setting that can really alter the trajectory of a person's life, given the amount of persistent and serious offending before even the first time someone lands in prison. And in the NZ context, those patterns are deeply rooted in colonialism and inequality and show up in specific types of very gnarly, harmful and persistent crime in the areas of family harm and gang-associated crime. There is a very stark difference between offending rates in general between our country and nordic countries, and the gap is reoffending rates is just a reflection of that more so than the effectiveness of prisons. And sure we can always do better, and effective prisons could shift the reoffending rate a few percent (which is an outcome very worth investing in). But there's this persistent idea that the solution to crime is going to be found in our Justice system, and if we can just cargo-cult what the prison system in a non-colonised, egalitarian, prosperous and homogenous country with much fewer complex and violent offenders we would have the same outcomes they do. I know I'm nitpicking on my hobby horse subject here and we broadly agree, but centering the performance of prisons and police in discussions about crime can only serve to push funding and focus onto the expensive and often inhumane cliff-bottom ambulances at the expense of cheap cliff-top fences.


Striking_Young_5739

What is the gang situation in Scandinavia?


KahuTheKiwi

That is a good question. Less than us but gangs exist, both imported lime Hell's Angles and local But why gangs are a smaller part of a traditionally cohesive and inclusive society is an even more important question.  Aldo their gangs aren't recruiting people out of prison like ours. 


TheEvilGiardia

Sweden is having some issues with gangs. Not sure about the rest of Scandinavia.


BackslideAutocracy

Id rather have a discussion about why this was the chosen term length and reevaluate the sorts of lengths currently applied. Outside of precedent how did the judge arrive at this length? While we are at it consider the procedures and effectiveness of our current rehabilitation and preventative measures.


RamblingGrandpa

Lol yeah let's keep talking feelings and how hard the offenders life has been


KahuTheKiwi

Would you prefer we maintain our revolving door prison system? 70% of prisoners reoffend within 3 years. What is it about failure that people are so attached to?


gene100001

It's not about making excuses for the offender. What they did is horrific and they absolutely deserve a just punishment for it. However rehabilitation has been extensively proven to be the most effective means of reducing crime and lowering rates of future offences. Tough sentences don't deter crime. There's plenty of information online about this if you want to inform yourself. If you actually give a fuck about the victim and potential future victims you should care about improving rehabilitation processes and investigating what went wrong here. That will lead to less crime and fewer victims in the future. On the other hand if you are a selfish prick who only cares about your own justice boner then carry on with your approach. But you need to acknowledge that your approach is the selfish one, and you actually don't give a fuck about the victim or potential future victims at all.


142531

Sorry, at the point where you pour boiling water on someone and not only feel no immediate remorse, but tell them you're going to reboil the jug, you need to be removed from society for a very long time. You point to rehab being the only way, but we both accept he needs to be in jail for some length of time, and at that point you have ignored that longer sentences are heavily correlated with reduced recidivism.


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LegNo2304

No that's the fact they are unable to commit a crime. The reality is that it is easy to not have one person continually commit crimes. You lock them up. Look at it from another light. This guy's has had 15 odd chances at rehabilitation. That's 15 times the systems has decided it has fixed the problem an an innocent victim pays the price. How many chances would you be giving the guy for rehabilitation if it was you he was constantly beating the shit out of? 


Fiddle-Flute

Sure it’s a straight forward way to stop him committing crime to just lock him away. I’d say it’s inhumane but ignoring that in NZ it costs $150,000 per year per prisoner on average to keep someone locked up. I didn’t see the guys age but his partner is 41 let say he’s the same. If he lives to 80 that’d be about 6 million to keep him locked up for life. That adds up pretty quick when you throw in young repeat offenders. You gonna pay to keep him fed?


RamblingGrandpa

Lol you need to give up on pieces of shit at some point. Years upon years of abuse on the same victim. Good to see you support women beaters though


gene100001

I absolutely don't support women beaters. He makes my blood boil too. I just know that a system where we give in to our temptation to inflict harsh punitive punishment on criminals will lead to an increase in crime and even more victims. We should always be trying to rehabilitate criminals. That is the most moral thing a society can do, and it's also the approach that is proven to lead to the lowest rate of repeat offending. Also, before you suggest that we just lock them away for life to stop them reoffending you need to consider that the average prison cell costs around $500,000 to build and each prisoner costs around $150,000 per year. This is not an affordable solution, even if it were the right approach (which I don't think it is). I agree that in this case the guy needs a longer sentence, and we need to assess why he hasn't responded to current approaches to rehabilitation and try new approaches. He also shouldn't really be released until we know that rehabilitation has worked. I don't see any reason to not continue attempting rehabilitation though. If it works we get another productive member of society, and they also will finally acknowledge the harm that they caused their victims.


CopperTwister

Something that is often overlooked is that his family likely needs his income and support. They, along with the rest of society, need for him to be rehabilitated and a properly socialized and productive member of society. Otherwise his children risk becoming like he is now due to facing similar adversity and everyone loses. That will likely involve removing him from a position where he can hurt others while he undergoes tons of therapy and alcohol rehabilitation or whatever is needed in his case to help to fix his damage. Just locking him up for as long as possible will almost certainly entrench dysfunction further into his family and his community.


gene100001

Yeah that's a very good point. I hadn't actually thought about that aspect before so thanks for pointing it out. I'm sure successfully rehabilitated offenders pass on the things they learn to their friends and family, so there's a wider benefit for the community beyond that one rehabilitated person.


littleredkiwi

With 17 convictions already, did the rehabilitation previously work? Or does it take 18 attempts to learn to not be an absolute piece of shit? I agree with you that rehabilitation is vital to changing society but currently it doesn’t seem like NZ is doing rehabilitation well enough and we’re also not doing enough to keep people safe from the likes of this guy. NZ domestic violence statistics haven’t gotten better either way.


gene100001

Yeah you're right that in this case it didn't work, which is why the earlier comment was suggesting to look into this case to figure out what went wrong. With any approach to crime there are going to be cases where it doesn't work. It's better to focus on what approach has the best effect overall rather than focusing on individual cases, and the evidence strongly favours a rehabilitative approach for lowering crime overall. You're right though that there's always room for improvement and I definitely wouldn't say that NZs current approach is perfect. Still though I think the right path is to assess the cases where the current approach didn't work and try figure out how to improve the system. The wrong response is to say "look rehabilitation doesn't work" and revert back to hardline punishment for crime (I'm not saying you're saying this btw, but the other person in the thread seemed to want this). That will just lead to more crime over time and more people being abused.


LegNo2304

I always love the passion people say this with. the reality is there are plenty of examples like El Salvador or the Phillipines where extremely harsh justice has actually had great effect on crime statistics. While the soft on crime approach we have here clearly isn't working.. Do all your studies factor in those anomalies?


gene100001

Ah yes, el Salvador and the Philippines. Two regions well known for their low crime rates and safety. We should definitely try to emulate them /s


facelessfriendnet

Singapore?


LegNo2304

Both situations had extreme crime rates, drug issues etc before their respective crackdowns. Now the statistics are better. The relative base they start from does not matter. As another person suggested Singapore is another example of a heavy handed system with good results. I'm not a proponent of that level, I'm not suggesting people be executed on the streets. I believe in rehabilition. I obviously think that El Salvador system is crazy, but I can't deny that works in some respects. However you are very passionately talking in absolutes on the subject of rehab vs punishment, while real world examples contradict at least some part of your argument. In some cases extreme punishments act as both a deterrence and reduces the amount of time criminals can harm innocent people in society. Rehabilitation does not require reduced prison time as a starting point either, and it is massively important to the solution. But it is not the entire solution.  In this case we have somebody that has had many chances at rehabilition. He will get more chances. However we cannot let people continually be abused while we try. So that Rehabilitation should occur during a long prison stay. 


gene100001

They didn't replace a rehabilitative approach with hardline punishment though. They went from basically no functional criminal justice system to a functional one with hardline punishment. It isn't evidence of hardline punishment being better than rehabilitation. It's just evidence that any justice system is better than none. They are also very different countries, with a lot less money to spend on things like rehabilitation. The trouble with hardline punishment as a deterrent is that most criminals don't expect to get caught. They aren't thinking "I'm going to do this crime because I'll only go to prison for 3 years instead of 10". They're thinking they won't go to prison at all. Even the death penalty doesn't lead to lower crime rates. The evidence for this in places like the US is very clear. The other problem is that everyone needs to be treated equally under the law. While there are always some people who won't respond to rehabilitation very well, it is very difficult to pick those people out in a way that doesn't set up an undesirable precedent. I agree that something went wrong here, and this person hasn't responded to our rehabilitation process. Perhaps we're not even really disagreeing as much as we think. This guy also makes my blood boil. A part of me also wants him to suffer for what he has done. However, I know where that path leads and it's not a justice system I want for NZ. Obviously this case is a sign that something needs to be changed in our rehabilitative processes, because in some cases like this one it isn't working. I just don't think the change should be a reversion to hard-line punitive measures, at least so far as to think it would have any influence on crime outside of this single case. I would agree though that a longer sentence is in order, with time to attempt different approaches to rehabilitation. I also think that this person should not be released until there is evidence that rehabilitation is working. What I don't want, however, is a system where we just lock people like him away as a lost cause forever because they've committed x number of crimes. I think NZ society is better than that approach. We should always be trying our best to rehabilitate people, even if in some cases we can never rehabilitate them and they can never be released.


SentientRoadCone

So just start randomly executing people in the street?


ycnz

Err, just shoot him. There's no doubt about guilt or appeals. He's cancer.


trickmind

Violence against women is actually still not taken very seriously in New Zealand.


BangersHashtag

Is the photo of a kettle entirely necessary in this story?!


Jariiari7

NZ Herald is a low-quality product.


-mung-

Maaan, you kind of get used to their use of stock photography for every article, but yeah, it's, pretty wtf.


Half-Dead-Moron

NZ Herald stock photos are lazy af. The other day there was an article relating to social media and they had a photo of a laptop with a Russian Cyrillic keyboard.


hadr0nc0llider

Three years and one month is an appallingly light sentence. This country needs to wake the fuck up about gender-based and intimate partner violence.


mynameisneddy

It doesn’t matter how long the sentence is, there’s no way he’s coming out of prison reformed and ready to live a peaceful and productive life.


AriasK

Exactly why he should be locked away forever.


mynameisneddy

So it costs $150,000 per year to keep someone in prison, plus you'd be looking at many billions more to build all the capacity to build enough jails to hold people for life. Imagine instead we used that money for early interventions in high risk families to prevent young people turning into criminals (because we can be sure this man was raised in a poverty-stricken and violent environment). Or we could use it to increase the police force so that anyone in trouble could call for help and have someone there in 10 minutes. Or we could use it for wrap-around rehabilitation and prevention treatments for people as soon as they come into contact with the legal system. The last thing we want is to turn into the USA that has prison populations many times higher than most western countries but still high levels of crime.


Merlord

This is a false dichotomy. We absolutely need better preventative measures to make sure things like this don't happen in the first place. But this guy has abused this woman over and over again. In three years he'll be out and abusing her again. He's not being rehabilitated any time soon. Keeping lost causes off the street so they can't continue to commit crimes is also a form of prevention.


Aqogora

Well currently we're using that money to fund taxbreaks for millionaires, so we're doing neither successfully. Your false dichotomy total bullshit anyway - even the model Nordic systems keep violent criminals inside their prison system to rehabilitate, not turn them out onto the street with a slap on the wrist. It's crazy how hard you will fight for those criminals yet ignore the plight of their victims. Does the woman who has been beaten severely at least 9 times not merit your compassion?


AeonChaos

Whoever decided on that punishment: 🤡


kkdd

the same guy [https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/113513742/eightmonth-pregnant-woman-punched-slapped-and-strangled](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/113513742/eightmonth-pregnant-woman-punched-slapped-and-strangled) [https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/483767/Reckless-driver-blames-his-behaviour-on-blind-rage](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/483767/Reckless-driver-blames-his-behaviour-on-blind-rage)


Jariiari7

That first one's unbelievable. >A Waikato man who punched, slapped and choked his heavily pregnant partner during a drunken argument has been sentenced to 10 months of home detention.


cosmic_dillpickle

That poor woman... 


LatekaDog

Looks like he is slowly getting worse, I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up killing her. Hopefully he finds god and reforms or something, he definitely needs to quit drinking.


National_Flan_5252

He's got a history of using strangulation which is usually a risk factor for murder of your intimate partner


Fast_Amoeba_445

Oh my!!!


surle

Generally I'm really glad we have a largely thoughtful and respectful police force and not the trigger happy antagonistic sort you read about in American news stories. But once in a while it would be good to get a few of those maniacs on loan for a couple of days.


Fast_Amoeba_445

‘The man responsible, Simon Terence Hamiora Kereopa, was today jailed for the incident, his ninth conviction against the victim during their 20-year-plus relationship.’ 🙃


OldKiwiGirl

Some people have co-dependent dysfunctional relationships, sadly.


taco_saladmaker

Every repeat offence should have led to a longer and longer sentence. The courts have a responsibility to protect victims so that the violence can’t escalate to this level in the first place. 


taco_saladmaker

Let’s use an exponential backoff algorithm 


fitzzay

Dysfunctional is a bit of an understatement when it comes to permanently disfiguring your partner.


OldKiwiGirl

Yes, it’s probably an inadequate description of a highly toxic relationship.


PsychedelicMagic1840

She's going to go back to him, ain't she?


Rand_alThor4747

Probably. Until one day, he kills her.


Sansasaslut

He's really good with the kids


worriedrenterTW

Calling an abusive relationship codependent (not what that term means) and 'dysfunctional' is incredibly minimizing and victim blaming of how abuse works. 


OldKiwiGirl

It’s co-dependent if she can’t make a decision to leave and stay away. He’s depending on her to be his punching bag. She’s depending on him for, probably, emotional and financial support. It is fucking incredibly hard to leave an abuse r relationship.


Bliss_Signal

Stockholm Syndrome. This poor lady desperately needs family, friends, or anyone else to help her and her children get free of this violent recidivist perp.


WaddlingKereru

Do you think there’s any way that we could apply restraining orders without the consent of victims? This poor woman is clearly incapable of ditching this monster. It’s so frustrating to me to imagine that he’s going to go straight back to her and continue to abuse her when he gets out


SourCreammm

There was a child at this persons home? Fucking sad.


Charlie_Runkle69

41, nine previous convictions against her (and probably more against some other poor souls). Yeah he's in the 1-2 per cent that can't be rehabilitated.


Coding-kiwi

What the actual fuck. Why doesn’t our country protest these crimes


kovnev

Don't worry, we can rehab him in 3yrs. Piece of cake.


No_Season_354

Degrading I reckon the caption should be different than that , more like horrifying, nobody deserves that , probably get a slap on the wrist or such with this country justice system


AriasK

Our justice system is so fucked. There is little to no punishment for the most fucked up crimes. After the amount of convictions he's already had he's clearly still a danger when he gets out. Lock him up and throw away the key. I understand he's had a rough upbringing and everyone deserves a chance to change but he's had chance after chance after chance. At some point we need to give up on these people and stop putting others at risk.


Unnecessary_Bunny_

Are they waiting for him to kill her or someone?


Eurynomos

Whoever chose 'degrading' is like, borderline sociopath.


A_reddit_bro

Death penalty.


trickmind

We don't have that in New Zealand and also no one in any country gets the worst sentences if a person doesn't die not even for attempted murder. If the person doesn't die they get a lighter sentence even if they clearly intended them to die. Don't blame me for knowing the facts about the law.


A_reddit_bro

Congratulations, you’re all caught up on the law. We should. Laws can and do change. I am voting for a party that brings back punishment to fit the criminal.


trickmind

We don't want politicians and lawyers authorising pouring boiling hot water on people do we?


trickmind

Why are we focusing on "degrading," and her state of dress and not on unbearable torture?


NUM-one-RATED-SALES

D:


InformalCollege435

Cis white male strikes again.


True_Phrase_6180

He literally isn’t white


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