Thur 13 September 2018

Today we went up to Whangarei to meet and interview David Fisher, a senior writer for the NZ Herald.  David has been closely following the Criminal Justice Reform debate for some time and reporting on it in the Herald.

We meet at the Piggery 2^nd Hand Book Store (@piggerybooks) which was a really cool place run by his friend Chloe , a lovely lady who allowed us to shoot in her shop.

David is very well informed and you can read things he has written here – https://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/david-fisher/

Most of the people we have spoken with, including legal experts, academics, and people working on the ground, all speak of the crazy “race to the bottom” which political parties have engaged in over the past 15 years, trying to outbid each other for votes by promoting their “tough on crime” platforms. This has led to an extremely undesirable situation when New Zealand’s crime rate has been significantly declining, and yet the jails have been filling up at a faster rate and sentences have become much longer and more punitive. Many people who are interviewed feel less safe than they did 25 years ago and yet the murder rate has almost half over that period. This is largely being due to politicians and media sensationalizing crimes, particularly sentinel events, for the sake of votes or to increase their audience size.

The politicization of criminal justice is a very unintelligent way to deal with such a serious issue. We see that when the current government wants to try and seriously address the issue in order to make society safer, they are immediately attacked by the opposition and charged as being “soft on crime” which is a gross misrepresentation of the issue. David recently challenged the leader of the opposition, to prove his statement that longer and more punitive sentences reduce crime. Simon Bridges (the leader of the opposition) quoted a study that was done in Italy which turned out to disprove this reality, especially in the New Zealand environment. David wrote about this in an article titled – Simon Bridges’ ‘tough on crime proof’ — unpublished, not reviewed and doesn’t really back him up. I suggest you read it here – https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12116541

An extremely sensitive part of the conversation surrounding criminal justice reform is the huge overrepresentation of Maori in the system. While making up only 15% of the country’s population, they represent over 50% of the prison inmates. Of course, the very big and sensitive question is why? When you look at all the social indicators, Maori fall at the bottom of key statistics such as education, social support, health and employment. That alone should be very troubling for all NZ’s and we should be asking why this is and whether we as a society have any responsibility here.

When I asked David about this issue and about the systemic social bias, which began with colonization and continues up to today he responded with something which was deeply concerning. He stated that; “In the part of New Zealand where I live, it’s a community that’s predominantly pakeha, I think maybe 70 to 80% pakeha and 20 to 30% Maori, which is a higher percentage of Maori than many other parts of New Zealand. But there’s a town that’s 20 minutes drive away, where it’s reverse. If I were to sit down an 11-year-old boy from the other town next to my boy who’s 11, it would break my heart to say to that other boy, I’m really sorry, the chances that you’re going to finish school are so much lower than my son’s, it’s probably not going to happen. The chance of you going to prison is much higher. You’re going to die much younger. The opportunities that your children will have in life are going to be much, much less. Your chance of getting a job is lower, your chance of being unemployed is obviously much higher. The wage that you do earn, if you get a job, is going to be lower and your chance of owning a house, buying a house, it’s not very good, sorry. They only live 20 minutes apart, these kids. That’s obscene.”

I find that many of us can become too complacent, thinking that other people’s problems are theirs or the government’s to solve, and wanting to wash our hands of any direct or indirect responsibility for creating the society we live in, with its inequalities and imbalances. Definitely some serious food for thought.

This is also a really informative read – “Judge: Make New Zealand safer with shorter prison sentences, humane jails and less use of prisons.” https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12114971

On our 2nd day in Whakatane (Sat 08 Sept.) we were able to witness the fruit of the vision Paora (Black Power chapter leader) had back in 1992 when he decided that what was missing in the lives of the gang members and what could heal them was their Maori culture. Paora was not able to get the national leaders to buy into his dream at the time and so he took his own path of a very deep emotion into the culture and language he had not known as a child and young man growing up. We got to meet his elder son Raymond and next son Glenn (who has just come back from Australia), and hear from them what they witnessed as they grew up observing their father’s journey. They both spoke with great pride about what their father had given them, and how it had affected their lives. Now Paora and his sons play a unique role in sharing the deep traditions of their culture with their Marae and with the wider public in Whakatane.

Saturday morning was a regional junior rugby league tournament and festival. Teams of young players had come from around the region to Whakatane where the championship was held. In a tradition of the elders, the local young players along with Iwi leaders welcomed the different teams in the traditional way of their people.
Paora’s eldest son, Raymond, teachers kapa haka, taiaha, te reo Maori, and deeper culture to schoolchildren in Whakatane. He is incredibly dedicated to revitalizing the traditions and a deeper cultural understanding, especially with the young people, of the entire Maori culture. Today he led the young team members from Whakatane in a traditional welcoming of the other teams who are coming for the competition. They began by practicing at 7 am in order to be ready for the formal start of the program at 9 am.

While young boys performed a haka, C.K. (one of the BP younger generation we had interviewed yesterday, and who are setting a new course for the gang) performed the traditional challenge to the teams who were being welcomed. CK had learned the taiaha and how to perform the challenge from Raymond. CK concluded his challenge by placing a twig with leaves on the ground. Paora guided a young representative from the visitors to come forward and pick up the twig with leaves to show they had come in good faith. All the while, Raymond was leading the young boys from Whakatane in a challenging haka. One by one the visiting teams came forward and responded with their own haka. The Iwi elders then sang a welcoming waiata and Paora spoke in Te Reo Maori to welcome everyone. And an elder representative from the visitors responded and the games were declared open.

VIDEOS OF EVENT ON MY FB HERE –  https://www.facebook.com/Allan.Tibby.page/videos/2232918863606674/

It was very moving to see how a young man who was steeped in violent gang culture (Paora) who had this vision, and then dedicated himself over decades to not just familiarize himself, but to become deeply enriched with the intricacies of his lost culture, has gone on to make such a profound change in the lives of so many people. It is both truly inspiring and, if I were in government, I would really get behind and support as it clearly shows what can be done through vision and leadership.

Before leaving Whakatane, we went down to the beach at Ohope, and saw these amazing huge logs on the beach, which were carved with Maori design. Apparently, some local guy comes down to the beach and carves on logs that are washed ashore, and then when there are large tides and storms, they are picked up and washed to other parts of the coast. It was supercool to see.

Kingi is a criminal defence lawyer and youth advocate. Prior to starting as barrister, he worked for four years at the office of the Crown Solicitor for Auckland, Meredith Connell,  specialising in the prosecution of serious crime.  Kingi did a master’s degree at Harvard law school.

Super nice guy and very passionate about criminal justice reform with an emphasis on youth and preventing young Maori and Islanders from entering the “pipeline” which leads to a lifetime of offending and being locked up in our prisons.  Cool video of him here doing a TED Talk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A9ABdpibBw

We went to Hamilton to interview two incredible ladies, Nayda Te Rangi and Jane Stevens, who had formerly been connected with the Black Power and Mongrel Mob from a really early age.  They were also both involved in the Aroha Trust in Wellington in the 70’s, and their stories were included in an acclaimed book by Pip Desmond titled TRUST – A True Story of Women and Gangs.

Nayda’s partner was a Chapter President of the Mongrel Mob, but she eventually separated from him with her children to escape gang life and the cycle of Methamphetamine use of her partner and all the baggage that brought with it. She went on to put her children through school and returned to school herself. She graduated on the same day with one of her children.  She has written a paper for her masters titled “The Liberated Voice of Wāhine within a Gang Collective” and I would encourage you to read it online here – https://www.teipuwhakahauaa.co.nz/uploads/terangi/2016/1147_TeRangi2016.pdf  We interviewed her at the Waikato University where she is completing a degree and then went out to Ngaruawahia to interview Jane.

Jane and Nayda both share a history of experiencing institutional racism from a young age which is incredibly painful for young people. After enduring, then escaping, a childhood scarred with abuse, Jane found safety and security with the Aroha Trust, a work co-op set up by a group of women enmeshed in the gang scene. Wellington journalist Pip Desmond, herself a founding member of Aroha Trust, spent 11 years collecting the stories of the women involved and convincing them they needed to be told.

Jane told us a story she has shared with others before and which needs to be heard as it is a very common narrative amongst many people, both men and women, connected with gangs.

At 11 she was sexually abused by an art teacher. Two years later she was raped by a man in his mid-20s from a V8 gang. She was raped many times over the next decade – once by a gang associate but mostly by “respectable” men: a church worker, a St John Ambulance man who took her home from Girl Guides and a family acquaintance, among others. As a result, Jane went seriously off the rails, stealing, drinking, taking drugs, becoming violent. She was expelled from one high school for stabbing a classmate, then asked to leave the next after hitting a classmate.

“I was self-destructive, angry, I was just lashing out at the world, blaming myself for what had happened,” she says. “But at the time, and to this day, people never picked up on that, never looked at the reasons why I was acting that way.”

At 15, Jane began living at a halfway house run by youth worker Pip Desmond, who was little more than a teenager herself. When that didn’t work out and a brief time flatting was just as unsuccessful, 16-year-old Jane ran away to Wellington with a friend. There, her newfound freedom ended almost immediately when she was kidnapped by an older man she met at a pub. Jane was kept prisoner in his house for several weeks, during which time she desperately tried to get hold of Desmond, who had by then returned to Wellington and set up Aroha Trust.

Desmond finally made contact and, with the help of some of her Black Power connections, got Jane out. “Some of the boys came out and made the guy hand over my suitcases,” Jane recalls in Trust. “They did a big heavy on him. I remember thinking: wow, this is so cool having someone to stick up for me.”

It’s hard to understand how close contact with a group of widely feared and routinely violent men could be a good thing for such a vulnerable young woman, but Jane says it offered a measure of security. “For me, what was incredibly unsafe was mainstream society,” she says quietly. “Abuse came from people in positions of power, people who were supposed to be keeping me safe. Think about trying to report abuse of a parent or schoolteacher back then, or even now. You learn very quickly that you can’t tell anyone. Where do you go when the world that’s supposed to be safe for you is a place of danger?”

By comparison, living and working with the women of Aroha Trust – themselves all battle-scarred by tough upbringings, violence and cultural alienation – was “amazing”.