Defunding Cultural Reports plays well politically, but will it reduce crime? / A.J. Hendry

This week the Government announced an end to funding for Cultural Reports. The stated intention was to rebalance the scales in favour of victims, but will this policy achieve anything meaningful?

This week, as part of their intention to “crack down on crime” the Government announced their plan to scrap funding for S27 Cultural Reports. The Government expressed concern that the Cultural Reports, having originally been introduced to allow whānau or friends to provide the court with context to a person’s harmful behaviour, had resulted in reduced sentences and increased Government spending unnecessarily.

Alongside the concerns about Government spending, one of the Government’s key arguments for defunding cultural reports has been that they provide no value to victims and are only of benefit to people who have caused harm in our communities.

My experience has been different...

I have seen firsthand the value of cultural reports in providing important information to the court that has then enabled the judge to make an informed sentence.

For example, I think of young men with disabilities and complex mental health disorders who - without the report would not have gotten access to assessments, treatment, and support they needed to address the underlying factors contributing to their actions and harmful behaviours.

My concern with defunding them is that we lose an important mechanism that allows the court - and community - to understand the factors behind a person’s behaviour, and thus we weaken our ability to respond in a meaningful way in order to reduce and prevent further harmful behaviour.

Now I want to be clear, because during this debate calls to understand the factors that lead to harmful behaviour, have been twisted by supporters of Tough on Crime policies to insinuate that to do so is to justify and excuse behaviour that causes harm in our communities.

This is not the case.

If a person causes harm in the community, it is important that our justice system works to hold individuals accountable, ensures that justice is realized, makes right the wrong which has been done, and provides those who have been harmed with the support, care and resources they need to heal. It’s important to recognize that punitive Tough on Crime shaped justice systems (our current system included) do a very poor job at centring victims and empowering people to hold responsibility for their actions.

For those who welcome the loss of funding for Cultural Reports, the tough reality they need to face is, that despite how you might feel about someone who has caused harm in the community, ignoring the context of a person's offending only increases the risk of further offending.

Cultural Reports are valuable because they provide an opportunity to ensure the court has a more holistic understanding of what has gone on in a person’s life which in turn supports the court to make more accurate decision’s on what sentence will best serve.

I have known young people who would have gotten very perverse outcomes, and who would have continued causing harm in the community, if not for cultural reports which provided vital context to the offending, and equally highlighted key needs, which if met, would reduce offending.

From the kōrero I've heard, Minister’s Mark Mitchell & Paul Goldsmith acknowledge the value in the court being able to hear this information. The Government's concern appears to be largely about the ballooning costs and that the system may be being abused for financial gain due to an industry that has grown up around the reports. I couldn't speak to that, and if that is the case, we should tackle that problem.

However, many of those needing these reports are people experiencing poverty and extreme deprivation, meaning losing funding risks denying equal access to justice. We already have a problem where the quality of legal representation someone can access depends largely on their financial situation. I fear this decision will exacerbate this issue while also preventing opportunities for rehabilitation and recovery, which in the end will create less security for all of us in our communities.

One last note. The conversation so far appears to assume that justice and security within our communities cannot be achieved unless people go to prison for the maximum time. The focus seems to be on getting more people in prison, and on ensuring judges provide people with increased prison sentences. The stated goal is community safety and security. The problem is that prisons just don’t achieve this, not in the long run anyway.

Sure, people are locked up for a time, but they come out of prison eventually, and when they do, they are back in our communities. And often, whatever was going on in their lives which contributed to them causing harm has got a whole lot worse.

Whenever I hear politicians speak about "placing limits on the courts", I get concerned. Basically, this kōrero is stating that a politician in Wellington will be better placed to deliver a Just sentence than the judge who has heard all the evidence and context surrounding the offending.

This is not the case.

Such limits, including mandatory sentencing such as policies like Three Strikes, risk creating perverse outcomes that will inevitably lead to further offending and more victims.

The use of this whakaaro in the kōrero around cultural reports has ignored a clear and obvious reality. Cultural Reports don’t magically provide anyone reduced sentences. It’s not a 2+2 scenario, where you get a cultural report, pass it to a judge, and automatically you receive a reduced sentence.

No, the Reports allow the court to receive important evidence relating to a person’s life and situation, which than informs the court’s decision. What we are saying by defunding these reports, is that we are only going to allow you to provide this information to the court, if you have the financial means to do so. This policy will fall hardest on the poorest within our community, denying equal access to justice (a pillar of our justice system).

It is also important to recognize that the rhetoric employed so far attacks not just our legal professionals, but the validity of our justice system itself. Judges are intelligent, experienced, professionals, the idea that they are being snookered by these reports, and that the court is so easily manipulated, is not just offensive but questions the stability of our entire justice system.

If the courts can be so easily fooled, than we have much bigger issues than Cultural Reports to deal with.

There is no silver bullet to reducing crime.

And, keeping people out of prison is not a bad thing, as long as we have the right support, systems, and information to support people to make better decisions, heal, and recover.

 Ironically, cultural reports are pivotal in providing the sort of information needed for communities to support their people to reduce and prevent harmful behaviour from continuing.

Again, as we have said throughout this debate. If we want to address these challenges in any meaningful way, we must understand the problem, and then respond appropriately.

A party that is serious about reducing reoffending will ensure the courts - and community - have the resources to respond adequately to the needs of people who offend.

We do not reduce reoffending by piling people into prison. We kick the can down the road and ensure more offending will occur in the future.

If we want to reduce offending, we must stop reacting to crime, and instead seek to understand what is happening - both in a person’s life and in our communities – and then respond appropriately.

We don’t make things better by ignoring reality.

A practical, no-nonsense approach to crime, faces head on the factors that lie behind them. And has the courage to deal with them.

A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads Kick Back, a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.