By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

The thesis has explained and analysed the consolidation of the Sensible SentencingTrust in New Zealand and the influence it has had in penal policy development. As adepiction of the force of penal populism in New Zealand, the Sensible SentencingTrust has secured itself a position in the public and political arena, unlike morefragile pressure groups, which coalesce very quickly then soon disappear. Theauthority it has gained as a perceived representative voice for victims means itsviews are increasingly used in the media. Furthermore, politicians continue to alignthemselves with the Trust to show they are committed to victims of crime. Overall,this looks set to continue as the National Party has promised to place the victim atthe centre of the criminal justice system (Power, 2008a).The thesis has also explained the changing role of the victim in the criminal justicesystem, where the victim has become central to public and political debate onsentencing and penal policy. The present government’s priorities could not havebeen clearer when, after coming to power, it announced that the $5.8 million setaside for the Sentencing Council, the project of the previous Labour government,along with the $90,000 that was to be spent on the Criminal Justice Advisory Boardannually (Power, 2009), would be used to establish a Victims’ CompensationScheme. Along with this, the government has pledged to bring ‘fairness’ back to thecriminal justice system, a fairness that involves prioritising the rights of victimsrather than their offenders (Power, 2008b). This, however, seems likely to be anotherset of symbolic gestures made by the government to crime victims, where theyreceive only token compensation (while all convicted offenders at sentencing alsohaving to pay a $50 levy for the victim fund). This will once again raise publicexpectations surrounding victims’ rights, as was the case with the Victims RightsAct 2002, giving further momentum to the Sensible Sentencing Trust and populistforces. Justice Minister Simon Power, for example, states that ‘[f]airness is theexpectation that criminals don’t get more rights than their victims’, and further, thatfairness was the government responding to public fears about crime (Power, 2008b:Par. 5). What can be seen, therefore, is a return to the constraints of penal populism,where the definition of ‘fairness’ in contemporary New Zealand involves degradingthe rights of offenders if this favours victims.103