By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

stories (second behind sport), 55 percent of these stories were on violent crime, 25percent were regarding non­violent crime and 20 percent were stories on prisons(Atkinson, 2002). Similarly, a study by McGregor (2002) found that on two days inone week the New Zealand Herald (the largest circulation daily newspaper) carried55.6 percent and 46.9 percent crime news.Lack of trust in the democratic processDuring the 1990s, despite the overall decline in crime that was beginning to takeplace, the increased visibility of crime, particularly serious crime, meant politiciansbegan implementing piecemeal legislation to show they were listening to theconcerned public. In 1992, the Criminal Justice Law Reform Bill was proposed (butwas consequently not enacted) by the National government to provide the publicwith better protection ‘particularly from violent crime’ (New Zealand Parliament,1992: Intro). It was proposed amidst concern over a series of violent killings that hadtaken place, such as the mass killing of thirteen people by David Gray ("Tragedy atAramoana," 1990) 16 . At this time, a Report of the Ministerial Committee of Inquiryinto Violence was also undertaken to address violent crime and the report noted that‘[t]he public, through the submissions made to this Committee, has expressed itsconcern at the increase in violence and has called on it to find solutions’ (quoted inNew Zealand Parliament, 1993a: Par. 1). The National Party also made adjustmentsto parole, which meant courts were now able to impose ‘non­parole periods forserious violent offenders’ (New Zealand National Party, 1993: 12). These legislativechanges, driven by expediency, marked the beginnings of the influence of publicsentiments on legislation.Another significant event that changed the role of the public in the political arenaconcerned the electoral process in New Zealand. This occurred in 1985 when theRoyal Commission on the Electoral System (hereafter referred to as the RoyalCommission) was established amid concern ‘that it was time a far­reaching andsearching examination of [New Zealand’s] electoral system was undertaken’ (TheRoyal Commission on the Electoral System, 1986: 1). It was felt by some membersof the Labour government that the egalitarianism and fairness that had been a16This event occurred in Aramoana on 13 November 1990 when David Gray shot dead thirteenresidents before being found and shot dead by police the following day ("Hours of terror end," 1990).36