By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

Reform Bill). The Trust made submissions to the law and order select committeeemphasising the need for ‘common sense’, and for harsher sentencing to prevail(Select Committee News, 2001) 30 . The power of the Trust was illustrated incomments made by Justice Minister Phil Goff when he stated: ‘I correspondfrequently with the Sensible Sentencing Trust’ (New Zealand Parliament, 2002e:Par. 2), noting further that this group, along with Norm Withers, had shown itssupport for the legislation he had introduced (New Zealand Parliament, 2001b). Thereference to the Trust by politicians (in particular by United Future member MarcAlexander who was sworn in to parliament as a representative of the SensibleSentencing Trust, giving the group an automatic voice within parliament) once againreaffirmed its authority as a powerful and influential pressure group withinNew Zealand society.While the power of the Sensible Sentencing Trust usually meant that political partieswere uncritical of it, it was still prepared to attack any political party, be it right orleft­wing, whose policies were not in line with its own political agenda. In the leadup to the 2005 election, for example, the Trust named the parties that did not endorsepunitive policies in a campaign titled ‘Victims before criminals’ (McVicar, 2005b:Par. 4). The campaign involved a television advertisement featuring victims’ familiesand grew out of the frustration felt by the Trust towards a government that appeared‘not to be listening’ (McVicar, 2005b: Par. 7), despite the way in which politicalparties had tried to position themselves much more closely to the Trust since 2002.Its expectations were, and continue to be, of such an absolute standard that they arelikely never to be met. The Trust has visions of a ‘crime­free’ New Zealand (SelectCommittee News, 2001: Section 3), a ‘paradise’ (quoted in McVicar, 2007a) whereall the ‘scumbags’ (Sensible Sentencing Trust, n.d: Par. 27) are behind bars while allthe ‘ordinary’ citizens are free to live their lives without fear. This idealised societyis unattainable, yet the Sensible Sentencing Trust has increasingly set this standardfor the public to judge politicians by, and for politicians to aspire to, for fear oflosing public support.30The Select Committee News material does not purport to being an ‘official’ record of SelectCommittee minutes (Select Committee News, 2001).63