By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

It is very obvious why punishment did not appear in the purposes orthe principles of sentencing. The reason is that this Government doesnot believe in it. This Government believes that criminals are classvictims; that they are victims of the oppressive, ordinary folk­­­the 92percent (who voted in favour of the referendum). This Government isembarrassed about punishment.(New Zealand Parliament, 2002c: Par. 13)The Sentencing Act was used to satisfy public expectation, showing that thegovernment was able to deliver on punitivity. However, the penal environmentmeant oppositional MPs continued to emphasise the more lenient aspects of the Actto prove that the government was not, in fact, punitive, and nor was it in line withpublic sentiment and mood.Tough talking politicsIn this environment, the two main political parties competed with each other to ‘gettough’ on crime. The inclusion of aggravating factors in the Sentencing Act wasthought to ‘considerably toughen the current sentencing and parole system’ and wassubsequently given the most prominence by the Labour Party (New ZealandParliament, 2002d: Par. 1). Such factors included acts of serious brutality, multiplemurders, or instances where the age or health of the victim made them particularlyvulnerable ("Sentencing Act," 2002). Furthermore, section 9 of the Sentencing Actalso outlines any relevant aspects of the offender’s criminal record (includingelements such as number of offences, date, and nature of previous convictions). Ifone or more of these aggravating factors is present when sentencing, those on trialreceive a seventeen year non­parole period of imprisonment, substantially increasingthe penalty for murder (in the 1980s, the average non­parole period was ten years)("Sentencing Act," 2002). These factors were used by the Labour Party to show how‘tough on crime’ it really was, with Justice Minister Phil Goff stating: ‘thislegislation makes the penalties for those guilty of the worst forms of murder withaggravating factors much, much tougher’ (New Zealand Parliament, 2002c: Par. 4,emphasis added). The government was doing everything in its power to emphasisethe punitive aspects of the legislation, even if, in reality, these would affectcomparatively few cases.68