Every violent act must be punished

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 21

Every violent act must be punished

Now all the trust needs is the money to put this goal into effect. (In the 1970 s I argued that this should be the goal of the women’s refuges but the refuges never succeeded in attracting battered women workers and have become increasingly irrelevant in the fight against violence.) Another thing that we can do is to encourage the development of a nation-wide network of parent support groups (like our local Parentline). These groups are needed so that parents who are having trouble in managing their children can get in touch with and get help from parents who are good at managing children.

Where both parents are violent, or the child is being badly neglected, then the only alternative is good foster care for the child. This will mean putting considerably more money into foster care than is at present the case.

Because teachers are often the first to notice the development of violent behaviour in children, we must also insist that the Department of Education train our teachers so that every teacher is competent in straightening out violent children. We know from overseas research how to straighten out violent children. All that is needed is to make sure that every teacher acquires these skills. If we want to eliminate violent offending we must tell our teachers that we want them to put just as much time and effort into producing non-violent children as they put into producing children who can read. The second thing that we must do as a community is to stop ignoring and stop making excuses for the violence which is occurring in our community. Everyone must start showing their disapproval, not only of the assaults by strangers, but of all assaults regardless of who is doing the assaulting and regardless of where the f attack is

occurring. We see an assault in the street and turn the other way. We hear someone being beaten up next door and do nothing. Children turn up to school battered and bruised and nothing happens. It is possible to get off assault charges, injuring charges, and even murder charges, if you can persuade the jury that the person you injured or killed “provoked” you into doing what you did,

The victims of violence think that you do not care. Rape victims are reporting only a tiny fraction of rapes to the police. Battered wives report less than five per cent of their assaults to the police. Something less than one per cent of the beatings and rapes experienced by children are reported to the police. As long as we continue to turn a blind eye to 90 per cent of the violence in our community, all attempts to reduce the level of violence will fail. They will fail because 90 per cent of violence will continue to go unreported and unpenalised. There are many things that we can do to change this state of affairs. We can support our neighbours in their efforts to set up a Neighbourhood Watch or Neighbourhood Support Group. Every neighbourhood should have at least a Neighbourhood Watch scheme in operation. Further information is available from the police.

Each one of us must start reporting each rape, each assault, each wife assault, and each case of child abuse which comes to our attention. It will not be easy. Many of us still redefine family assaults as “family disputes” and use this as an excuse to do nothing. Each time we do nothing, we condone the assault, we give our tacit support to the offender, and we forfeit the right to complain in any way about the level of violence in our community. We must teach those who are most likely to become the victims of violence (young women)

how to recognise and how to avoid involvement with violent males so that the pool of potential victims is greatly reduced. The Battered Women’s Support Group is preparing an educational programme for secondary pupils which is designed to teach all teen-agers how to avoid falling prey to the violent offenders in our society. All that is required is enough money to print the booklets and buy the videotapes which are needed. Most importantly of all, we must persuade our politicians (on both sides of the Beehive) to change the law. We must remove the defence of provocation from the law of assault, from the serious assault laws, and from the law relating to murder. This will cost us nothing and it can be done tomorrow.

This change would do more to change our attitudes towards violence than a million dollars worth of advertising. This change would make all violent persons responsible for their own violence. No longer would it be possible for violent persons to blame anyone except themselves for the violent acts which they have committed. For those adults and young adults who have already been raised as violent offenders, punishment must be swift and effective. Punishment will only function to reduce violent offending if the following rules are applied in all cases: 1. Each violent act must be reported and punished. 2. The punishment must be administered as soon as possible after the violent act. 3. The punishment must be something which is highly unpleasant to the person concerned (unpleasant enough to motivate a desire for

The punishment must be a non-violent punishment — otherwise we are no better than the violent offenders we are complaining about. To meet the first condition, each one of us will have to begin reporting each and every violent act that occurs in our community. The number of police will have to be temporarily increased to cope with the increased workload, and the Courts will probably have to start working two shifts. In order to meet the second condition, present Court procedures will have to be radically changed. At present, even a simple assault can take months to come to Court and a murder can take the best part of a year. These procedures will have to be changed so that each person who is charged with a violent offence can be brought to trial within, say, 10 days and sentenced no more than a few days later. The only exception to this general rule should be in those cases where either the victim has been wounded to such an extent that they need more than 10 days in which to recover, or the victim has been killed and the police need more time in which to construct their case.

Punishment only works if it is experienced as highly unpleasant. To meet this condition, we will need to eliminate all the soft option penalties (probation, fines, and periodic detention) for violent offences and make a number of changes to the running of our prisons. Prisons should be made into places which are much less pleasant to stay in than is now the case. All recreational activities and all social interaction should be eliminated. A stay in prison should be a constant reminder that the community no longer tolerates violence. It prisons were particularly unpleasant places, the length of sentence for ordinary assaults could be reduced to a few weeks, and for more serious assaults to q few

months. A short stay in unpleasant surroundings would be just as effective in motivating the offender to reform as a much longer stay in comfortable surroundings. Given appropriate retraining, approximately one-half of our violent offenders could be rehabilitated. It follows that a behavioural retraining programme should be attached to each of the short-stay prisons, and that each convicted offender should have the right to enrol in that retraining programme.

While we know how these programmes should be set up, we have in New Zealand at the present time less than a dozen psychologists with the behavioural retraining qualifications required to operate such a programme. Overcoming this lack of qualified personnel will cost money. It is one of the major hurdles to be overcome if we are to reduce the level of violent offending in our community. Some of our violent offenders were so badly damaged as children that they now lack any motivation to bring their violence under control. These offenders will be undeterred by short-stay prison sentences and will probably not even bother to enrol in the retraining programmes. Those that do will often prove to be untrainable. These offenders will continue to offend. For these offenders we will need to retain, .for at least one generation, our long-term, maximum security prisons. I envisage that a sentence to a long-stay prison will be a life sentence in all cases. A sentence to a longstay prison should be imposed only on those offenders who have proved themselves to be incapable of reform and

should be imposed on all offenders who, during previous short-term sentences, have shown themselves to be incapable of reform. Because the long-stay prisons would be receiving only unreformable violent offenders there would be no need for any educational or therapeutic programmes in these institutions. Their purpose would simply be to remove from society the unreformable violent offenders. The point at which this option should be invoked in any individual case can be left for public discussion. The fairest procedure would be to operate a points system. Violent offenders would accumulate points in the following ways: Each violent offence conviction would add a certain number of points to your total. Serious offences (such as raping or wounding your wife) would add more points to your total than minor offences (like punching your neighbour). Once you had accumulated a certain number of points, you would be sent away for life regardless of the nature of the offence that put you over the legal limit A change in community attitude towards the reporting of violence, together with the proposed criminal justice reforms, would considerably reduce the amount of violence committed by the present generation of violent offenders. But these reforms alone cannot create a non-violent society. A non-violent society is only possible if we do a better job of raising our children. If we fail to identify those children who are already developing violent attitudes and violent behaviour, or if we fail to provide adequate help to the parents of these children, then we will fail to make any permanent reduction in the level of violence in our society.

Unpleasant punishment

Those who are untrainable