Healing Justice
Maori Party Justice advocate, Rahui Katene, has welcomed the wider debate around the causes of crime as an opportunity to initiate real dialogue within communities about justice that heals and restores, rather than perpetrate a system that punishes.
“The Maori Party wants to see immediate action to reduce this country’s over-reliance on adversarial processes, and use of imprisonment as a response to offending behaviour” said Mrs Katene.
“Why do we invest so much state resource in failure – in building prisons, in increasing the inmate population?” said Mrs Katene.
“We must decrease the number of Maori who are victimized by offending behaviour; the number of Maori who are arrested, convicted and imprisoned”.
“We are keen to see any initiatives which actively engage the community in the justice process” said Mrs Katene.
“Part of the answer lies in treating offenders as part of the wider community and not just ostracizing them from the outside world. We need to develop responses to wrong doing at all levels, which restore the mana to all whom have been affected”.
“This will take greater attention to relationships; the commitment to promote justice values that are restorative rather than adversarial; it is about the expression of manaakitanga; rangatiratanga; whanaungatanga”.
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