Publishing names of drink drivers
August 19th, 2009 at 4:44 pm by David FarrarJudith Collins continues to show very good instincts as a Minister. The Herald reported:
Police Minister Judith Collins says she will change the law if police and court staff fail to find a way of routinely making public lists of convicted drink-drivers.
The bureaucrats get so detail obsesses sometimes, they forget the big picture. They were basically saying a conviction is a personal private matter and should not be publicised unless a reporter actually happened to be in court during the hearing.
That was and is an outrageous view. Criminal convictions are not private matters. They are by their very nature public, unless a name is suppressed.
I actually think all convictions should be publicly available through a searchable database.
Her comments come after police yesterday rescinded a decision to stop releasing lists of convicted drink-drivers to media. The about-face came after Ms Collins met senior police staff on Monday and requested they re-examine the decision.
Requested. Ha. I bet you that is a polite word for it.
Police spokesman Jon Neilson said the issue of “ownership of information” was at the heart of the review.
As it stood at the moment, police laid charges with the court, but their involvement effectively ended with prosecution. The information belonged to the court, he said.
No convictions are not private property of the court. They are public information.
August 19th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
This is somewhat ironic given that the Land Transport Act specifically says names of drink drivers should not be suppressed except for “special reasons” (s66). I cannot recall any special reasons off the top of my head. I think a short term suppression (a couple of days) might have been granted to allow family to be told but I am not 100%.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I remember seeing that list in a paper once, and thinking, “This is part of their punishment, thus it’s my civic duty to read this list.”
Then I realised I didn’t care enough to read the names of a dozen strangers.
I wonder how many of the people complaining about the (temporary) decision to withhold that information actually bother reading the lists?
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Agree wholeheartedly DPF – if you are convicted of a crime, barring a supression order, you forfeit the right to privacy – it’s what’s known as a consequence
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
This sort of PC crap makes my blood boil. Anyway, why not just obtain the list from the courts? Well thats what was done in my day and the local rag justed published the list. Easy peezee. The other thing that needs to be re-introduced is publishing the name of tax evaders. (It was also great reading!)
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
It was just someone in the Wellington Police office having a brainfart.
Either that or someone with a bit of clout with that office has just been convicted of Drink Driving and a favor was done to keep it out of the paper.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Who cares enough to read a list of drink drivers? Gossips and tragic people and, errr, probably no one else.
But, while we’re at it, why not publish lists of parking fines, speed camera tickets, and people caught talking on their cell phones while driving.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I like the database idea. All that information is databased in any event, so why not simply provide some form of limited access to that? There’s 100′s of things already (membership of certain organizations, job applications etc) where one has to provide permission for third parties to access one’s record on the conviction database, so I’d say just open the thing up.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Ah well, I suppose someone has to come along and act as the negative karma magnet…
If only everyone were as reasoned and intelligent as us here at Kiwiblog, this would be a splendid idea. But they’re not.
I know a murderer quite well (I’m helping him apply for a parole transfer). Some twenty years ago his second wife cheated on him and took him for everything he had. When she confessed her infidelity and laughed in his face, he snapped and killed her. Her served a very lengthy sentence, underwent rehabilitation, was a perfect prisoner, and has lived a quiet and blame-free life for many years now.
I’d suggest that if anybody could access a database and see the blunt fact: “B____ B_____ convicted of murder, ____ 198_” with no explanation of the events prior and subsequent to that moment, he’d most likely never be able to work or even live anywhere again.
Whereas if I had the capacity I’d be happy to employ him because I do know those circumstances. He’s not going to kill again and he has no propensity to commit any other sort of crime – indeed murder is the only thing on his record.
I have to wonder, though, if all I knew about him was the stark fact of his crime whether I’d have been quite so ready to help him.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Well said Rex. The Economist did an article on the various sex offenders registers in the US a few weeks ago. Among the examples was a woman who, as a 17 year old girl, gave a BJ to her 15 year old boyfriend and is still on a sex offenders register years later. At best, she wouldn’t be allowed to attend events at her children’s school or take them to a swimming pool. At worst, some retard might arson her home or shoot her.
I’m happy to leave sentencing to the court system. I’m not in favour of enthusiasts dishing out further punishment. Published details and offender registers just encourage amateurs to get involved.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I think the problem is that it is potentially possible for organisations such as Sensible Sentencing Trust and media to build up their own databases of offenders. This would be greatly assisted if you could obtain summary information from a courthouse especially in machine readable form. Hence I perceive a reluctance to make this information available to discourage such ‘private’ databases which potentially makes a mockery of ‘clean slate’ laws. It is rather like the electoral roll being publically available in printed form but scanning and databasing it being forbidden by law.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
One of the realities of modern urban living is that you can live anonymously by and large.
This is especially true if you commit crime as if you tell no one and are convicted but not jailed who would know?
Unless a pesky reporter wrote you up by the fact of their being in court.
With our Modern Urban life the idea of shame in the community as a punishment and to be an incentive to keep you on the straight and narrow is pretty much gone now.
When you consider that many criminals (those caught and convicted and those committing crimes! Mr Key) live with and spend their lives with other criminals or people who doesn’t give a monkey about that you are one.
You can even move suburb, city/town Island in NZ and start again and nooner qwould be the wiser.
A real problem with kiddie fiddlers and Catholic Priests.
So to Drink driving.
At least the names used to be published in the paper if one bothered to look, and if Like me occaisionally you do just to see if you recognise anyone.
How better to have the Picture as well in all it’s glory either in the local paper or on a website!
Wow that does stop someone being able to hide doesn’t it?
Besides which we can all help keep those we know on the straight and narrow can’t we?
Why should there be a presumption of privacy in this wired and anonymous age, Why should it just be celebrities who are under the eye with regard to who commits crime?
Drink driving can devastate families and communities, so don’t we have an interest in knowing who commits it and when and where they are.
Why should just the local policeman know?
For that matter why stop at drink driving?
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Rex
I can understand your view and sympathise with the case you have given but don’t think it is germane to the public safety aspect of my questions above.
I supported a sex offender in Prison and even appealed to his parole hearing to get him to stay in so that he could undergo the treatment course.
Surely when you commit crime your sentence and details are public and rightly should be as you have chosen to live outside the law that we all abide by (?) and therefore are a risk.
Just because you have completed part or a whole (unlikely) of a sentence doesn’t mean you are rehabilitated and are no longer a risk or danger to others.
I think that rehabilitation is not something we do well at all but that’s is another thread.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Note to Judith – don’t change the law – REPEAL THE LAW
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Yes, but the point is being missed here.
Vote:The information was ALWAYS available at the courts.
It’s just that the papers didn’t sent their reporters along to the courts any more to do their job.
So the police have been doing the newspapers’ job for them, and at taxpayers’ expense.
Who is paying for the constabulary to provide this information? The Dominion Post? The Daily Post, in Rotorua?
The editor of the Manawatu Standard says in an editorial today that it’s just not practical any more to send reporters along to the courts.
What he is really saying, and I feel for him, is we can’t spare anyone any more. But that’s not the taxpayers’ problem. Remember how two weeks ago the media were pointing their fingers at MPs for their allowances?
Well, the same media have been spinning this one as a public information thing here, and how bureaucrats have got a funny bee in their bonnet about freedom of information.
I repeat: the information is available at the court hearings. It’s just that the papers haven’t bothered to do their fundamental job — report.
August 19th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Further to sentiments expressed in the general debate thread, I would like to say that Collins’ move on drink driver names (and even photographs if Fairfukked Media is to be believed) is another sideline from the real crime issue, just as the boy racer campaign was.
New Zealand’s No. 1 crime problem, and the one Collins will be judged on, comprises the criminal gangs that are almost cemented into the national infrastructure. Thanks to multiculturalists and the immigration industry, these have been reinforced by triads and no doubt soon other Asian gangs.
When Collins goes on about convicted drink drivers’ names (already available if Fairfukked will send reporters to the courts) and boy racers she is on easy, soft, side issues, no doubt hoodwinked by the police hierarchy and its PR team who want to deflect public opinion from their failure to tame criminal-gang culture.
If the driver pictures report is true, this probably entails supplying the news media with police photographs, which again will save the media from sending their own photographers to courts. Taxpayers subsidise strapped print media.
C’mon Collins, kick police arse until they stand up and fight the criminal gangs, and I don’t mean by cruising through the bush harvesting their cannabis.
Pissheads and teenage petrolheads are easy meat compared with gang criminals. The Maori Party is soft on these gangs, suggesting it wants to bring them into the respectability tent. Surely Collins and Bro Key aren’t going to go along with the Maori Party on this?
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Jesus, Jack:
Vote:That ain’t bad.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Well said, Jack5.
When “Crusher” starts crushing gangs and other distributors of the poison that pollutes the veins of far too many otherwise promising people — mostly but not exclusively our young — then, and only then, will I accord her the level of adulation she courts with this sort of posturing.
Vote:August 19th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
I like the database idea too and wouldn’t it be subject to the clean slate deal – which should largely deal to Rex’s problem. How many times do convicted fraudsters go on to offend again – it seems quite often and subsequent people don’t realise they are dealing with a convicted fraudster. Ditto for those accused at assaulting their partner.
Vote:August 21st, 2009 at 9:06 am
dimmocrazy and Anthony have the right idea – open the existing criminal records databases up to the public, with filtering of course, so that things like victim info, addresses, suppressed info etc do not get into the public domain. Filtering to match clean slate provisions and scenarios like the one Rex describes should also be fairly easy to implement also.
After all we have paid for this information to be collected. Surely we should be permitted access to it so we can manage risk etc. It has been done successfully overseas, with enhancements such as mapping using Google tools and so on, no good reason we should not do the same here.
The issues that people often raise, such as the example given by davidp earlier of the young woman who gave a BJ to her 15 year old boyfriend, are failures of the legislation concerned, rather than of the registers themselves. Such convictions, if they are to happen at all ( which is up for debate) should be filtered from public access as clearly she presents no public risk. There are plenty out there that do, both here and overseas. We have a right to know about them in my view
Regards
Vote:Peter J