Protection Orders
November 5th, 2011 at 9:11 am by David FarrarStuff reports:
National has announced it will double the penalties for breaching protection orders and fund security improvements for the homes of family violence victims, Prime Minister and National Party Leader John Key announced on the campaign trail today.
The policy is here.
In 2010, 976 people were convicted of breaching a protection order and, of these, 185 received a prison sentence.
National will double the maximum penalty for a single breach of a protection order to two years in prison or a fine of $10,000.Any subsequent breaches, regardless of the period in which they occur, will be punishable by up to three years imprisonment, rather than by the current maximum of two years in prison for two or more breaches in the space of three years.
I suspect few things are more terrifying than having someone who is the subject of a protection order breach it, and turn up on your doorstep etc. Far far too many people are killed or seriously wounded in domestic violence attacks. Hopefully this policy will prevent some offenders from so blithely ignoring a protection order – or if they do, then lock them up for longer.
November 5th, 2011 at 9:55 am
I don’t really agree with making this a cornerstone policy which they are with the publicity they’re giving it.
Sure it’s a good thing this package but its a minor element in the extremely complicated field of law and order and it rather insults ones intelligence that the only element they market is a highly emotive element designed specifically to capture a few thousand of the floaters. Sure that’s politics and in a campaign political marketing is critical. But it’s not the only thing which is critical.
Another critical thing is informing the public of what exactly they are voting for. I know it’s all on the website should I care to look, that’s not the point. The point is, the widest coverage of the most detail, should be the objective of every party in every campaign. That should be the starting point for them, re: discharging their democratic duties in any area, especially the critical law and order area.
Yet the Nats, as Liarbore did generations ago, collapse their ethics to the cynical demands of their political marketers who of course don’t have the democratic perspective in mind, that’s not their job, that’s the politician’s jobs, and they aren’t doing it. Not too late guys, to change that and show us you do have integrity, after all.
DPF, I suppose you haven’t done it on purpose, but Phil is laying himself over me in this edit window and it’s bloody annoying.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 10:24 am
Sounds like a load of horse shit. The laws are on the books now, they just have to enforce them.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
People who breach protection orders (and most other law) tend to do so regardless of the penalty, up to, and including the death penalty. Such people have a maggot in the brain, and they are undeterred by penalties. This is a sop to the public which will not affect outcomes.
[DPF: Having them in jail, and for longer, will affect outcomes. They can't beat up or kill their partner if locked up]
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
It does not take much to breach a protection order. Arriving home drunk could breach the order, something you should be careful of David as a heavy drinker, not leaving your own home when the protected person orders you to do so could breach the order, having an argument with the protected person could breach the order. Fortunately these technical breaches are reflected in sentencing until someone like you starts screeching for mandatory penalties.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Brian Harmer wrote
People who breach protection orders (and most other law) tend to do so regardless of the penalty, up to, and including the death penalty. Such people have a maggot in the brain, and they are undeterred by penalties. This is a sop to the public which will not affect outcomes.
There is a fair bit of truth to this. However the point of increased sentences in such scenarios is not to deter but to incapacitate, so this policy change is a good move in that it will get these dangerous individuals out of circulation for longer and so give the victims more time to gather resources to evade the offender in future.
That is of course, assuming that the judiciary hand down the maximum sentences in cases where it is justified and the victims have pressed for that. They have pretty consistently failed to do so in the past, which is how we arrive at the mandatory penalties mentioned by tvb. If the judiciary were to exercise their discretion in order to incapacitate the worst offenders in this regard more often, they will retain that discretion in order to reflect the merely technical breaches.
On a side note, I have some personal experience in this area, as years ago I had a lady boarding with me who had this idiot loser ex-partner that kept breaching the protection orders taken out against him. I did manage to get a most amusing revenge on the loser though – he was a taxi driver, and an LTSA guy came around to do a background check and we ended up having a bit of a chat…. apparently loser boy had given his ex (my lady boarder) as a reference. Two days later I found out he had lost his job.
I had reported him to the Police God alone knows how many times, and nothing much had ever happened.
I later found out that he had also been harrassing someone else as well, along with various other offending, got caught, put in prison and been assaulted in there so badly (probably because of his big mouth) he ended up in intensive care for several months. Couldnt have happened to a nicer person
Not that he learnt anything from the experience, he was caught outside my place days after his release, put back inside again, where he was assaulted again.
I do wonder in some cases, rather than prison, it might be more cost effective to take advantage of NZ’s geography and sentence such offenders to forced geographic relocation, i.e. Auckland based offenders would be order to relocate to Dunedin and vice versa, and banned from travel by air or ferry. This would be just as good an outcome for the victim and save cost to the taxpayer.
Regards
Vote:Peter J
Webmaster for http://www.sensiblesentencing.org.nz
November 5th, 2011 at 2:25 pm
The Judges will take no notice so pretty pointless. It would be more effective and reduce the incidence if they left the penalties as they are and apply the three strikes law, or/and deny bail for a second and subsequent offence.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
backster’s right unfortunately – which is what I was referring to in my second paragraph. The judiciary have a poor track record when comes to actually making use of the penalties contained in legislation to their maximum – it almost never happens. Then they bitch and moan when their discretion is removed. Well if they’d used it properly to start with as requested by the public whom they are meant to be serving they wouldn’t have lost it in the first place
Regards
Vote:Peter J
Webmaster for http://www.sensiblesentencing.org.nz
November 5th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Yeees….the problem with all of this (as someone said above, it is a complicated area of law/human behaviour) is that it is extremely easy to get a protection order or domestic violence order without any corroborating evidence. A policeman of my acquaintance recently confirmed that essentially, when responding to complaints of domestic violence, the cops have an “arrest the male first, ask questions later” policy.
Thats all very well in what is probably the majority of cases… but what of the case where one has a vindictive ex partner who is quite prepared to lie? In my local rural area I know of at least three cases where the male has spent the weekend in the can (in each case they swear blind nothing happened) because “the missus” called the police and cried “assault”…
I dont know what the answer is….
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
I have a male relative who had an ex report false breaches for three years, (with all the stress and interrupted life that that caused) until a jury trial found him innocent.
Hopefully the police will now not automatically believe a woman when she is in vindictive mode.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
David Garrett – “I dont know what the answer is….”
In such a complicated area never a truer word said.
Is pretty much window dressing – any breach worth getting up to the three year mark tends to have something else with it (MAF – 3 years, Threatening to Kill – 7 years etc).
And in the desperate, and understandable, search for solutions we now have a situation where protection orders can be obtained, without the other party being heard, and then abused. In fairness it is my experience that Family Court Judge’s are fairly alive to such situations but a fat lot of use if it takes weeks and months to get a hearing on whether the allegations are true and all the time the order is preventing contact with children. This is an exception but it is certainly not unheard of.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
I dont know what the answer is….
Prosecute the woman for making a false complaint and wasting police time and do it every time it happens and make sure it gets publicity.
That’s how they deal with other things like this, where publicity reduces offending since those considering it see that if they do it then eventually it will have nasty ramifications.
Hell hath no fury like a law that prevents hell’s fury, around here anyway. Good old Westminster Democracy eh. Bless her.
Vote:November 5th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Ha ha ha ha ha! No, seriously, what would you do, reid? ‘Cos that won’t happen in a month of Sundays.
Vote:One of the biggest reason for breaches of protection orders is that the beneficiaries of the orders keep on inviting the subject of the order to return to the ‘family’ home. That means that the moment they have an argument, he gets arrested. I have always tried to convince my clients that the only way they can communicate with the person who has a protection order against them is through their lawyer, but very few ever take that advice.
Although the one who got prosecuted for communicating with his daughter via text message, when he did not know that the daughter’s phone was being borrowed by, and therefore in the possession of, his protected ex-partner did seem a tad harsh…
November 5th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
FES: Did the last mentioned guy actually get CONVICTED of breaching the order? If so that is bloody scary… Facing arrest in situations of false complaint where there is no supporting evidence is bad enough, but a cell phone communication when it wasnt even the protected one’s cellphone?? I assume you are being ironic when you describe that as “a tad harsh”…
Vote:November 6th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
DavidG,
from memory, he was, but from memory the penalty was not that big. I remember complaining bitterly throughout the process but getting nowhere- judge alone and all that (which apparently most people on KB would prefer to a jury, not sure why). May have been part of a deal, so I’m not going to town on it too much!
Vote: