Youth Alcohol Abuse is the Symptom of a Wider Disease
25 July 2010
David Seymour
Any good economics student in year 11 will tell you that the cost of everything is what you give up to get it. By that logic the "cost" of a weekend's binge drinking can be 48 hours of life; drinking, recovering, drinking and recovering again ... More >>>

Arming the Police  
18 July 2010
Muriel Newman Without a doubt, drugs and organised crime are key drivers of the increase in violence in New Zealand society. Firearms are now commonplace within the illicit drugs industry. The question we should be asking ourselves is... More >>>

The Ability to Respond Quickly is Imperative
18 July 2010
Greg O'Connor
The recent incident in Christchurch in which two police officers were shot and seriously wounded and a police dog killed once again highlighted the risks that frontline police officers face going about what most would consider routine tasks. More >>>

Dealing with Abuse: The Way Forward
30 August 2009
Muriel Newman
While New Zealanders were busy voting on whether parents who lightly smack their children should be regarded as criminals, two toddlers were so brutally abused they died... More >>>

Change the Law, Mr Prime Minister
23 August 2009
Muriel Newman
The public have spoken. 87.6 percent of New Zealanders want the law that has banned smacking changed. They want to go back to the common sense situation that existed before Parliament... More >>>

Truancy: a costly societal illness
19 July 2009
Michael Irwin
Truancy is a societal disease; which left untreated spreads and affects the social, physical, judicial and economic well being within our communities. Every day over 25,000 children are absent from our schools...  More >>>

Crimestoppers  
29 March 2009
Lord Michael Ashcroft
Crimestoppers has been an extraordinary success in the UK ; I set it up over 20 years ago, have been involved with it ever since and am extremely proud of being the Chairman of the Trustees of a charity that is making a serious impact in the fight against crime in the UK . But my discussions with the police, government and business leaders in New Zealand , looking at the idea of setting up a similar venture here, came about through an unexpected and unplanned direction.  More >>>

Rethinking stop violence programmes  
28 February 2009
Stuart Birks
On 16 February Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier gave a speech to a hui in which he questioned the value of stopping violence programmes (Boshier, 2009)...  More >>>

The "P" Word
23 July 08
Mike Moore
In a rare moment of candour, the Minister of Police confessed we are losing the battle against methamphetamines, commonly known as P. It is a chilling admission, and it’s true. More >>>

National Security
13 July 2008
Muriel Newman
Last week, a report prepared by the ANZ estimated that back-office departmental spending had grown 40 percent faster than operational spending on front-line services. More >>>

The Unseen World of Industrial Espionage
13 July 08 
Warren Reed Industrial espionage has a very long heritage, it’s rampant and on a global scale – and New Zealand is in no way immune... Throughout history, intelligence has been about stealing other people’s ideas, mainly those that could be turned into products and sold to create wealth... More >>>

Crime in Perspective
20 April 08
Muriel Newman
It was just three week’s ago that we heard the sort of news that sends a chill down the spine of every parent – a fifteen year old schoolgirl reported missing. Tragically Marie Davis was buried on Thursday. Her killer remains on the loose. .. More >>>

Wanted- A Law and Order System that works for us
26 April 08
Dr Lech Beltowski
Law and order is the foundation of a properly functioning society. History shows that for any nation, where law and order goes, there too eventually goes their society. Thus, the substantial rise in violent crime seen over the last eight or so years of this Labour government should be cause for serious concern and urgent action to those charged with the responsibility of protecting New Zealand society. More >>>

Crossing the Line
Muriel Newman
21 October 2007
Earlier this month a napalm bomb was detonated in a guerrilla-style exercise in a training camp deep in the Urewera Ranges. Police say that such military-style training camps have been under surveillance for over a year. More >>>

Smacking: Those Kiwis Must be Crazy
Ruby Harrold-Claesson
11 Aug 07
One year ago, I travelled 36 hours from Gothenburg, Sweden to Auckland at the invitation of the Section 59 Coalition. I came to testify at the Parliamentary hearing on the private member's Bill that proposed a repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act and to inform - and to warn - the general New Zealand public of the effects of the Swedish smacking ban. More >>>

The Right to Justice
Muriel Newman
10 June 2007
The rule of law and the right to justice are fundamental to a democratic society. The thought that someone could be imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit is the stuff of nightmares. More >>> 

The Most Obvious Miscarriage of All
Keith Hunter
10 June 07
There’s much talk now of the call, lately by Sir Thomas Thorpe but in fact made by many others many times over many years, for an office of criminal review to sort out courtroom mistakes and free all the wrongly convicted. This may get the thumbs up to acknowledge the spanking the Privy Council has just given our Court of Appeal in Bain, but also because something has to be done to cover for the suicidal detachment of our appeal system from the PC. Although recent history records that, excepting Peter Mahon, the truth has only been supplied to the satisfaction of the people by reviewers from outside our justice system, as in the Thomas Inquiry and lately Bain, we now rely entirely on members and ex-members of the same Court of Appeal that received the spanking. More >>>

Beating the Gangs
Muriel Newman
13 May 2007
In politics, words are cheap. The real test of leadership is action. For years politicians have been talking about getting tough on gangs. But the result of their failure to act can be seen all around in the wasted lives of drug addicts, the thugs who get their kicks from terrorising neighbourhoods, the families who live in fear, and now a drive-by shooting that has left an innocent sleeping two-year-old dead.More >>>

Saying "No" to gangs
Otago Daily Times editorial More >>>

Smacking Ban: A dangerous law
Ruby Harrold-Claesson
25 Mar 07
In the Dominion Post article (14/3) "Police prepare rules to act on smacks" the New Zealand public is informed that police chiefs are preparing to send out guidelines for dealing with complaints about smacking as the bill outlawing the use of physical punishment as the final vote draws nearer. The Gisborne Herald article (17/3) "New bill ‘unlikely’ to drastically lift police workload" is based on a quotation from Police Minister Annette King. The Police Minister's views are quite irrelevant because the police, prosecutors and the criminal justice system are obliged to enforce the letter of the law. Thinking New Zealanders have known all along that the proposed law would lead to policing and criminalising responsible parents. More >>>

State Accountability
Muriel Newman
28 January 2007
This week the Parole Board decided against the early release of Baily Kurariki, the 17-year-old who was sentenced to seven years in jail for his part in the killing of pizza delivery man Michael Choy in 2001. He was 12 years old at the time. More >>>

The Politics of Crime
Muriel Newman
21 Jan 07
It started on the balcony. Numerous blows from the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun rained down on the teenager's head, shoulders, legs and arms, leaving bruising and deep cuts on her body. Not satisfied, Fenton dragged her into the house by her hair. Inside, he continued the beating, in front of three terrified female flatmates and their young children - aged 10 months to 3 years. As the blows continued he told them, “You are going to watch her blood splatter”, and warned them what would happen if they tried to escape. More >>>

NZ Sadly Lacking Leadership
Garth McVicar
20 Jan 07
“We love you son…be strong”. These were the words the family of a 15 year-old young man called out as he stood in the dock accused of murdering 77 year-old Doreen Reed in Auckland this week.  More >>>

Keep the Kids Inside
Muriel Newman
9 September 06
With last week’s newspapers headlines warning: “Keep kids inside after dark, police tell parents”, the public could be excused for thinking the reports were about Soweto, not Auckland. More >>>

USA's Toughest Sheriff
Sheriff Joe Arpaio 
10 Mar 06
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known as “America's toughest Sheriff”. He is head of the country’s fourth largest Sheriff's Office in Maricopa County, Arizona. More >>>

Prisons, porn and P
Muriel Newman
10 Mar 06
Like most New Zealanders I was appalled last weekend to read that the killer of Lillybing had enjoyed a life of P and porn in prison.  In a media interview she explained that prison “is not as hard as people make out”. More >>>

Thinking of the Future
Stuart Birks
2 Dec 06,
Central to the issue of policy making is the fact that we do not influence the present, but we may influence the future. When determining policy objectives it is important, therefore, to consider not so much what is wrong now, but what may be unsatisfactory in the future. A focus on present circumstances may result in poor decisions. Even left alone, things will change over time. Hence, to give an economic example, it could be wrong to clamp down on inflation when an economy is already heading into a downturn. As inflation is already set to fall, the policy might deepen the downturn, giving a deeper trough, or a “hard landing” rather than a “soft landing”. More >>>

Politically Correct  The Office of Proceedings
Josie Bullock
26 Aug 06
I first met the Director of the Office of Proceedings for the Human Rights' Review Tribunal a year ago. Perhaps I should have realised from his title that his organisation would be highly bureaucratic and probably a vast waste of space, time, energy and tax-payers' dollars. The Human Rights' Commission offices on Queen Street in Auckland, where we met, were huge with panoramic views, but there was little, if anything, going on there. I had been advised to take my case on the basis of human rights, rather than employment, given that it involved sexism. More >>>

Disgruntled Dads, Family Court
Stuart Birks
27 May 06
In the past few weeks I have fielded a series of queries by reporters asking why fathers are protesting about the Family Court. Suddenly the matter is newsworthy, and, just as suddenly, the phase will pass. That is the ephemeral nature of news. More >>>

The Airline Seating Issue
Stuart Birks
9 Dec 05
It seems that the airline seating issue has struck a nerve. It is, in fact, not new for airlines to have a policy that men should not be seated next to unaccompanied minors. British Airways received publicity for this in 2001 (Phillips M, 2001, “The paedophile bogeyman and the paranoid parents”, The Sunday Times, 28 March. However, the significance of the current example of the policy, and people's reaction to it, should not be underestimated. More >>>

Sensible Sentencing
Garth McVicar
3 Dec 05
The Sensible Sentencing Trust was started in 2001 by a small group of New Zealanders who were extremely concerned at the break down in law and order, the gradual decay in society and the consequences on our wider community in general. More >>>

Solving Crime not Rocket Science
Muriel Newman
3 Dec 05
One of the core roles of a government in a democracy is to protect its citizens from crime. In 1999, New Zealanders were given the opportunity to send the government a message on that issue: by voting overwhelmingly in favour of Norm Wither’s law and order referendum, the public indicated they wanted the justice system reformed and violent crime reduced. More >>>

Politically Correct  Corrections
Josie Bullock
5 Nov 05 
Who would have thought that a woman taking a front-row seat at a graduation ceremony for offenders would have caused such uproar? More >>>