New & Controversial New Zealand Justice System - by Frances Garnett

The New Zealand justice system is adopting American ways: trying to cut costs and taxpayer money by permitting criminals to plead guilty to charges that are less serious, reducing their amount of jail time and trial lengths. This also involves trying to bypass the courts with speedier and easier negotiations. Some arguments against this new process are that it doesn't make criminals face their consequences, people in society aren't put to rest that offenders are doing that, that it sets up a vicious cycle of repeating offences with criminals being "let off the hook" and future judges won't know of their past actions. One person has even said that "It's all driven by the government's desire to give the appearance of crime reducing and also saving money." This has also caused major changes in the funding of prosecutions, so that firms must trim their spending costs by resolving cases before they go to trial, hiring junior staff members who aren't usually as experienced as other prosecutors and tend to struggle in court. Other people, however, think this is good, for example, a woman from the Crown Law prosecution unit said that "there is no evidence to suggest that resolving cases early is a bad thing" and that there has been no fault "found in the prosecutors' handling of the plea bargains."

This was a very long and complex article, so I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I feel like the author didn't like this new process, because they gave more reasons why people opposed than to why prosecutors changed to using this style of an American legal system, and they also used a story about a man who severely beat up another man (he was in the hospital recovering from trauma) because he stole his girlfriend's wallet. The "criminal" said that he had been really trying to change, and yet his victim was badly hurt and he needed to take the appropriate responsibility for that. It's a tricky issue, while I'm really big on giving people second chances, that doesn't mean you can exclude people from taking responsibility. And yet, all these extreme budget cuts may weaken the system and order all together. I guess New Zealand with just have to wait and see how this pans out, because our American justice system is still very flawed.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11256874