Correspondent: Maori Justice Tx Date: 27th October 2002 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Correspondent Theme Music 00.00.11 Keisha spitting 00.00.15 Keisha’s friend That’s gross. 00.00.17 Keisha Yeah, ok. 00.00.21 Keisha There are always two sides to a story and it’s who they want to choose and in this case they didn’t want to choose me. They didn’t believe my story. 00.00.31 Music 00.00.32 Title Page MAORI JUSTICE 00.00.38 Sarah Macdonald Keisha Dais lives in Fielding, a small rural town in the north island of New Zealand. She’s fifteen. 00.00.49 Sarah Macdonald Three months ago Keisha got into a fight with a thirteen year old girl on the way to school. 00.00.55 Aston KEISHA DAIS She was down Lovers Lane trying to be cool, smoking marijuana, whatever, you know and drinking vodka and juice. And she was tripping, being the fool. It wouldn’t have happened if she like, didn’t like push me in the face but I just, just punched her in the face and then she was pulling my hair and so I grabbed her hair and threw her on the ground and started punching her face in and then I booted her in the back. Yeah. 00.01.30 Keisha What shall we have? 00.01.32 Keisha I just did it like that because I wasn’t thinking, I was like oh no, no, what shall I do, ah who cares, just hit her back, smash her, smash her man, who cares. Find out what happens at the end. 00.01.51 Sarah Macdonald At the end Keisha was charged with assault and expelled from school. 00.01.56 Keisha Got any filters? 00.01.59 Sarah Macdonald The attack was vicious. But instead of charging her in court, the police sent her to a community scheme, which deals with young offenders through restorative justice. 00.02.10 Sarah Macdonald She’s to be forced to confront her crime and say sorry to her victim. 00.02.15 Aston KYLIE CLARK I just spat out a lot of blood and all my front lips was all swollen and black and cut. And all around there, all around my cheek bones on each side and around up there were all swollen and black. She has quite a record but she swears at the teachers, smarts off to them and all that. 00.02.39 Sarah Macdonald Thirteen year old Kylie lives with her mother Stephanie who runs a spiritual beauty therapy clinic from their home in Fielding. 00.02.48 Sarah Macdonald Restorative justice will give Kylie and Stephanie active involvement in Keisha’s punishment. 00.02.56 Stephanie I can’t say I hate her but I don’t like what she did to my daughter and I don’t like what it did to our family unit. I want to be able to get off my chest how she made our family feel. 00.03.11 Aston STEPHANIE CLARK And how much she demoralised my daughter and took away her self-esteem and you don’t deserve to do that to another person. 00.03.27 Sarah Macdonald Has it left you with any long-term problems? 00.03.30 Kylie I don’t think so, not at all. 00.03.32 Sarah Macdonald Your mum thinks so. 00.03.36 Kylie I don’t. I can’t think of any. 00.03.40 Sarah Macdonald Keisha says that you were drunk and smoking dope before school, is that true? Is that, is that, she was saying, that’s what she told the headmaster didn’t she? 00.03.53 Kylie I don’t know, I don’t know much about anything really. I haven’t been told or informed of anything. 00.04.02 Sarah Macdonald Are you going to have to say sorry tonight? 00.04.06 Keisha I don’t know, I hope not because I’m not sorry. I’m sorry that she got hurt kind of but no, I’m not sorry. 00.04.15 Sarah Macdonald Do you think that having to confront you and hear what your feelings are about it and apologise to you, do you think that’s a good thing? 00.04.26 Kylie I suppose I think it is, her to apologise and that, it is, yeah. 00.04.41 Sarah Macdonald These days Keisha lives with her uncle, Lani. 00.04.45 Sarah Macdonald He’s bringing her to the Maori meeting house for tonight’s Youth Board. 00.04.50 Sarah Macdonald Lani understands the consequences of Keisha’s offending. 00.04.57 Lani Varu I liked running away from police and just being chased by them, that was sort of a rush for me. 00.05.03 Aston LANI VARU Keisha’s Uncle I’ve been through the courts system and you know it has put a mark on my record sort of thing and I learned my lesson from that. But with Keisha and this new system that they’ve got here I’d rather that she do it this way so that we can get her record or whatever, you know, cleared sort of thing so she doesn’t have a blemish on her record and she can continue with her life just clean slate. 00.05.29 Sarah Macdonald Before Lani, Keisha had a violent childhood. A restorative justice mentor has to take that into account. 00.05.37 Aston ROBYN DUNCAN Fielding Youth Board Director Keisha’s going to be hard work. And it means that I’m going to have work, do the extra mile for Keisha. We get a few like Keisha that you have to do the extra mile and I will certainly do it. 00.05.49 Sarah Macdonald This community of just seventeen thousand is using restorative justice to steer youths away from the courts. They’re still punished but there’s no criminal record. 00.06.02 Aston Snr Constable JOHN SAMUELLA Fielding Police Officer I think that when the Youth Board first started the officers here were a bit, they weren’t too sure about it. But give them a bit of time, once we were up and running; they could see the benefits of it. 00.06.20 Sarah Macdonald John Samuella now steers ninety percent of his youth offenders towards restorative justice. 00.06.27 Sarah Macdonald Then his role ends and the facilitators begin. 00.06.32 Sarah Macdonald Some are social workers, others past offenders. 00.06.39 Robyn Duncan Unfortunately, I can’t get the victim to come in, so, her family’s here anyway. 00.06.45 Sarah Macdonald Robyn tells the board that Kylie’s refusing to come to the meeting. She’s in the car outside. 00.06.53 Sarah Macdonald Stephanie, her boyfriend and Kylie’s father are here to represent her. 00.07.00 Female Board Member We’ve got the police versus, is it Keisha, is that how… 00.07.04 Keisha Keisha. 00.07.05 Female Board Member Keisha. Now you’ve been charged with assault under the Crimes Act 1961 and if this was to go through a normal process the penalty could be one year’s imprisonment. And that’s just to give you an idea… 00.07.19 Sarah Macdonald Keisha’s uncle, aunt and grandmother are here to support her. 00.07.24 Female Board Member Keisha then continued to punch the victim while she, the victim, was still on the ground. Keisha was also seen to kick the victim to the stomach, head and back area. 00.07.37 Sarah Macdonald This scheme is based on traditional Maori justice. For the harmony of the tribe, offenders were made to apologise and make some offering to their victims. 00.07.49 Male Board member It’s not up to us to really to find you guilty, that’s not our role. Our role here is trying to deter you from this sort of behaviour again. And I’m not saying like, you know, people are gonna come and hassle you and slap you around a bit you know. I’m not saying don’t smack them back but, there’s, there’s, there’s defending yourself and then there’s getting vigorous on it and giving another person a hiding. And this, this is where the breakdown’s coming. 00.08.11 Keisha Well… 00.08.13 Lani Varu So where did the assault charge actually come in – after she got hit? 00.08.16 Male Board member Well the assault charge must have went into John, that’s, the complainant would have made, would have made an assault charge. 00.08.22 Robyn Duncan No they would have told the police when they were interviewed. So that’s taken from the policeman that actually went to them. 00.08.28 Male Board member So that’s compiled all of the statements. 00.08.31 Robyn Duncan Yeah. 00.08.34 Stephanie Clark So the women that went in to split the fight up, the parent, she’s the one that rang the police, so once it’s in the police’s hands. 00.08.43 Male Board member So the police laid the assault charge not Kylie. 00.08.45 Stephanie Clark Kylie hasn’t laid an assault charge. 00.08.47 Lani Varu You know, to my understanding I though an assault charge was if you lay a hand on someone. Well, to my knowledge she was touched first, so why wasn’t that… 00.08.56 Stephanie Clark Because it didn’t the stop the… 00.08.59 Male Board member It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day, what we’ve got to look at is what’s in front of us here. 00.09.03 Discussion 00.09.07 Sarah Macdonald They hope this process will stop Keisha re-offending. 00.09.12 Male Board member You know you’re quite lucky to be here. If it happens again well, we’re not going to let you come here again, you’ll have to go and see a judge, the real judge and then go through their whole process. So what we want to try and do here as a panel, is try and help you out, to try, you know, think about some of these things that you’re gonna do right when people upset you, you know. What do you reckon? 00.09.31 Keisha Well, that day I wasn’t thinking about fighting her and then….she started pushing me and so, we just had this fight. 00.09.41 Sarah Macdonald The board want to get Keisha back into education. 00.09.45 Sarah Macdonald It won’t be easy; she’s been expelled from every local school. 00.09.50 Lani Varu She’s been to some of the top schools around here and they didn’t suit her. 00.09.54 Keisha’s aunt I was looking at seeing if she could go back to Girls High but whether they’ll accept her there because she’s been suspended from them once before. 00.10.04 Sarah Macdonald Tonight should give Kylie, if she were here, and Stephanie a sense of involvement in the process and from that restore their self-respect. 00.10.14 Sarah Macdonald Hence, restorative justice. 00.10.19 Stephanie Clark Keisha, what you did to my daughter, whether she provoked you or what happened and how far you took it, blew me away. I have made it my utmost in the last thirteen years to protect my daughter. And I never thought something like this would break my protection of her. And what you did to her and the way you make you feel, whether that gives you a victory in your mind, I’m sorry you take that as a victory. But Kylie won’t face you and if you call that cowardness I don’t, I call that the fear you put into her by what you did to her. 00.11.07 Sarah Macdonald The board breaks up to discuss in private what punishment should be imposed. 00.11.15 Sarah Macdonald Keisha’s finding it harder than she expected. 00.11.23 Male Board Member She’s obviously not going to stand up and apologise so, she’s a confident young girl, she knows what she’s up to and she knows what it’s about and she’s not… 00.11.30 Female Board Member Did you see those facials? 00.11.33 Male Board Member Like I say I think their community services is going to be an eye opener to her… 00.11.39 Female Board member So this is the Agreement Plan that we’ve, we’ve decided upon. Community service; fifty hours are compulsory, a further fifty hours dependent upon outcome of, of the review. We’d like you to write an apology letter to Kylie and Robyn has a layout for the letter that, that you will use. The supervision will be with Robyn. 00.12.03 Sarah Macdonald Unlike the court system, restorative justice demands that Keisha acknowledges the pain she has caused others. 00.12.16 Keisha I don’t really want to write a letter to Kylie to say sorry, I just really want to say sorry to her family for what they’re going through and at the moment for what I did. I don’t feel, I just don’t want to write an apology letter to her because… 00.12.37 Robyn Duncan But you would write one to her family? 00.12.40 Keisha Well, I think… 00.12.43 Lani Varu I just had to put across to Keisha that, you know had the shoe been on the other foot sort of thing I would have been upset and I wouldn’t have been handling it quite as well as these people have… 00.12.52 Robyn Duncan The bottom line is you do the crime, you do the time, sweet as, it’s over and done with, see you later and it ain’t hard. We’re pretty cruisy people to work with. Okay? Are you going to sign up? 00.13.05 Keisha Yeah, whatever. 00.13.07 Robyn Duncan No, no, not whatever. 00.13.09 Keisha Huh. 00.13.11 Lani Varu …your attitude. 00.13.13 Robyn Duncan And no one works with me with that attitude. It gets left at the gate mate, I’ll tell you now. 00.13.25 Keisha Then I’ll sign the form. 00.13.38 Female Board Member Have you got a copy of the form out there Robyn? 00.13.41 Robyn Duncan Mm mm, Keisha now we’re partners in the good stuff. Excuse me. 00.13.46 Keisha It was an accident. 00.13.47 Robyn Duncan No, no, pass it back nicely mate, don’t throw it. 00.13.53 Robyn Duncan First and last time you‘ll do that. 00.14.01 Sarah Macdonald If Keisha doesn’t complete her periodic detention, she’ll go before the courts and get a criminal record. 00.14.09 Keisha I thought those four people were trying to be staunch, trying to make me scared or something, trying to say either do it my way or you go to court, which, for me, it seems that instead of getting PD or community services and writing her an apology letter, I kind of feel criminal record, that’s better. 00.14.34 Stephanie Clark So I looked at her because she just stares really at you and this time I’m not backing down. I was shaking when I went to say my piece but I’m proud that I kept my calm and kept my cool and said what I had to say. Don’t know whether it sunk in, whether she really heard me. 00.14.59 Stephanie Clark Even though my daughter threw the first punch, Keisha brought up about the pot smoking and drinking, that angered me because the police couldn’t even smell it on her breath. 00.15.09 Sarah Macdonald Kylie had her teeth chipped and still suffers headaches from Keisha’s kicking. But she says it wasn’t fear that stopped her going to the meeting. 00.15.18 Kylie I don’t think I really wanted to go, just the fact that I don’t really want to listen to anything about what was being said. 00.15.27 Sarah Macdonald Why? 00.15.30 Kylie I don’t know `cos I’m already, like I’m sick of hearing it enough, like I’ve heard, I’ve heard it enough, it’s been dragged on for so long. 00.15.39 Robyn Duncan Talking to Kylie who was sitting in the car outside the night of the panel meeting, I, my own personal opinion is that Kylie’s hiding something, something else went down that day. Kylie did not want Keisha to be punished. Kylie did not want any part in Keisha being punished whatsoever. 00.16.04 Sarah Macdonald Keisha will now work every Saturday with Robyn paying her dues to the community. And she still has to write that letter. 00.16.13 Robyn Duncan I think Keisha needs to go to anger management. She needs to learn how to control her own anger and at the moment she’s not, she’s just lashing out and it’s getting her into trouble. 00.16.36 Sarah Macdonald Restorative justice, still in its infancy, has already been sorely tested. 00.16.44 Voice over Subtitles So here’s a man taken from us. A loved father, a husband, brother, brother-in-law, son-in-law, son. Murdered for doing the job that he loved. 00.16.58 Sarah Macdonald A seventeen year old boy, who went through the same scheme as Keisha, has just shot and killed a local policeman. 00.17.08 Sarah Macdonald It left not only this community but the nation staggering. 00.17.20 Voice over Subtitles Some of us have to question why, some of us have got disbelief… can this happen in friendly Fielding? Some of us are really angry, pretty jolly mad. 00.17.31 Drum roll 00.17.36 Sarah Macdonald Detective Constable Duncan Taylor knew the boy who killed him. He had tried to stop him getting a criminal record for petty crimes by putting him through restorative justice 00.17.48 Bagpipes 00.17.51 Sarah Macdonald Now the policeman’s dead and the boy’s in jail for life. 00.17.54 Bagpipes 00.18.02 Robyn Duncan The boy that, that killed one of our policemen on Friday was a very hard boy to work with. He was also very, very hard to contact. So I didn’t have a lot of contact because he was never ever there. I left message after message after message. Mum contacted me back. He did do what was put in place. He did do what was asked of him. And I would never have thought that he was a murderer. 00.18.35 Sarah Macdonald In the last five years seventeen teenagers have been convicted of murder in a population of just three and a half million. Like Britain, violent crime in New Zealand is on the rise and offenders are getting younger. 00.18.52 Congregation singing 00.19.17 Sarah Macdonald That night, the police commissioner comes to a tribute for the slain officer. He can offer no easy answers on why young people are becoming more violent. 00.19.27 Police Commissioner We have to help our youngsters. We have to help them make good choices, choose healthy lives and get to that point in time where they have enough wisdom to know when to turn away and when to actually reach out to other people instead of trying to deal with crisis themselves. 00.19.50 Music 00.20.11 Sarah Macdonald Locals write in the book of condolences outside Fielding Police Station. 00.20.18 Aston Snr Constable JOHN SAMUELLA Fielding Police Officer The community are really saddened as all of us here in the station are. These kids are going to decide where they’re going to, they’re going to make these choices whether they’re going to go into gangs and whether they want to do drugs or alcohol or break into houses and break into cars. Comes down to the choice thing really but all we can do is just keep on top of them. 00.20.47 Sarah Macdonald The killing runs against Fielding’s trend. A hundred and four girls and boys have gone through Robyn’s Youth Board, only eight have re-offended. 00.20.57 Sarah Macdonald Its success has been attributed to the closeness of this community. 00.21.01 Music 00.21.11 Sarah Macdonald But what happens if community doesn’t exist? 00.21.14 Music 00.21.15 Eugene Ryder I had nothing else to do except steal. I didn’t want to go home, I was too scared to go, I was getting hidings at home for not being at school and so I just ran away from home and lived on the streets and stuff. We were all same mother, same father, that’s out of eight of us. And the ones that weren’t in jail weren’t because they were too young. 00.21.39 Aston EUGENE RYDER When I was sixteen I robbed a bank with a gun and I got caught and I stayed in jail until I was twenty. 00.21.47 Sarah Macdonald Eugene Ryder is a member of the Black Power Gang. 00.21.51 Sarah Macdonald His facial tattoo, once the badge of a warrior, now a hardened hell raiser. 00.21.58 Sarah Macdonald There are more than a hundred gangs in New Zealand and all are deeply entrenched in criminal activity. 00.22.05 Eugene Ryder A lot of the kids run away and join the gangs, you know and the gangs, like they did with me, offer them help, you know, offer them money, offer them a roof over their head. 00.22.17 Gang fighting 00.22.26 Sarah Macdonald For the urban Maori, gangs replace the tribe. 00.22.29 Gang fighting 00.22.32 Sarah Macdonald Members of Eugene’s gang fight a rival. 00.22.36 Gang fighting 00.22.42 Eugene Ryder Ten years ago a lot of the, a lot of the gang members, their dream for their kids was to have a patch on their back, a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. And now that their kids are starting to get around sixteen, seventeen, they’re starting to realise, shit, you know, I don’t want them to follow in my footsteps. But they haven’t because they’ve lived their life of the gang member and they’ve promoted it to their kids. I’m learning from what I did wrong, you know and that’s something I try and push with my kids especially. 00.23.13 Sarah Macdonald The irony is that Eugene, who knows better than most, is banned by the government from helping try to turn kids from crime officially – because of his patch. 00.23.26 Eugene Ryder What kind of got me away from the life of crime was me joining this multi-cultural group. Now I got the same, same buzz doing the Haka as I did holding the gun, you know and I didn’t get arrested for doing the Haka so, I stuck to that. 00.23.41 Children performing Haka 00.23.56 Sarah Macdonald The Haka, the traditional Maori challenge, is performed by these children to welcome a teacher to this Maori culture school in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. 00.24.07 Children performing Haka 00.24.11 Sarah Macdonald This is the Maori taking control of their heritage, lost, some say, to western values imposed by their colonial invaders. 00.24.19 Children performing Haka 00.24.26 Sarah Macdonald New Zealand has reached a crisis. Maoris make up a tenth of the population but fill more than half the prisons. Restorative justice is a last ditch attempt to reverse the trend. 00.24.39 Aston PITA SHARPLES Maori Elder They haven’t done it because they thought it was a good idea or something, it’s in desperation. They’re embarrassed that all these criminals are Maori; so many of them. They know that they haven’t done right by a thing, by a thing called Maori…and, and this is the last resort, their prisons are full and there are too many prisoners. They know that and they’re building more prisons. And this is a terrible situation. 00.25.07 Sarah Macdonald Pita Sharples struggles to fill a void for the offending urban Maori who have lost their tribal contact. He uses Maori justice to reconnect them. 00.25.18 Pita Sharples We people are so stupid in this country we think nine years for rape’s going to heal a rapist – bullshit. It does not heal a rapist. Nine years in prison does not heal anybody necessarily. It certainly doesn’t stop a person from raping. You want to look at why did they rape, who did they rape, what were the circumstances around it and so on. 00.25.41 Pita Sharples The restorative justice system is a system, which is concerned with real emotions, care, remorse, sadness, hate, love, all those kinds of expressions. And that’s the real nitty-gritty of life; that’s why I recommend it. 00.25.59 Music 00.26.06 Sarah Macdonald New Zealand has to find alternatives to the prison system because eighty-six percent of inmates will re- offend within five years of their release. 00.26.15 Music 00.26.20 Helen Johnathan, you’re here because you want to be here and similarly Mark, you’ve expressed an interest to come along. And I’d just like to say it’s a very brave thing to do. 00.26.31 Sarah Macdonald Now Maori justice is being brought to everyone. New Zealand is the first country in the western world to make restorative justice the law. This group are taking part in a four year pilot scheme aimed at adult offenders only. 00.26.45 Helen …so it’s a voluntary process, we ask you to be respectful amongst one another and not talk over the top of one another. 00.26.53 Sarah Macdonald Mark and Johnathan are here because of a near fatal car accident. 00.26.58 Helen Tell the truth and we ask for it to be a safe environment and that means kind of psychologically safe as much as anything else. So no bullying, that kind of thing. 00.27.16 Sarah Macdonald Johnathan Ware is a water polo champion and teaches the sport to youngsters. 00.27.22 Aston JOHNATHAN WARE I was going up to the pools to have a swim for training and I noticed that I needed to get some gas because otherwise I wouldn’t make it. So I know where the BP station was and I, I pulled up, I stopped, I indicated, you know and did all the right things and looked up to see, see nothing was on the road and turned right and then all of a sudden - bang. 00.27.45 Crash 00.27.47 Aston MARK POLGLASE I can remember hitting the ground and that hurt. When we got to hospital they raced me straight in and there was a whole heap of people and just needles and all sorts started going in. They, because of my breathing problem, they had to put a tube in through my side. That hurt. There was no anaesthetic; no nothing. They just punched this tube straight through. 00.28.16 Johnathan Ware It was just unbelievable. I was in shock totally. And then the ambulance was there within seconds and then the police came. 00.28.25 Sarah Macdonald Mark Polglase was thrown from his motorcycle thirty feet down the road. He had five ribs broken, a lung punctured and his foot crushed. He was off work as a car salesman for months. 00.28.42 Sarah Macdonald Johnathan pleaded guilty to careless driving causing injury. 00.28.47 Sarah Macdonald The judge then turned him over to the restorative justice pilot. 00.28.53 Johnathan Ware I went over to my lawyer afterwards and she said no, this sort of can actually help us, it’s, restorative justice is just talking to the person and I didn’t actually know what it was. And I think it’s a good idea because I’d like to say what I, how I feel you know, towards the guy, you know and just try and put his mind at ease. 00.29.15 Mark Polglase I’ve got no hard feelings about it now. I’d say it’d probably do him more good coming together, seeing how I am about it all than myself. I don’t want to go in there and bash him. 00.29.29 Sarah Macdonald At the moment murder, rape and aggravated robbery are excluded from the scheme. 00.29.34 Helen …be interested in what happens here today. 00.29.38 Sarah Macdonald Helen is a lawyer and now a trained restorative justice facilitator. Calvin is a social worker from the local Maori tribe. 00.29.47 Helen Johnathan, in your mind, how do you think it was for Mark? 00.29.52 Johnathan Ware I, I’m, I’m sympathetic for Mark for what’s happened. I know he’s suffered heaps of injuries. And, yeah, that’s… 00.30.07 Helen Mark, tell Johnathan from your perspective what the consequences of all of this have been for you. 00.30.13 Mark Polglase You go through the pain and obviously the recovery side of things and you just, it sort of each day you progressively get better and better and that’s sort of what’s happened right up until this week, until I got the phone call to say, you know, would I do this conference. And at the time I thought oh, I’m sweet as with it, so it’s all been dealt with, I’m getting better, road to recovery and what not. But it’s been a lot different to what I thought to be quite honest. 00.30.44 Mark Polglase This sort of one leg goes up this way and another one drops down here. 00.30.46 Sarah Macdonald Mark said he had no hard feelings but those feelings are growing. He complains to Johnathan that he can no longer play with his daughter in the park. 00.30.57 Mark Polglase …well I can’t do that. That’s too much pressure on the foot, it just and that’s something I’m going to have to live with. 00.31.05 Helen Nancy, do you want to share a little bit about what’s gone on from your perspective as the Mum of Johnathan. 00.31.12 Nancy We did inform John of what your injuries would be like because my husband’s had five fatal accidents on a motorbike, he was thrown three hundred metres down a road. And all I can say is that eventually it does heal and in the five cases of my husband’s accident he was not in the wrong either and there was no compensation for him back then. None. He spent three and a half months in hospital. 00.31.40 Sarah Macdonald Mark and the facilitators find her comments inappropriate. 00.31.45 Helen Jonathan, what would you reflect back to Mark right now, what’s going on in your mind? 00.31.51 Johnathan Ware Umm, I’m feeling, you know, that you’ve gone through a lot, I mean something with your kids, I mean that, that just, I mean I love, I love children that’s what I do for a job and I know they’re not even my kids and I know how much if I was hurt how much it would affect me if I couldn’t do stuff like that. 00.32.14 Helen We’ll just take a breather and then we’ll come back… 00.32.17 Sarah Macdonald Now Johnathan’s punishment will be decided. In five weeks he’ll go back before a judge who should just rubber stamp today’s decision. 00.32.28 Helen What we have to do here is also try and pin it down. So… 00.32.32 Calvin He’s offering three hundred hours and community service but that’s without any financial… 00.32.41 Helen Do you want to maybe just check with him about the money, the reparation and then we’ll reconvene. 00.32.47 Calvin Can we, can we have a figure… 00.32.50 Eli You guys are just running over this. I mean you’ve got to think about it, you know, I just, it’s all nice being all happy and stuff but you know you guys haven’t been through, for someone who’s been, seen what’s gone on, you haven’t seen the struggle, you know, you’re all sitting back going ok, well the poor young fellows putting a nice sympathy act on, he’s a nice chap and stuff but I mean that’s all good and fine but he nearly killed somebody. 00.33.13 Sarah Macdonald Eli’s here to support Mark but he finds he too is angered by the process. 00.33.20 Helen He could do periodic detention, yes, I mean that’s another option. 00.33.26 Eli It’s up to you mate; I’m going to stay out of this now. I need a new coffee. 00.33.30 Sarah Macdonald Mark’s anger makes him push for a harsher punishment. He wants Johnathan to do four hundred hours community service and pay for two thousand dollars worth of ski equipment. 00.33.43 Nancy It’s cost you what it would have cost you to have actually pleaded innocent because you believed you were seemingly innocent. Because he was speeding. And the police clocked him with speeding too so. The only reason you pleaded guilty was because you couldn’t afford to fight it. 00.34.13 Johnathan Ware Like I said I could probably get a thousand to him but that’s it I can’t get any more than that. 00.34.18 Helen So we’ve got an agreement on the community work hours and there’s no agreement on the reparation. 00.34.22 Calvin But we do have an agreement on the ski equipment as reparation. 00.34.26 Mark Polglase No, he’s not. 00.34.27 Helen He’s not going to pay that though is he? 00.34.28 Calvin Okay. 00.34.29 Helen Do you want to check that with him? I think that’s as I understand it, he’s offered a thousand dollars towards it. 00.34.38 Mark Polglase I’ll tell you what, got back tell him fifteen hundred bucks, if he can pay fifteen hundred buck within two weeks then, we’ll take that and leave the rest of it out of the court, otherwise we’ll just leave it to the judge. 00.34.49 Calvin Within two weeks. 00.34.50 Mark Yeah. 00.34.52 Calvin He said if you can pay fifteen hundred dollars within two weeks he won’t ask the court for reparation. 00.34.58 Nancy There’s no way he can pay it. 00.35.00 Johnathan Ware It’s just impossible for me. 00.35.03 Helen I think we’ll just leave it to the court, I think everybody’s going to be satisfied with that. Yeah, we’ll just say that we haven’t got agreement on reparation but that he’s agreed to do four hundred hours community work. That’s fine. We can’t go any further, I don’t think. 00.35.15 Nancy I mean you can’t get blood out of a stone… it’s just impossible. 00.35.19 Helen Ok, so we can bring them in. 00.35.22 Calvin Okay, thank you. 00.35.30 Johnathan Ware That, that upset me. You know, I was, I was apologising, I was doing everything, I was saying I was sympathetic, I was saying sorry, stuff like that and then all of a sudden bang, he says you know, two thousand dollars for ski gear but yet he can’t push his kid on a merry-go-round thing, he can’t run, he can’t play squash you know, yet he can ski. 00.35.56 Mark Polglase I thought I was going to be a lot friendlier and I don’t really feel like being that friendly to him. 00.36.00 Sarah Macdonald Why? 00.36.02 Mark Polglase Because of the damage that’s been done, yeah. Ok, I’m fine, I’m sitting here now, I can walk around and what not but there’s limitation on what I can do, there’s things I’ve got to put up with on a daily basis that only are a result of what he made a mistake and did. 00.36.22 Sarah Macdonald It will now be left to the judge to decide how much money Johnathan should pay to Mark. 00.36.29 Johnathan Ware Sorry about that again… 0036.30 Mark Polglase No worries mate, all the best hey. 00.36.31 Music 00.36.38 Sarah Macdonald Maori justice is being rolled out across the country. But it does have some high profile detractors. 00.36.45 Music 00.36.47 Sarah Macdonald The pilots are designed to shut them up. 00.36.51 Aston ALAN DUFF Author We didn’t have a restorative justice system, the old Maoris. We didn’t, we killed you, we cooked you, we ate you. End of story. If you were the enemy you had no, there was no system of justice, nor did you expect it. It was tribe against tribe. And now they’re suddenly pushing this thing that you know somehow we were, we were a race of just people and we weren’t. 00.37.16 Alan Duff These are my grandparents… 00.37.19 Sarah Macdonald Alan Duff is the controversial author of Once Were Warriors, a brutal depiction of the modern Maori as a drunken wife beater living on the dole. 00.37.29 Alan Duff My grandfather was a, the founding editor of the New Zealand Listener and got the OBE for services to literature and my grandmother was a published novelist and a self-taught classical pianist. And then here’s my Maori grandfather who was not educated but had, came from a totally different conceptual world and that was the world that I grew up in. 00.37.54 Alan Duff I’ve been through the whole range of penal institutions myself from a young age and I know these people backwards. And I’ve grown up with all of the roughies and I’ve obviously run with them and I know damn well that restorative justice to them is a joke. They’re laughing at all these liberals who are pushing this, this nonsense idea. 00.38.28 Sarah Macdonald It’s Saturday – community service day for Fielding’s little criminals. 00.38.38 Sarah Macdonald It’s five months since the Youth Board ordered Keisha to do fifty hours community service. 00.38.46 Sarah Macdonald Today’s her last day. 00.38.54 Man Now listen up, we’re going to do some work here. The rules are; you play up you get a slap. No breaking stuff, you’ve just got to listen to me really. All right? Let’s go. 00.39.10 Sarah Macdonald All these kids have been through the Youth Board. This too is their punishment. 00.39.25 Sarah Macdonald Keisha’s a lot angrier than before. 00.39.31 Sarah Macdonald She’s been difficult to work with. 00.39.34 Keisha Holy shit…enough! 00.39.38 Sarah Macdonald No school would take Keisha back and she’s refusing to do the correspondence course the board has put in place. 00.39.51 Keisha Smelly in here! Oh my gosh the dirty part’s on my jersey. 00.39.55 Man It’s the spiders you’ve got to watch. 00.40.00 Sarah Macdonald Robyn says that mentoring is essential to the success of this project. 00.40.05 Robyn Duncan How’s it going girls? 00.40.06 Sarah Macdonald But this is actually the first time she’s spoken to Keisha for five months. 00.40.11 Robyn Duncan What are you doing now? 00.40.12 Keisha Stay at home. 00.40.14 Robyn Duncan Well that’s not going to get you anywhere is it, really? 00.40.16 Keisha Yeah, well I’ve already got my future sussed out, thank you. 00.40.19 Robyn Duncan Oh have you now. Ok, what about your attitude, Keisha, what about when you threw the pen at me that night; have things changed for you? 00.40.28 Keisha No. 00.40.28 Robyn Duncan No, why not. 00.40.30 Keisha Because. 00.40.31 Robyn Duncan Well you can’t go round treating people like that, hey? 00.40.33 Keisha Like what? 00.40.34 Robyn Duncan Like throwing things at people. 00.40.37 Keisha I wasn’t even throwing it at you; I was just putting it on the table in a shitty way but not intentionally. 00.40.43 Robyn Duncan Well, that’s unacceptable. If you want to get on in this life mate you’ve got to do things properly, okay? 00.40.49 Keisha Whatever. 00.40.50 Robyn Duncan What I need to say to you is that you actually have to come back before that panel of people and if they’re not satisfied with what you’ve done then they’re going to put that other fifty hours on you. 00.40.59 Keisha Why wouldn’t they be satisfied? 00.41.02 Robyn Duncan Well for a start, your attitude. 00.41.04 Keisha My attitude has nothing to do with it. 00.41.06 Robyn Duncan It does. You’ve got to go in there sweet so they think, yep, choice. 00.41.10 Keisha Oh well that’s putting on an act and that’s not something that I want to do. 00.41.13 Robyn Duncan Well that’s cool but what I’m saying to you is that I don’t know that they’ll let you get away with your other fifty hours. 00.41.23 Sarah Macdonald Britain is fast becoming enamoured with this kind of justice. 00.41.27 Sarah Macdonald Police forces nationwide are now confronting young British criminals through the restorative process. 00.41.44 Sarah Macdonald KFC’s the treat after stacking wood. 00.41.51 Sarah Macdonald Robyn says she’s had trouble tracking Keisha down. Her phone calls remained unanswered. 00.41.59 Aston ROBYN DUNCAN Fielding Youth Board Director She’s done the community service, she hasn’t done the apology letter and I’m more than sure that the panel aren’t going to be too impressed with that. I don’t know, she needs to drop the attitude to get anywhere in life. Her education, no school will take her because of her, her attitude and her behaviour, which is quite sad. 00.42.20 Robyn Duncan Kids of toady are just, I don’t know, out of control basically. They think they can rule the world. 00.42.26 Keisha When I’m sixteen, I’m free. Don’t have to live by any rules except the law. And that’s me. 00.42.34 Sarah Macdonald Keisha would have preferred a criminal record and been done with it. Instead for not apologising to Kylie, she’s facing another fifty hours community service. 00.42.50 Sarah Macdonald Restorative justice demands an emotional response to crime; it’s proving a much harsher punishment. The hardest part of all is to say sorry. 00.43.00 Keisha Just write what I feel because before I had to write what, sorry and I’m not sorry, I am sorry for her mother but not Kylie because she did it. 00.43.14 Music 00.43.18 Voice over You can comment on tonight’s programme by visiting our web site at: www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent 00.43.28 End music 00.43.19 Credits Reported & Directed by SARAH MACDONALD Camera JONATHAN CALLERY Dubbing Mixer PHITZ HEARNE VT Editor NICK KAMPA Graphic Design STEVE ENGLAND Production Team ALEXANDRA CAMERON CHARLOTTE DAVIS SARAH EVA MARTHA O’SULLIVAN Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager SUSAN CRIGHTON Film Research NICK DODD Web Producer ANDREW JEFFREY Picture Editor HUGH WILLIAMS Producer MIHINGARANGI FORBES Deputy Editor DAVID BELTON 00.43.30 Voice over Next week on Correspondent – Mafia women. How the mob’s unwritten rules have been broken in one Italian feud. That’s next Sunday at seven fifteen. 00.43.42 CORRESPONDENT 00.43.43 Editor KAREN O’CONNOR © BBC MMII 00.43.50 End BBC Correspondent 1 1