Leading from the front issuu

“When Nils realised I was staying at a backpackers
and wasn’t a criminologist but was in Oslo for two
weeks, he made a deal with me. ‘Read my books and
then we can talk’, he said. So I went away and read his
brilliant and sobering Beyond ‘Gulags Western Style’?
and Crime Control as Industry and we met up a few days
later over a beer for a Q&A. We kept in touch too following
that visit.”
Twenty years ago Norwegians moved away from their
harsh Corrections model, which Pat put down to the
country being a mature society and having strong, inspired
leadership at the time. Norwegians started paying
higher taxes, which helped fund early intervention.
He saw prisons where there was little evidence of retribution
and reoffending rates dropped dramatically.
If Pat hadn’t talked to Nils, he would never have braved
meeting Stewart Murray Wilson — one of New Zealand’s
worst sex offenders — in his cottage on the grounds of
Whanganui Prison and he wouldn’t have felt confident
enough to challenge Whanganui Corrections, who as a
result, often weren’t happy with him.
“Wilson would have had a better chance at rehabilitation
in Norway. Politicians there aren’t allowed to promote
prisons as places of punishment and he would not
still be locked up or supervised in a cottage on prison
grounds after 25 years.”
In Pat’s view, the best thing New Zealand could do
would be to adopt the Scandinavian Restorative Justice
model, based on enquiring why people fall through
the cracks and then trying to prevent it from happening
again, instead of letting people rot in prison.
Thinking about Anders Behring Breivik in Norway, and
the mass shooting in 2011 where 77 people were killed;
Pat says the object of the Norwegian system was to
work with Breivik, find out what hurt him and get him
back into the community, “As yet, forgiveness is not in
our culture”.
“Wilson
would have
had a better chance at
rehabilitation In Norway.
Politicians there aren’t
allowed to promote prisons as
places of punishment and he
would not still be locked up or
supervised in a cottage on
prison grounds after
25 years.”
FRIENDSHIP AND
THE BEAST
Lack of forgiveness was not a consideration
for Pat when he came up with the idea of
meeting “The Beast of Blenhiem”. Pat likes
a challenge. He doesn’t shy away from high
profile situations either and he sure found
both in Stewart Murray Wilson. People’s
reactions to Pat visiting Wilson a few years
back ranged from: “Why waste time on
him?” or “You’ve gone too far with this one,
Pat”, through to, “It’s good you went to see
him”. Born in 1946 in Timaru, Wilson is known
as one of New Zealand’s worst sex offenders.
He was jailed for 21 years in 1996 for offending
involving 42 women and girls. In September
2012 he was paroled under the most
severe release conditions ever imposed in
New Zealand. The public and Whanganui
City Council were outraged that Wilson was
accommodated in a house on the grounds
of Whanganui Prison and not in more secure
conditions. Wilson is still there today, following
a return to prison in 2013 after allegedly
making a phone call to someone he wasn’t
permitted to contact.
Above: Open prisons in Suomenlinna Island, Helsinki, Finland: “There is no punishment so effective as punishment that nowhere
announces the intention to punish”. Doran Larson, in GLOBAL.
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Restorative Justice – for an unjust justice system